Morale and Cowards

[kabill]

It tracks it internally, so if you have someone wig out and it doesn't look likt it should have, that's probably why.

Are you sure about that? I've seen morale bars be depleted both on the alien turn (if the soldier I had selected takes morale damage during the alien turn) and seen soldiers with less than 100% morale on my turn. I may be wrong, but I think the game applies morale recovery after panic checks have been made (and it's a fair fast recovery) which is why you don't tend to see low morale scores.

(That said, you may well still be right and there is an issue. But I've definately seen morale bars doing something.)

[Max_Caine]

I'm super cereal. Two of my soliders had bravery in the high 30's, so they were likely to break at pretty much anything. They had previously gotten a morale buff from the man in charge, but they had moved away, however the buff had not been removed from the bar. I watched as a friendly AI blew himself up then both of them wigged out (as they would). However the bar didn't go down as it should have.

[kabill]

I watched as a friendly AI blew himself up then both of them wigged out (as they would). However the bar didn't go down as it should have.

If this happened during the alien turn, my explanation would still stand: Friendly AI dies; morale damage is applied; panic test is made at beginning of player turn (and failed); morale recovery is applied. You'd not necessarily see the bar go down, because if the morale damage was less than the maximum you can recover in a turn (and from one friendly casaualty probably was), then it would appear like nothing had changed.

What you've described, then, could still be WAD (not the bit about temporary buffs not being removed, mind!). It also might not be; I just wanted to suggest a possible non-bug explanation.

(It would be really easy to test this, actually. If morale recovery was modded to a very low amount, then this would stop morale recovery being able to cover up morale damage. If the morale bar doesn't adjust downward after this, there's almost certainly a bug like you describe.)

[Max_Caine]

That would make sense - not quite sure then how you'd represent it so the player knows that he's lost sufficent morale to trigger a test.

[kabill]

A greyed out bar (like the health bar after taking damage) would work to show how low morale was before recovery.

Alternatively, having the morale bar on the unit-selection cards update during the alien turn would at least show the player that they're taking morale damage, even if they can't review how low it was exactly.

[Chris]

I guess we can move morale-recovery to the end of the turn, maybe? I'll take an in-detail look at the morale system in the polishing phase.

[kabill]

I guess we can move morale-recovery to the end of the turn, maybe? I'll take an in-detail look at the morale system in the polishing phase.

I'd thought about suggesting that, but it would render morale damage taken during the player turn largely irrelevant.

[Chris]

Actually, now I think about it, the reason why we don't do it is if you fall to 0 morale then you're automatically up to 20 or whatever before the next morale check. So you can never have really low morale....although you do still take morale damage as normal down to that minimum level.

However, the game could theoretically be balanced around that, if the chance to panic was set to 90% at 20 morale...or whatever the numbers actually are.

[kabill]

Ok, after some testing things seem to be working correctly (so far as I can tell):

- Morale losses apply properly on the UI on the player turn (tested by shooting my own soldiers!).

- Morale losses apply properly on the AI turn (can be seen if the unit selected at the end of the turn takes morale damage).

- The UI (and, I guess, the game) recalculates morale at the beginning of each Xenonaut player turn. I can't quite tell if the normal recovery applies before or after a morale check, but the main reason why Xenonauts often panic but look like they have lost no morale is that a large morale boost is applied after a soldier panics.

- Calculations for officers and soldier proximity also apply at the beginning of the Xenonaut turn. If this would take the soldier to more than their maximum morale, their maximum as well as their current totals are increased accordingly. If this would take the soldier below their maximum morale (e.g. a soldier has moved away from allies), this shows as a depletion on the bar. If a soldier currently has less than their maximum and moves close to a soldier to get the proximity bonus, this is displayed firstly only as an increase in their current and not their maximum morale. However, as the soldier's morale recovers, it will eventually go above their normal maximum morale as expected. (Proximity bonus can be seen by moving soldiers into/out of range).

- The last thing may be WAD, but I'm not sure: killing aliens takes morale above maximum.

I only did a few tests, so it's possible I missed stuff. But overall there don't seem to be any glaring issues. I think the issue is that because panicking gives a large boost to a soldiers morale, often it looks like they were fine to begin with.

[Chris]

Yeah, looking at the files they get +21 morale every time they panic. That should probably be applied at the end of the turn, rather than immediately though.

EDIT - Plus they regen +10 morale a turn naturally, so any soldier that panics appears to have +31 morale more than they did when they panicked. I'm going to cut the +21 gain down to +5, which means a soldier will always have +15 morale more then when they panicked.

If they were at 0 morale, this means they only have a 45% chance of panicking again the next turn.

[GlyphGryph]

Personally, I'd rather not see panicking give a boost to morale at all (and perhaps even a penalty that completely negates the turn recover bonus), but rather result in behaviour that has a chance of boosting morale (crouching behind cover, or trying to run back to a group of other soldiers, etc.).

Like you said, even if panic gave a -10 penalty, they'd still be recovering about 5 morale per turn WITHOUT any other factors impacting things.

I could understand berserking giving a morale bonus, but honestly I would rather see a panicking soldier need to be calmed down, rather than being to rely on him now being essentially the bedrock of the squad because he's the only one who's already panicked and now has more morale than everybody else.

Basically, turn panicking into a a tactical consideration with opportunities for counterplay, rather than being a randomized kick-to-the-nuts that can only be avoided that you can't respond to in any meaningful way. (Well, technically, it would still be a random kick to the nuts, but it would be the second with tactical considerations and counterplay thrown on top). By reinforcing the duration for when things go bad, you make it worse, admittedly, but you also make it more predictable and give players something to actually respond to, instead of creating a problem that automatically resolves itself by the time the player can do anything about it.

Is it completely random whether a given soldier panics or berserks? For the same reason, it would be nice if panicked soldiers where more likely to panic and berserking soldiers more likely to berserk after their initial whatever at least, so again there's some sort of predictability I can respond to there. I might decide to move people in to try and boost the morale of a panicking soldier, but retreat people from a berserking one and just hope he lives long enough to get a hold of himself... but that's only true in either case if they are likely to be continuing said behaviour for multiple turns.

Edited March 13, 2014 by GlyphGryph

[Gauddlike]

Not sure I like the idea of a panicked soldier basically becoming useless for several turns.

If they got a penalty to morale when they panicked then they would be almost guaranteed to panic next turn, another penalty and that carries on for another turn and so on.

In your example they would need to avoid panic for 3 turns before they started to increase in morale again, any adverse effects like a friendly moving away or a civilian getting shot could start the cycle again.

I understand the desire for a more interactive panic system but I don't think that would be a particularly fun way to do it.

I wouldn't mind seeing a morale boost effect added to the medkit though.

At least you can pre-empt the panic by dosing up the twitchy looking rookie.

[Skitso]

Is GH planning to add morale and panic effects to alien forces too? I think it would be a great addition and add emeregent gameplay situations.

[StellarRat]

Is GH planning to add morale and panic effects to alien forces too? I think it would be a great addition and add emeregent gameplay situations.

I think Chris ruled that out quite a while ago on the grounds that aliens are centrally controlled so they fellow orders without question or emotions, like the Borg. Besides, I think it might unbalance things this late in the development because it would no doubt lead to weaker aliens and I'm sure it would cause more AI coding.

[Skitso]

Thats understandable lore wise and would certainly require extra work but still.. makes me sad thst we won't be seeing panicked caesans fleeing or berserking sebillian plasma-shotgunning his adjacent friends to purple bits..

[StellarRat]

Thats understandable lore wise and would certainly require extra work but still.. makes me sad thst we won't be seeing panicked caesans fleeing or berserking sebillian plasma-shotgunning his adjacent friends to purple bits..

I know. I always loved it in the old game when they panicked. Made me feel like, "Now you know how it feels you alien bastards!"

[legit1337]

I know. I always loved it in the old game when they panicked. Made me feel like, "Now you know how it feels you alien bastards!"

Exactly. Aliens being unable to panic makes them feel less real. Almost like they are robots. It would have been cool to see androns never panic, but sebs and caesans are flesh and blood, and them being unable to panic strikes me as strange. All biological life forms feel emotions, it comes with the territory.

I don't buy the reason chris gave either. IMO it is just a justification for laziness. There is NO valid reason except for not wanting to spend the programming time, for aliens not to have morale.

[StellarRat]

Exactly. Aliens being unable to panic makes them feel less real. Almost like they are robots. It would have been cool to see androns never panic, but sebs and caesans are flesh and blood, and them being unable to panic strikes me as strange. All biological life forms feel emotions, it comes with the territory.

I don't buy the reason chris gave either. IMO it is just a justification for laziness. There is NO valid reason except for not wanting to spend the programming time, for aliens not to have morale.

Please don't take my word as gospel here. That's just what I seem to remember. My memory has not improved with age, LOL.

[DreXav]

Exactly. Aliens being unable to panic makes them feel less real. Almost like they are robots. It would have been cool to see androns never panic, but sebs and caesans are flesh and blood, and them being unable to panic strikes me as strange. All biological life forms feel emotions, it comes with the territory.

I don't buy the reason chris gave either. IMO it is just a justification for laziness. There is NO valid reason except for not wanting to spend the programming time, for aliens not to have morale.

If you read some of the ingame interrogation research text, it says pretty clearly that the non-officers are mindless thralls that simply comply with orders. Officers might be augmented enough not to suffer from morale or they have just more extensive conditioning for tactical capacity. I feel only the leader class of aliens should be susceptible to panicking, per their lore.

That aside, your statement that "all biological life forms feel emotions" is simply wrong (i.e. plants don't have emotions).

Perhaps you meant to say that all sentient beings are capable of emotions?

[Chris]

Aliens being affected by morale events is on the to-do list, we've just not got round to it yet.

[StellarRat]

Aliens being affected by morale events is on the to-do list, we've just not got round to it yet.

Well, that is good news!

[DreXav]

Aliens being affected by morale events is on the to-do list, we've just not got round to it yet.

Smooth ninja edit for toning-down there, Chris ; ]

[Belmakor]

I don't know if its possible but instead of toning down morale penalties for taking damage, could you make them weapon dependent?

It strikes me that being hit and pinned down by a sniper is more fear inducing than a guy firing his little pew pew pistol. I know its tied to suppression, but the (IMHO) scariest weapons don't always have the most suppression.

I'm not against higher chances of panic, as long as its deserved.

[legit1337]

Aliens being affected by morale events is on the to-do list, we've just not got round to it yet.

Wow, really? I'll eat my words then... I thought you said they weren't going to. Great news!

[Kirill Selivanov]

intrested... do civilian armed forces panic?