A couple of ideas... (Fear, Morale, Leaders, Hunting...)

Hey all! Dvd here with a couple of ideas.

First off:

FEAR
No, not First Encounter Assault Recon. I mean Fear, as in Fear For Life. Or Fear of Death. Basically, if a single peasant saw thirty heavily armored dark knights charging, what would he do? Turn and run as fast as he can! Fear also ties into Morale, which I will cover next. Basically six things determine fear level:

1.) Your Level (AKA, Unit's Level)
2.) Enemy Level (AKA, Enemy Unit's Level)
3.) Weapons and Armor
4.) Enemy Weapons and Armor
5.) Your Number (AKA, how many of you)
6.) Enemy Number (AKA, how many bad guys)

If a peasant is:

Level 1
W/ a small knife and commoner clothes, hunting boots, leather gloves
There are 20 peasants

While a dark knight is:

Level 20
W/ a long sword, and steel shield, full black armor
There are 30 dark knights

Then the Peasants will have extremely low Courage. Courage also ties into Morale, and Fear.

There are two bars, Courage and Fear. If the Fear bar is full then it continues into the Courage bar. A unit or party with Courage will attack parties the same size or slightly larger. A full Courage meter in a party makes them attack just about everything.

If the Courage bar goes down and into Fear then a party is fearful of defeat. They will run from battles, and only attack things with a much larger difference in number. A full Fear meter means that the party will attack nothing and simply run around amok and away from anything and everything.

Courage is the opposite of Fear, and the both work together. The Dark Knights have Courage against the Peasants.

You gain Courage by winning battles. You lose it by losing battles, by facing much stronger foes (and obviously not winning), by running out of food, running from enemies, and by doing nothing.

You gain Fear by losing battles, facing stronger foes and not winning, running from enemies, having your Leader die, and running out of food.

Since the peasants have so little courage they will run around the map away from the Dark Knights. If they do get caught in a battle than they will run around away from the Dark Knights and try to flee.


Morale

Morale is both a group and a bar. The group Morale encompasses the Courage & Fear bars, along with the Morale Bar. The Morale Bar however is very important.

Morale is what affects your men in battle. If you have full Morale than your men will cut through everything. If you have no Morale than your men will desert, mutiny, or just get slaughtered.

Deserting is when you go to town and find out that your fabled level 34 Dark Knight has left.

Mutiny is when you enter a battle you "cannot win" and your fabled army of 56 Dark Knights turn and murder you at the start of the battle.

Getting slaughtered is when your men fight as if they are peasants and get mowed down.

You gain Morale by winning battles, gaining gold, having a full stomach, leveling up, and defeating hard foes.

You lose morale by losing battles, losing gold, starving, your leader getting killed, dying, and getting your ass kicked.


Leaders

Leaders affect Morale. Basically, a Leader is a single extremely strong unit.

For example, Dark Knights would have a Dark Paladin. A twice as strong Dark Knight sitting upon a black warhorse with black armor wielding a black sword with a black shield and clad in full black armor.

All leaders do is affect morale and cut a swath of destruction through armies. If a Leader dies than massive fear is added to the enemy, their courage drops, and their morale goes way down.

Leaders are identified by large Banners on the horse, as they are always mounted.

Commanders are sometimes on foot however. Commanders are identified by a special shield. Commanders are slightly weaker than leaders and don't cause as much damage to morale, fear, and courage.

Flag Bearers are special units. They can only be recieved through missions. A Flag Bearer carries the flag of the Swadians or Vaegirs and significantly improves Morale and Courage to have one. However, if the FB dies than you lose massive Morale and Courage. They are unarmed accept for the massive flags they carry. Sometimes they ride horses.

Hunting

Hunting. Yea, hunting.




Anyway, yea, those are just a couple of ideas. Basically, just a giant Morale Idea.

-Dvd

Morale should definitely be a part of this game, but your suggestion sounds terribly complicated. Why do we need to separate morale into fear and courage?

Here's how I might do it:

Okay. All troops should have a basic morale value, which determines how trained or devoted they are; knights and fanatics would have high morale values while peasants or bandits would have lower values.

Your party's basic morale level should be an average of your troops' morale values and that would be affected by a bunch of modifiers as follows:

- Your leadership skill (a very significant modifier)
- The quality of food
- Previous victories or defeats
- Fatigue (long non-stop marching decreases morale)
- Party composition (severe penalties to morale if you have swadian and vaegir troops in the same army)
- Weather (rain & such might decrease morale slightly)

and possibly some others which I cannot think of right now.



In battle, the starting morale level of individual soldiers would be their basic morale value multiplied by some suitable modifier that's based on the party's overall morale level. For example if a foot soldier would have a basic morale level of 50 and your party's overall morale is' very good', the value might be multiplied by 1,4, so the soldier would effectively have a morale value of 50*1.4=70

Once the battle rages, this value would increase or decrease depending of how the fighting goes. Some possible modifiers might be:

- The commander being in sight (+10)
- Other friendly troops being close by (+2 per soldier)
- The number of kills made by the soldier (+5 per kill)
- The number of kills made by nearby friendly troops (+2 per kill)
- Fleeing enemies nearby (+5 per soldier)
- Nearby casualties (-5 per casualty)
- The commander being killed (-30)
- Being wounded (-5 if lightly, -10 if below half hp or -20 if almost dead)
- Fleeing friendly troops nearby (-5 per soldier)

Once the morale level reaches 0, the soldier would start fleeing.

This might be one possible system, it might not be the best possible one as I just came up with it, but something similar might work.

Morale system MUST be soldier to soldier, not the whole group. When I play Rome Total War, I really HATE watching thousends of people fighing and than suddenly three soldiers from a pikeman group fleeing, in real life they shouldnt notice their group mates was killed, and keep fighting because others in their army still was fighting.

And if there are going to be morale implanted: Dont make it cover the whole group

I like Kelpo's system.

I'd add a battle outcome prediction hint for AI leaders that would be like:
(my_initial_troop_number - my_casualities_so_far)/(enemy_initial_troop_number - enemy_casualities_so_far)
if the result is within 0 - 1 range it tells the AI they are likely to lose.

And I don't like additive modifiers. I'd rather decrease the morale level by a % than substract from it.

Well, I'm not against fear, but sometimes its impossible to run even in a 20vs30 situation.

The thing is, currently your men fearlessly move away from their friends, and charge solo into the middle of 20 enemies who are 50 levels higher than them. Obviously they die, and you have to find replacements.. People who are scared, may still fight for their lives, but would be on a rather 'retreating / sticking together' since thats they stand more chance that way. Unless they panic, and run haywire.

Sometimes it is easier to kill an overconfident person, than a fearful one as well, AND it is harder to kill somebody whose morale is so low, that they feel they have nothing to loose and don't value their lives, hence they would just be concerned about venting their frustration out on somebody without worrying about personal safety, obviously they would not nesessarily obey orders from higher command though. It may be a disaster to try and impliment human psychology into the game, since it is very near to impossible, but it may be interesting.

And it would REALLY be annoying when as soon as you are about to win a battle, the enemy retreats, and keeps retreating every time they loose a man, or like somebody said, your army retreats or tries to scatter as soon as a certain ammount of men has been killed, even though the enemy troops may all be at 1hp and die in the next hit.

Also, things like a peasant being surrounded by 20 friendly knights, would not be as scared of the same 10 dark khergit knights, so the ammount of calculators to include is pretty much... well... a lot :

I'm not trying to be sceptical, but since we are ALL different people here, and fear and morale ALL comes in different shapes and sizes to us, we would all have a different idea to how this can be realistically implimented. Personally I don't really mind seeing something new such as the above mentioned pop up in game, however the result is in deep shadows at the moment.

Hunting maybe added as a bow/crossbow training. I mean hunting for fur, leather and meat would be nice but I'd refer raiding for them

Doubt adding hunting as a mod would be real challange, if proper models are made (Yes, this is a secret pun for Yoshi, stop modelling fishes)

(think of it a single deer... charged by 20 knights...)

hmm..lots of interesting ideas. At the beginning of my time with MaB I wanted morale and fear system. But now I'm not sure...it would be really hard to ballance it. But if it could be done, it would surely be great!

One thing I would personally like is a "warcry" button. In real life it's quite surprising how a simple shouting can encourage anyone. Any type of person. I've experienced it many times and when my group, lower numbered, lower skilled, vanquished the enemy just because I shouted very very loud at them, gave them rhytm and strength in their minds. It also works the other way - the enemy is stunned by the sound if it's done properly. His self confidence is tested, it breaks the integrity of the enemy group. You know

So there would be a button, after being pushed it would make a horn sound or my avatar would shout his warcry or s.l.t. And it would increase morale of my troops. But it would be of limited use in one battle...by numbers or by a bar that would slowly recharge during the battle.

Kelpo said:

Morale should definitely be a part of this game, but your suggestion sounds terribly complicated. Why do we need to separate morale into fear and courage?

Here's how I might do it:

Okay. All troops should have a basic morale value, which determines how trained or devoted they are; knights and fanatics would have high morale values while peasants or bandits would have lower values.

Your party's basic morale level should be an average of your troops' morale values and that would be affected by a bunch of modifiers as follows:

- Your leadership skill (a very significant modifier)
- The quality of food
- Previous victories or defeats
- Fatigue (long non-stop marching decreases morale)
- Party composition (severe penalties to morale if you have swadian and vaegir troops in the same army)
- Weather (rain & such might decrease morale slightly)

and possibly some others which I cannot think of right now.



In battle, the starting morale level of individual soldiers would be their basic morale value multiplied by some suitable modifier that's based on the party's overall morale level. For example if a foot soldier would have a basic morale level of 50 and your party's overall morale is' very good', the value might be multiplied by 1,4, so the soldier would effectively have a morale value of 50*1.4=70

Once the battle rages, this value would increase or decrease depending of how the fighting goes. Some possible modifiers might be:

- The commander being in sight (+10)
- Other friendly troops being close by (+2 per soldier)
- The number of kills made by the soldier (+5 per kill)
- The number of kills made by nearby friendly troops (+2 per kill)
- Fleeing enemies nearby (+5 per soldier)
- Nearby casualties (-5 per casualty)
- The commander being killed (-30)
- Being wounded (-5 if lightly, -10 if below half hp or -20 if almost dead)
- Fleeing friendly troops nearby (-5 per soldier)

Once the morale level reaches 0, the soldier would start fleeing.

This might be one possible system, it might not be the best possible one as I just came up with it, but something similar might work.

Click to expand...

Much better idea than mine!

-Dvd

dirtbag said:

Morale system MUST be soldier to soldier, not the whole group. When I play Rome Total War, I really HATE watching thousends of people fighing and than suddenly three soldiers from a pikeman group fleeing, in real life they shouldnt notice their group mates was killed, and keep fighting because others in their army still was fighting.

And if there are going to be morale implanted: Dont make it cover the whole group

Click to expand...

I agree.