Suggestions regarding morale

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11-10-2017, 10:27 PM
Bivoj

Suggestions regarding morale

Currently the morale (tickets with flavor) is kind of black-and-white: either all soldiers fight with full elan, without any penalty / malus OR the reinforcements are depleted and the round is suddenly lost. This is not realistic, not appealing (morale is being lowered, but it has no impact on gameplay) and (more importantly) not gameplay clever.

My suggestions is to make morale impacts more fuzzy and more appealing:

1)
Morale drops below 50% => slightly increase the time for respawns
Morale drops below 25% => significantly reduce the respawn time

Rationale: the soldiers with lower morale are more reluctant to reinforce the first line

2)
Morale drops below 50 / 25% => slightly / significantly increased suppression effects

Rationale: when low on morale, fear and shock is increased

3)
Morale drops below 50% => out of formation soldiers auto-surrender when close to enemy in close formation
Morale drops below 25% => out of formation soldiers auto-surrender when close to enemy even in skirmish formation

Rationale: low on morale soldiers would surrender when alone facing superior number of enemy in good order
Gameplay: punishing lonewolfing in realistic way and encouraging formations

4)
morale above 75% => quicker sprint and more stamina

Rationale: fresh troops have more stamina

Gameplay improvements of fuzzy morale system: reducing enemy tickets will be much more gameplay important (and can be used for balancing maps/scenarios), especially for attacks - when lowering enemy tickets, attacking will become realistically easier (imagine Burnside bridge with US side having more tickets); dying out of formation will be more punishing for the team; keeping formation will be more rewarding; unbalanced battles will end quicker
11-11-2017, 09:56 AM
TrustyJam

Thank you for the feedback. :)

We’re not in favor of penalizing the losing side - they are already behind and likely to lose, I don’t see the need to reinforce this more with game mechanics.

- Trusty
11-11-2017, 12:04 PM
Dether

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrustyJam

Thank you for the feedback. :)

We’re not in favor of penalizing the losing side - they are already behind and likely to lose, I don’t see the need to reinforce this more with game mechanics.

- Trusty

exactly Trusty,, and especially at this battle at Sharpsburg ... many times the confeds were on the ropes and pulled through, I believe it would be an injustice to make it otherwise.
11-11-2017, 03:25 PM
Bivoj

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrustyJam

...penalizing the losing side - they are already behind and likely to lose...

That would be true if your intention is to see most games ending by completely depleted tickets. I hope this is not the case and depleting all tickets is just uncommon punishment for too poor or too aggresive (suicidal) gamestyle of the side (like in most other realistic first person shooters). I hope your intention is to see most games ending either by capturing the objective (attacker is the winner) or running out of time (defender is the winner) - in this case, number of remaining tickets has no impact on determination of winner and fiddling with uneven number of tickets has no real impact for balancing maps. My suggestion is not punishing losers, but helping realisticaly balance attack/defend.

Example:
A map difficult for attacking like Burnside bridge can end with losing USA having 55% of remaining tickets and successfully defending CSA having 20% of tickets (while they suffered less or similar casualties as USA; CSA is provided much less tickets in this map to represent numerical superiority of USA). At this moment, this has no impact on gameplay. You can say, that USA should have played much more aggressively, more suicide attacks neglecting casualties and even enjoying the lonewolfing tactic more, because they can afford it (they have plenty of tickets) and it is their fault, that they have not exploited the opportunity in higher tickets number - is it really the playstyle to be encouraged?

On the other hand my suggestion would position CSA into inconvenient situation: their respawns being slower and suppression effects more severe, realistically helping USA to attack easier at "breaking" infantry unit.

My suggestion is not only realistic ("breaking" soldiers are not as confident as "battle ready"), but encourages/rewards realistic gamestyle:
attackers should first inflict some casualties to defenders to wear them off and charge at them after doing so - if the defenders have lower morale causing higher respawn rate, the attack is more likely to be successful. Even when both sides have lower morale, the higher respawn rate benefits attackers (defenders reinforce / counterattack slower)

Also defenders are discouraged to perform suicide counterattacks and they are encouraged to stick in formation to keep good morale as long as possible to be able to defend better

Also, if most games end by capturing the objective or running out of time, the malus for depleting more tickets of your side while dying as lonewolf provides only little real motivation to stick within formation. The effect of ticket depletion is too far to appear if any...
When there is realistic punishment for low morale unit, the lonewolfing has impact in every game and keeping formation rewards every game. Ending at 20% is no more too far from any trouble, your respawns are slow and your suppression is high.

Last but not least:
Yes, it can (and would) punish the worse side in some cases. Why is it an issue? It is realistic. Blackpowder battles are about morale and low morale has impact on soldiers' performance. Winning is about keeping own unit's morale high and put enemy's morale down. Attack against breaking unit was much easier than attack at fresh unit.

To be honest, it really disturbs me, that "battle ready" soldiers behave in the same steadiness, confidence and order as "breaking" soldiers. If the number of tickets has no gameplay impact, I would very strongly prefer to not call the number of tickets "morale"; better call it just "casualties" or even "tickets".
11-12-2017, 02:00 AM
Redleader
Quote:

Originally Posted by Bivoj

CSA is provided much less tickets in this map to represent numerical superiority of USA). At this moment, this has no impact on gameplay. You can say, that USA should have played much more aggressively, more suicide attacks neglecting casualties and even enjoying the lonewolfing tactic more, because they can afford it (they have plenty of tickets) and it is their fault, that they have not exploited the opportunity in higher tickets number - is it really the playstyle to be encouraged?
.

Today we had two cases of this perticular playstyle (where the US played "aggressive" in order to get as many kills as possible against a well ligned up CSA).
The results :
- Battle 1 : USA losses 93 & CSA losses 49 : USA won (both breaking, so probably close call)
- Battle 2 : USA losses 68 & CSA losses 28 : CSA won
The second time we won because the enemy kept pushing in while in skirmish or even out of line formation in order to break our line.
11-12-2017, 04:12 PM
Dether
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redleader

Today we had two cases of this perticular playstyle (where the US played "aggressive" in order to get as many kills as possible against a well ligned up CSA).
The results :

Battle 1 : USA losses 93 & CSA losses 49 : USA won (both breaking, so probably close call)
Battle 2 : USA losses 68 & CSA losses 28 : CSA won

The second time we won because the enemy kept pushing in while in skirmish or even out of line formation in order to break our line.
well done Redleader... always best to look at fact over conjecture.
11-12-2017, 05:11 PM
Bivoj

I have also played for a while yesterday and I have not experienced a round ending on ticket depletion (which is good). That proves my statement regarding barely no impact of the total number of tickets (called "morale") on real gameplay.
11-12-2017, 06:03 PM
TrustyJam

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bivoj

I have also played for a while yesterday and I have not experienced a round ending on ticket depletion (which is good). That proves my statement regarding barely no impact of the total number of tickets (called "morale") on real gameplay.

Then you have either been playing very well in formation or we have given you too much morale. I disagree with your statement about morale shouldn’t be the decider. It should as should time and as should capturing. In a perfect world it would be evenly distributed at 33% each.

- Trusty
11-13-2017, 07:42 AM
Bivoj

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrustyJam

Then you have either been playing very well in formation or we have given you too much morale. I disagree with your statement about morale shouldn’t be the decider. It should as should time and as should capturing. In a perfect world it would be evenly distributed at 33% each.

- Trusty

Then it will be different (it is not properly balanced yet, but we are in Alpha, so it is expected) from other realistic shooters, but this game has the unique (and great) formation feature, so it may work.

It is pitty to let this great feature influence only 1/3 of games. And calling the tickets “morale” is misleading. By common sense one would expect battle ready soldiers to fight better than breaking soldiers...