Morale rules

[Skitso]

I love to see my units panic, drop their weapons, run away or go berserk. Morale system seem quite bare bones at the moment and I've never even used the new morale boost action. What I've experienced is that my units tend to have panic reactions only when half of the team is dead or they receive critical wounds.

What could be improved:

1. New recruits bravery stat should be lower (battle hardened guys should always stand out!)
2. Training center should not improve bravery (not sure if it does?)
3. Dfficulty level could change morale rules. (Harder difficulty, higher morale damage)
4. Surviving critical wounds (crimson heart) could add permanent morale damage.
5. There should be a lot more things affecting morale like:

• "Did I see something in the shadows?" (Night missions should have constant morale penalty)
• "This place is scary..." (Alien bases and ufo interiors should have constant moral penalty)
• "Those things will kill us!!" (Add reaper a special ability of morale area damage around it)
• "This is too much for me!" (suppression, missed shots and nearby explosions should cause morale damage)
• "What's that?!" (Seeing new alien types for the first time could cause a morale damage)
• "There's too many of them!!" (Seeing there's a lot more alien units nearby than own units should cause morale damage)
• "Why is everybody screaming?!" (Seeing others panic should cause morale damage - chain reactions are always funny!)

Also, It'd be great to have soldiers screaming and crying when having a panic attack.

Edited November 6, 2023 by Skitso

[Conductiv]

1. not per-se, ignorance can be a bliss when it comes to the horrors of war..or in this case an alien invasion, you could say the soldier is simply too stupid to be scared. this is often detrimental to the soldiers health though, thinking McNamara's morons here from the vietnam era

2. don't know if it does, but again, it makes sense to be prepared when trained for it, we use training to prevent police horses from panicking when they hear loud noises. it doesn't make you brave per se, but certain "scary" things have much less impact if you expect them to happen.  
3. better to use total war like rules here, rather then improve morale damage on your troops make it harder to affect alien morale as the difficulty increases, the battle changes drastically if you can't suppress targets reliably. but I have to be honest here...neither option is particularity appealing, either my troops run for the hills as soon as they hear a stiff breeze, or the enemy is tanking flashbangs to the face. (ignoring the fact that robotic enemies already ignore morale effects)
4. maybe, being critically wounded or KO'd in a battle is sure to cause some trauma.
5. when it comes to troops crapping their pants you could say fighting enemies with futuristic weapons powerful enough to blast a hole straight through a brick wall even if they miss, seeing your allies..or well..any human... being evicerated by a man sized bug and then instantly birthing new ones, frigging invisible "terminators" trying to take potshots at you and/or you being inside a dark alien architecture would certainly create dread. but point 3 sort of applies here...morale damage should certainly have impact..but its very easy to overdo..and its a negative spiral effect. aka it hits you when you are already on the receiving end of punches.
so before the trooper drops his gun and decides to inspect the business end of the alien plasma cannon with his face, there should be a moment the player gets the opportunity to use said morale recovering action instead of trying to shoot. this is also the current problem, as long as you have the whole squad alive and not one trooper is getting seriously blasted, you barely take morale damage, but once you already have a massive action deficit because of multiple men down or gravely wounded, they start losing turns and moving to suicidal positions. Its actually quite binary, there is either no need or no time for the recover action to be executed.  while its completely logical that morale goes down the gutter when half the squad is down, I think it would be beneficial to have a "sweet spot" where having troopers take a moment to get their head on straight is the optimal action, and blasting at the enemy is at the players own risk. 

[Skitso]

@Chris, I couldn't find the exact morale rules posted anywhere. Could you post a quick summary of how it works here?

 

Also, thinking this a bit more got me thinking if the low morale effects should be less binary and units started losing stats before having total breakdowns?

Edited November 6, 2023 by Skitso

[Komandos]

On 11/5/2023 at 11:15 PM, Conductiv said:

sort of applies here...morale damage should certainly have impact..but its very easy to overdo..and its a negative spiral effect. aka it hits you when you are already on the receiving end of punches.

Currently, there are no tactical battles in the X2 game in which the player loses a battle to aliens. The only way for the aliens to make the player lose the fight is to kill all the player's soldiers. If the aliens have the ability to make the player's soldiers panic, then the aliens can make the player's soldiers run back to their combat transport and interrupt the combat mission, (as an option: the Aircraft pilot panics, starts the engine and flies away after 5 Turns (mission failure). This method is more acceptable to the player in the game than losing the entire tactical group of soldiers.

[Komandos]

21 hours ago, Skitso said:

Also, thinking this a bit more got me thinking if the low morale effects should be less binary and units started losing stats before having total breakdowns?

If the player's soldiers get a speed bonus during a panic and run back to their Aircraft to start the engine and abort the mission, then everything will look natural. (Then the mechanics of panic won't raise many questions).

[mclang]

I like your idea of Xenonauts panicking and running towards dropship and the dropship taking off even before all the Xenonauts are back on board.

[ooey]

On 11/7/2023 at 4:33 PM, mclang said:

I like your idea of Xenonauts panicking and running towards dropship and the dropship taking off even before all the Xenonauts are back on board.

If implemented, better keep your best troops near it just in case :-).

I had an idea a way back which is relevant to a mixed squad of men/women based on Sirens & He-men. If male troopers see females it halves their action points (and vice versa) as they would hesitate to kill beings of such beauty, but would have no effect on a woman trooper! This way you could hedge your bets by making your squad half/half. Perhaps troops left on a failed mission are used by the aliens to this effect. I like to have a reason for everything! I'd certainly think twice about killing a woman.

Incidentally, are there rescue missions for troops left behind on a failed mission? That would vary tactical combat even more (i.e. agents have info. that a captured xenonaut/s are being held at a facility and you have to rescue them). Find them, free them and GET TO THE CHOPPER!

Edited November 13, 2023 by ooey