Morale - has it got a place in Sins?

Id be happy to see morale be a factor; but currently I think we have that on a strategic scale with Culture... a tactical scale would be awesome, but I think it is a bit too late for such a complicated feature.

Medieval Total War 2 has a great morale system IMO

Most likely.

To be honest, even if it wasn't too late to try and implement, I don't see any benefits of a morale system, just more frustration you have no control over.

Bah, you have plenty of control over morale in games like MTW 2... the issue is that in those games certain units inspire fear and certain attacks inspire panic, such as being flanked from both sides or the rear.

This is simply not relevant in a 3d environment (or at least not Nearly as relevant) also ship crews are educated and wouldn't have quite the easy panic button as ignorant folk from bygone ages have had.

That being said it would be loverly if the the overall fleet morale dropped if the planet they are protecting suddenly dies! Or if the capital ship goes... etc. Twould be nice to see say 5% of ships suddenly break off and retreat under dire circumstances. These tinier touches are what makes the difference between a game you play to win, and a game you play to experience.

There is a difference.

Always room for this in an expansion. The AI already hits the panic button, and tries to run away when they lose their cap ships, or when a cap ship is near dead.

I would like to see a "fear" factor involved. Like if a Kol joins the battle the morale of the opponents frigates takes a nosedive, and they possibly break, and retreat. The thing is we dont want to go overboard with this as well. Otherwise all we will be doing is chasing opponents ships across the map.

I was talking about Sins specifically, though



There is a difference, but I just think this would be a frustrating addition to Sins. Right now, even if a superior in numbers fleet jumps in you still have a chance to inflict heavy losses and stop their push, even if your forces are weaker and are doomed to be obliterated in the process. But if a chunk of your forces suddenly decide to retreat, what good is that? I suppose if there was a way to do some research to 'improve' morale, that would be okay, but then it would be the same as not having a morale system to begin with.

Sins is a different game from the Total War series. There, you have your army and you watch it fight. Here you have your fleet but you don't just watch it fight, you can control what every ship in the fleet does. Because of this, having a morale system in Sins would take control out of the hands of the player and put it in the hands of some arbitrarily designed conditions. And that, while being more 'realistic' starts going into the 'unfun' and 'frustrating' category.

the aim of the dev's is for you to sometimes not control the fight... and more importantly I did say 'Dire' circumstances and '5%' hardly a factor in what will be a losing battle, its mostly for aestetics. Much like how Grunts run away in any Halo game.

I don't think 5% in an already lost fight is going to be an issue... might have to increase the percentile so that you will actually see this happen in a game... For example what I propose is that if you have a fleet of 10 Cobalts against a Kol and 15 Cobalts and you are on the offense, perhaps after a duration of 1 minute, 1 or 2 of your cobalts run off...

what with the fact by at that point they are probablly all that is left lol

The point is, yes anything is frustrating if you cannot control it, but the idea is for it to be a very minute advantage, and mostly for eye candy (IMO)

Oh and perhaps you shouldn't throw ships and crews to their deaths for a slight gain? The morale issue could be severly curtailed by the battle being in your controlled space, or by culture.

PS Did you play Total War 2? While you can watch a fight, that is pretty dull and more importantly foolish. You have extensive control over your units, and it is actually a very rewarding RTS in its own right.

ROFLCOPTER

Fear of death is fear of death, and isn't going away. What has changed, to a large degree, is that we can train our soldiers better to deal not only with that stress, but with the stress of killing other human beings. You don't "Kill the enemy!", you "service a target" for example.

This is not Total War. Don't compare Sins to Total War. They are two completely different genres. I play Medieval 2, and Rome TW. That kind of morale system wont work for Sins.

Perhaps something more in the lines of the Dawn of War morale system could work. Where the units would keep fighting, but have a reduced effectiveness.

There is already a break, and retreat system programed in the AI if it is way outnumbered, and outgunned. It just needs to be implemented into the Non-Human managed player fleets.

Morale can IMO be counted under (generalised) experience.

Moreso, I do believe even today we're (largely) past the whole 'running away from combat' part of fear of death and morale loss.

Having reduced effectiveness due to morale is a little better, but I still think it won't add much to 'experience'. Morale would be fine in single player where you're just against the AI. But in Multiplayer, it becomes a biased system because, logically, the superior-numbers force will drop morale for the inferior. But the superior force already has an advantage that makes it likely (although not guaranteed) to win the fight, and if you throw morale in there, no matter *how* you implement it, it will give an even bigger advantage to the superior fleet. Where a player may have done something to counter/deal with that superior fleet without interference of morale, with it his hands become even more tied. And so, the game becomes less fun

For some reason this brings to mind air travel...   

Was only a matter of time until someone quoted that bit

for some reason people have trouble actually Reading

~ Im not comparing Sins to Total War, Im merely bringing up some side points, and how morale worked there and How it WOULDNT work in Sins.

~ Ron, while fear of death is still fear of death, there is enormous difference between being an ignorant peasant who is sitting in the cold rain watching heavily armed people marching at you and screaming from all sides, as opposed to a highly trained individual who is A. Very busy doing his job, B. Far more physically comfortable and C. sees the action through a view screen, and the enemy ships are hardly screaming at him, not to mention whatever injuries/blood that happens on board while not good is far tamer than the active spearing, slicing, and chopping of true close combat.

PS. Saying ROFLECOPTER to me, is the equivelent of telling me to f@#$ off. I don't like it. Please don't do it again   

No, its saying that what you said was frickin' hilarious (which it was and is)!



Lots of people on board, even in combat, have a job consisting of waiting. Damage control comes to mind.



You ever tried to wear a spacesuit? From what I hear, they ain't that comfortable -- and technology can't change that, if only because of the need for plumbing connections. And imminent death is enough to make anything not-comfortable.



Go read a few books with (well thought out) space combat. David Weber comes to mind. Trust me, there is plenty of nastiness going on. Razor sharp shards of hull getting thrown away from the impact point, slicing through entire people as they spin end-for end at high velocity. At least in ground combat, you can try to block something.

While those may be true (to a very limited degree), the major factor is training. We train our people to deal with the stress, and (more importantly) we train them to work around the fear.

Go laugh at someone really hard out loud when they are being serious, and odds are you might offend them. What do you care if I dont like it you should make an effort, its common courtesy, and I asked nicely.


There is plenty of nastiness but ultimately it just isn't the same as facing a live opponent shredding you to pieces with intent In person. More importantly is the educational/training issue. There is a reason that modern armies don't have to worry to much about full on 'routs' in a shooting war in modern combat people are smart enough and trained enough to stay put more than just Bolt and run away. Which is arguablly a reason Not to have morale in sins.

How do you know they are wearing space suits? They probablly are not if only because this is Science Fiction and most simply don't bother with such a saftey issue... I would say they are walking around without suits. If you are conceding the point that training matters most... why is what I said funny? That was what I was saying before. My mistake was using the word educated instead of trained... which are in most cases synonomous.

Oh and back to the comfor issue... so a bunch of people on board say a space ship with standards on par with a modern navy are less comfortable than pikemen back in say the year 1530? Do you think they are eating horse meat and bad cheese in those ships? Does it rain on board the Marza? I'm not talking about in combat, which is different but the day to day lives of those crews is enormously more comfortable, if only by virute that having everyone work in a smog filled work hole, living off crap food is pretty inefficient.

Oh and I doubt they have to worry about turbuculosis, Measles, the plague, being stabbed while they sleep (maybe a little of that) starving to death even on routine outings, and snow.

I would be surprised if they don't have artificial gravity, so they probablly don't even have to devote 1/4th of their time to exercise. Certainly nothing like a 'forced march' of the days of yore.

Major Stress was right about not comparing the eras too much, you simply can't hope to think that button-pushing war, even with grisly consequences, is as hard and violent as ancient-medieval army warfare...

Er, most sci-fi authors do bother with such basic issues.

No, most make up excuses for not using space suits, because they are inconvenient for the story teller.

Star Trek, Star Wars, B5, Andromeda, BattleStar Galactica, Alien Series, Star Gate, Halo-

All dominate the Scifi Medium as the most popular to date: granted none of these started as novels, but thats hardly an issue, they all have tons of novels now, and none have space suits constantly being worn, or even worn during combat. Space suits are for very special occasions, or a ridiculous last resort. All of them accept that in space being able to breate the extra 3 hours isn't too important if you were blown off the ship and are drifting away anyways. All of them utilize sealing doors, shields, or some such for general safety purposes.

There are of course tons of novels that don't have space suits generally worn as well; its just that the Better and grittier ones deal with less advanced societies that do wear them for general safety... which given that in Sins our ships have anti-matter and shields they do not quite fit into the super realistic branch of scifi.

All the shields and sealing doors authors use (if they bother to) are simply conventions to get around the issue, nobody wants to read that the two heroine's of the story try to kiss in the middle of their fantasic battle and bump into each other's face plates. As a result the big bulky suits are done away with until they seem to bring about more drama rather than inconvenience it. Authors who work around this by having the suits anyways deserve special credit but they are hardly the norm.

And you still have no way of knowing if they use them consistently in Sins. 10$ says if we get a little CGI video of a TEC crew in battle they won't be in space suits Ron   

Corrected.



Which are all not hard sci-fi. And even more important, they're movies (and a game). Movies are generally not something where sci-fi shines. And book adaption of movies are generally even worse. (Reality in Sci-Fi is expensive. Lack of gravitation, the limit of the speed of light, etc. make for difficult story telling and even more difficult settings in movies.)

Good hard sci-fi is almost exclusively in books. I've just finished a wonderful novel by Poul Anderson. No faster then light travel, time dilation. The fear of vacuum and fragile space suits and ships. No artificial gravity besides spinning rings. Lot's of science. That's great story telling, imho.



Look at the Tech captain seen in the menu ingame. Doesn't wear and protection gear, does he?

Sins is also no hard sci-fi. It's fantasy. Comic grade sci-fi. So we can't really argue that well with how realistic something is. :/

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As for the topic. I would love a Total War style morale system for the battles. But sadly we won't get it anyway.

unfortunately I'm too unfamiliar with the total war series to competently comment on their take on moral. I did experience it a bit, but I never mastered the game.

that said, the original premise of the post was to NOT have the morale be as much of a gameplay factor as a visual and ambiance creating sugar coat. I'm sceptical though that this can be done so that people actually notice without said impact on gameplay.

if it were agreed to make it a gameplay feature then there should be steps to counter it. lowering morale can well serve as a strategy for defeating an otherwise superior fleet, however such a drop in morale could be achieved. thus, it becomes a strategic choice which may or may not imply a take off to other strategies or ways to invest ressources. if we can think of ways to countering or dealing with this problem, it would well be a cool and valuable feature, but if it ends with some of my ships running away due to facing a larger fleet I wouldn't want it in. as others said, a player with a supieror fleet has the advantage anyway, no need to amplify this even more.

ways of countering it could include cap ships with experienced crew that can coordinate the battle with other ships and whose renown commanders give confidence for the rest of the fleet that superior tactics can win the day.

one could also go for a temporary boost that declines quickly, making it more attractive for a the player with the superior morale to attack faster, possibly taking more risk ( defense structures, turrets) and possibly linking said decline in morale boost to enemy fleet strengh.

but then, battles are already have a nice degree of complexity, adding even more things to take care of and look after might well defeat the purpose of sins being a large game, where you not have to manage every detail of every battle, because in larger games you just wont be able to. M:TW is another type of game, where the battle takes place in a seperate window (it does, doesnt it?), so you can fully devote your time for them. in sins there are a few other things to watch out for during a battle.

I understand what you're trying to say, but I'm just not sure this can work. Morale can't really be just be visual without having effect on gameplay. It can be ambiance if when the devs add in combat chatter you can hear your ship crews panic when they're obviously losing a battle, for example. That can work, you'd get the feeling that you're pretty much screwed but the game won't force anything extra on you to go along with it. But visually, how could you represent morale? Combat chatter is the only way I can think of.



That's sort of a double edged sword. Adding a morale system without a way to interact with it in some fashion would be bad, yes, so adding something to counter it would be needed. But then, would it actually be fun or just an extra and unnecessary layer of complexity? Because if you have a morale system plus a counter to the system, that effectively makes things the way they are right now, doesn't it? There have already been complaints that combat requires too much micromanagement to be efficient, I can't imagine having to deal with morale on top of that would make it any better in that regard.

Variables are good, but I think there just comes a point when having too many variables and too much to deal with and worry about becomes more of an annoyance than anything fun.

~Vandenburg~ Your right Hard SF might do so, and I didn't restrict myself to books. But also like you said Sins is not hard SF, nor is hard SF mainstream SF. Nor did we at any point agree to restrict ourselves to books. Its simply more time consuming to list books.

~Morale could be done pretty easily and simply for Aesthetics, perhaps have ships which are technically dead, not simply explode right away, a simple chat voice saying "Game Over Man Game OVER!" As the ship turns runs for a bit, and then explodes... would suffice for Aesthetics...

You get cool points for quoting Aliens