Author Topic: Morale changes  (Read 17237 times)

CryptCypher

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Re: Morale changes
« Topic Start: November 19, 2017, 03:40:51 PM »
Gained 6 morale from fighting monsters without losing any man. So Anaris was right about gaining morale from winning but it seems it doesn't happen often enough. It should happen whenever you are winning and not losing too many men I think. Maybe as long as your loss is less than 20% you gain morale while 20% to 30% your morale should stay the same?

(Pre-post edit: Huh. Went from a tie-in to a fully-fledged suggestion of mechanics pipedream. Woops.)

Tie it into training and cohesion. A well-trained, cohesive unit would logically face fewer devastating morale drops and more morale gains than a badly-trained and mismanaged unit of green recruits. A squad of privates out escorting staff sergeant McOorah to his favorite "midnight funhouse" should freak out and lose morale for any minor loss, up to devastating morale drop for serious loss or retreat under fire as opposed to an all-hands-on-deck tactical retreat, which would be relatively or completely bloodless and a non-issue to veteran forces... Whereas a veteran squad can lose vital manpower and still retain some semblance of dignity/fighting spirit, where a green unit would lose its !@#$ and face collapse/mutiny/desertion.

Not to mention, a unit's commanding officer (noble retainer, maybe marshals) being wounded should have some sort of tangible effect on morale. After all, these damn peasants are nothing without the chain of command, which that enemy volley just pincushioned and knocked out of commission. "Dafuq do we do now?!"

That should totally, totally be a thing by the way. Mutiny, desertion, and-or chain-of-command events would be amazing (scripted? random-ish?)... Hell, can you imagine a priest/diplomat/hero/marshal/ruler doing one of those gloriously infamous and rare speeches pre-major-battle, or receiving a divine omen or what have you, and affecting morale of all those in the region/adjacent who belong to the relevant army/nation/faith? Or diplomat, assassin, or trader pulling some sort of skullduggery/bribery/offered-beeches and suddenly a portion of Noble McHero's elite units decide they'd rather serve Clever McMoneyBags, or a portion of the newly-recruited archer battalion takes a nice forward-advance payment of 3/5/10x their daily pay and screws off to the nearest bar/"funhouse"? Perhaps they can be convinced to return to their prior employer by bribing/imprison/executing their mutineer commander, or just return on their own after a drunken night gone AWOL right before that major battle... Maybe Sneaky McDagger sneaks in and poisons their dinner: subsequent parade-march of brown-stained pants and unscheduled trips to the nearest crap-hole temporarily(!) damages unit morale/cohesion, because your elite paladins are no good if their stomachs are clawing their insides and the smell of dribbled feces permeates the once-proud ranks of your forward battleline. Can you imagine how much it would SUCK to crap yourself in a suit of platemail+helm? Not to mention the chafing, chance of infected hemorrhoids from dysentery-like "eruption", and having to be shield-buddies with a guy who smells like a giant tin can of rotted gluteous maximus... Hell, maybe some ingenious trader drops some MAJOR coin to "acquire" the enemy's ore shipments and replace their superior steel with some shoddy low-quality iron, which gives a one-time/temporary malus to recruitment center quality/weapons/armor/training/etc. Do this the turn of/prior to an RC's construction and you risk (semi?)permanent damage to what would have been a better RC, bumping it down a tier in overall or trait-specific quality, simulating the historic loss of vital supply routes, resources, intel, and manpower that severely altered the outcome of battles and wars in our history books. *cough shoddy aluminium making Japanese Zero's akin to wet tissue paper, and a massive lack of oil which severely limited their mechanized capabilities, allowing allied forces to decimate them with ease cough* (not to mention the cultural impetus for unassailable aggression coupled with a disdain for defensive tactics and the dependence on blitzkrieg-style one-off banzai attacks and suicide-upon-defeat that failed in the face of the allies' superior logistical train, defensive-offensive mixed tactics, and a drawn-out war that rapidly outpaced Japan's ability to supply its forces. Lets not even get into the death of millions of Japanese citizens through starvation/firebombing/etc that make Hiroshima and Nagasaki's deathtoll seem tame.)

Speaking of, to make nations/religions/regions more unique, perhaps one day we can go beyond mere RP and have mechanics of some sort of basic skeletal "culture system". Nations opt out by default, of course, but nations who want to follow a serious theme can opt into certain realm-wide or region-specific cultural mechanics that "may" RNGesus things on a broad spectrum, tailoring the realm to better reflect their chosen image. Opting out by characters/nations/regions would just default to the norm, eliminating both maluses AND bonuses. (which exist in a dualistic give-and-take fashion as common sense dictates) like unit cohesion/training (ex: Spartans=bonus to training, malus to raw trainee volume? Persian slave-army=malus to training, bonus to RC raw trainee numbers? Opt out is neutral, spartan is training-focus for fewer troops, persian is more troops for crappier quality?), population growth/birth rate, monster spawn rate (heresy/anarchy/demon cults), agricultural yield/stability/volume (locusts, pollution, nitrate deficiency, evil omen, slash&burn, slave labor, hunter-gatherer focus, whatever), tax collection/region loyalty (greedy=more gold less loyalty/productivity; less gold-higher-loyalty/productivity), paraphernalia availability/cost (ex: medicus corps/health focus means more and cheaper healers, or more numerous but more expensive healers (+1 gold per pay cycle?) or faster wound healing, with associated maluses for balance), so forth. Hell, it'd be extremely interesting if characters retain the culture the last opted into upon moving to a new/different realm, effectively making it so that different regions/cities within a nation are affected by the cultures of their citizens, creating an incredibly dynamic meta-cultural flux that affects the realm, its individual regions, and the lords/knights or those regions in interesting ways. Hell, one could strike out the mechanics bonus/malus altogether in favor of a random-event system where adopted cultural paradigms opt you into, or make more likely, the incidence of certain random events while detracting from the chances/impact of others?

Hey, we can fabricate documents to buy friggin CITIES. Why not add some fun and sow chaos into the ranks of noble and soldier alike by using tactics that bear historical precedent in their varied usage. Not to mention it adds plenty of fun for different classes and incredible depth to nations, religions, guilds, and the like.
Apsu@Legends. BM: Yxevarii Auru'in, Grandmistress [Ruler;Priestess-Inquisitor] (Obia'Syela-BT); Sigrid Gudrun Auru'in, Avenging Exile of Xavax, Countess of Slimbar (Redhaven-EC);  Masalu Auru'in, Linguistically-Challenged Sumerian Death-Cultist (D'hara-DW)