Morale of Many

[Coffee Potato]

There are many features that are discussed regularly, but I wanted to drop a heartfelt plea to add one particular thing from XDiv, and technically CE. 

Namely how the morale system works. 

This system is apparently in the CE code, for reference, but mostly shines in XDiv.

In short,  there's many layers, and I may get some of this wrong, but your people get a situational morale bonus for sticking together. Your leaders boost units within 10 tiles, and morale recovers slower, but gets boosted by actions better. This creates an excellent thing where your units feel like they're fighting together, but would be prone to panic and psionic attacks if left alone. 

It's subtle, but for the sake of comparison. I wanted to share two scenarios. 

In one vanilla game, the squad gets suppressed from a single rifle burst from a Cesean outside of the drop ship, and while they mostly held together,  two units, including the LT leading them, broke and ran, despite not being in danger, and actively outnumbering the guy 8 to 1.

In XDiv, a scout is sent out the side to do some scouting, while the rest of the squad runs out and forms a wall of shields outside of the dropship. They take a drone attack, half get suppressed, the rest take their shots. The scout gets injured by a sneak attack, but doesn't panic until psi hits him. That psi and Suppression doesn't do more than slow down the formed up team, and their morale rarely dips below half even when hit by psi. 

Point being, it makes the fight feel like they are actually a team, and this helps a lot with believing the reactions when they actually do panic. 

Berserk was removed, and honestly I'll never miss it. One of the worst moments I had was when an I/I run was going super well until we waited too many turns for one rookie's liking (No casualties, no suppression, no psi), and he takes an HMG to the vets in the team....resulting in a dumb as hell squad wipe out of absolutely nowhere, since the last guy with a Pistol had 2 turns to walk out and mop up the 5 panicked units left. This has never once happened in XDic

I don't want to make this too long, so I'll stop there. Please, the code is apparently already there. Please consider this system. It makes our units feel sane.

[Ninothree]

Panic has not really had a decent implementation. Maybe if its effects were taken in a different direction, so rather than friendly fire, your green rookie refuses to break cover and only takes auto fire. That would make you rethink your strategy and allow you to keep going, rather than suffering a wipe. The threat would still remain, because if enough soldiers panic and refuse to move, they're much easier to flank.

Equivalently, facing enemies who are falling into panic would be a different kind of challenge, as they rapidly run through their ammo, and are equally susceptible to a flanking manoeuvre.   

Edited August 4, 2019 by Ninothree

[Max_Caine]

I don't believe a morale mechanic has been implemented in X2. There's no morale bar on the UI. The bravery stat is so far only useful for resisting Psonic effects. 

[Coffee Potato]

It hasn't been implemented yet, but I reeeeeeally hope XDiv's version of the CE code gets used. It just feels so believable.