Morale

[Hobbes]

Well, first I think morale on 448 is more realistic than in 443. On 443 it was annoying because if you lost 2 or more soldiers in the same turn there was a fair chance that most, or even all of the remaining soldiers would panic on the next turn and become easy kills for your opponent (which would lead to further morale loss and more panicking).

One thing that I didn't think it was working too great on 443 was the morale recovery: it only occurred if no soldiers panicked on that turn and to me it was a rare thing to happen.

However, with the changes on 448 (panicking only happening when morale drops to 50) I think it might be better to remove the automatic morale increase of 5 since it almost prevents panic from happening. So far I've only seen a soldier panicking twice and in both occasions he was the last survivor, after his squad had just been eliminated on the previous turns.

Maybe it would be better if a soldier could only regain morale with kills, which IIRC was the only way on the original xcom, with the exception of fatal wounds, where you could use the medikit for a slight morale boost.

[Usul]

I agree. I just started playing ufo2000 recently, but I never saw any soldier panic, even if he was the last one and three of his friends where killed in the previous turn.

[Hailfire22]

Also, I wonder if they will add in the nasty little feature of someone going berserk. I always hated that in X-COM but I always had my secret weapon at hand.....reload.

[Chris StarShade]

The reason the panic/morale algorithm is probably going so badly for you is that XCOM2000 does not yet have soldier ranks implemented. In the original games, rank really aided in keeping the grunts from panicking.

[Hailfire22]

The reason the panic/morale algorithm is probably going so badly for you is that XCOM2000 does not yet have soldier ranks implemented.  In the original games, rank really aided in keeping the grunts from panicking.

 

Unless they died. Then it aided them in panicking .

[Hobbes]

Just had my first game with the new morale of 479. I think it is better for the morale drop to be calculated in function of the number of soldiers left in the squad like it is with the new version.

However I think there might be a need to put something on to balance very big morale drops. For instance, imagine you have 10 soldiers on each side. First one gets killed, it drops to 90, then 80, 70 as two more die. Then you kill one of them and it gets raised to 80 but two more of yours on the next turn, making 80-1/7=69, then 69-1/6= 57 (these are approximate values). You kill two more of the enemy, back to 77. Two of yours die on the next turn: 77-1/5=62, 62-1/4= 47. By then, although you still have 3 to the other guys 7 you will be starting to have some serious morale problems, even if you kill one or two afterwards, everytime another soldier dies. And even if you kill 2 soldiers and your morale gets back to 67, next of yours that dies brings a 22 morale drop and when they is only 2 soldiers left the death of either one brings a 50% drop.

Although it is conceivable that this would happen in reality it really narrows the chances for the losing side.

Perhaps one idea is to put a cap on the morale drops, not allowing it to drop more than a certain percentage, like 25 or 30%. Another idea would be to increase the morale gain for the soldier that achieves a kill, instead of just the 10% that the entire squad gains. I don't think this is what happens now but i might be wrong.

[HaJo]

Hi,

 

I think it can be very frustrating for players to have their soldiers

panic several times in a row, and nothing to do.

How about giving a soldier on his second panic a few TUs ?

With 10-20 TU he could try to run or hide, but not shoot.

 

-HaJo

[Hobbes]

I just had tried out the morale of 483 and I think the feature of having morale automatically increased 5 each turn is a good solution to balance the big morale drops that can now occur. However, on hot seat i dropped the morale of 2 soldiers to 1 and it never got up past 4.

 

I think it can be very frustrating for players to have their soldiers

panic several times in a row, and nothing to do.

 

A good thing would be for his weapon not to be visible when he panics. If the other player can see the dropped weapons he immediately knows where they are.

[Tsereve]

Hmm. Yeah, moral can be a major factor when one team is down more than one guy. Once (in X-Com 1), I had just one guy get MCed, then the whole thing came apart. The MCed guy was a sergeant, which was bad enough, but he turned around and killed a captain holding a primed alien grenade. Boom. Three more guys bite the dust, two of which are of course carrying primed alien grenades as well. Another boom, five others die, and all but one of the survivors panics on my next turn. Only soldier w/ TUs tries to retreat to the Skyranger, makes it half-way there before running out of TUs. Suddenly, a blaster bomb comes out of nowhere! The rest keep panicing for the rest of the mission, until the Etherials pick them off with ease. Moral sux if you don't have any.

 

If the guy had a rifle or pistol, 10-20 TU's could still get him a shot off. It makes sense, though, that if one person made a kill, his entire squad would benefit.

 

edit: Hobbes, you're starting to sound like NKF

Edited October 23, 2004 by Tsereve

[Hobbes]

edit: Hobbes, you're starting to sound like NKF

 

Blasphemy! No one can rival the Nameless King of Facts

[Hailfire22]

edit: Hobbes, you're starting to sound like NKF

 

Blasphemy! No one can rival the Nameless King of Facts

 

Anyone who reads the X-COM 1 forum could have told him that..... ::

 

The truth is Hobbes is the morale guru for UFO2000

[Tsereve]

I beg forgiveness for any attack done to your stature or knowledge, oh great one.

[[Blehm 98]]

Now sacrifice your life in Homage!

[Hailfire22]

Now sacrifice your life in Homage!

 

Here's some advice, if you don't want j'ordos() to close this thread then don't make so many posts that are off subject Paladin and I shutdown a thread in X-COM 1 for doing something like we're doing. Ironically NKF was the subject of the "discussion" also........

[Tsereve]

Low moral actually helped me, once. It was a base defense mission, against Etherials/Sectopods. I had the hanger surrounded, and ended my turn. Two more soldiers succumb to a Sectopod's plasma cannons, then an Etherial panics one of my guys. On my next turn, he goes berserk, and of course starts firing his hev. plasma not everywhere as normal, but right in front of him. Incidentally, the Sectopod was right in front of him, and it had its side turned. Some 9 shots later, it was dead!! Then a blaster bomb came flying in and destroyed the guy, but who cares? I had destroyed a Sectopod with a heavy plasma that had only fired because an Etherial had caused the soldier to go berserk!

 

So, moral can be good even when it's low, and this post was meticulously on-topic, as is this thread, which is why it should be left open for others to post their comments and tips concerning moral, which is the topic of this thread, and is thus on-topic.

[Hobbes]

Since morale still isnt perfect, i have decided to do a little research on UFO to see how it works in situations where a 10 soldier squad gets reduced to 3 or 4 and to see how they recover.

Even the 5% increase does not work most of the time because you need for all remaining soldiers not to panic on the turn in order to get it. If one of the soldiers's morale gets down to less than 10, the odds of the squad recovering morale are almost impossible, unless one of the soldiers manages to kill an enemy. Usually it is game over by here because if another soldier is killed by then, and it tends to happen since the panicked units are ducks in the water, the remaining soldiers will never stop panicking.

So I checked UFO to see how it works on those type of situations. Everytime a soldier panics or goes bezerk, his morale increases 15% right after the panic or bezerking, regardless of his bravery stat. I didn't really check the bravery but it basically diminishes panic drops as the soldiers get killed. I think it also affects the morale gains from enemy kills but only for the soldier that kills the alien. For every alien kill the soldier gains around 30 morale points, while the rest of the squad gets 10.

There is also the question of rank but that seems only to have an effect on the morale drops. With the exception of the 30% increase, which seems to variate slighly above, the other values are constant.

[Hobbes]

Been doing some more testing of UFO's morale and bravery stats and how they are related, also considering the ranks. After several attempts to collect data this is what i came up with.

 

Bravery    Moral loss from every casualty 
60            90 (-10)
50            88 (-12)
40            86 (-14)
30            84 (-16)
20            82 (-18)
10            80 (-20)

 

This applies for a squad with only rookies/squaddies (there seems to be no difference in terms of morale for both). Also this seems to apply (although with slight differences in the values) to the morale of a certain rank when the casualty has that rank (i.e., when a sergeant dies, the rest of the sargeants morale will decrease in those values, depending on their bravery).

 

To understand the effect of casualties with officers present, I made more tests:

 

Bravery    Rank
              Same/+1/+2/+3/+4
60            90/91/92/92/94    
50            88/90/90/91/92
40            86/88/88/89/91
30            84/86/87/88/90
20            82/84/85/86/88
10            80/82/83/84/87

 

These values represent the effect that the presence of the higher officer has upon a squaddie/rookie squad after a kill made by the aliens. For instance if a squaddie dies and there is a captain present (rank +2) the loss for a 60 bravery squaddie would be of 92.

 

And the final chart: the effect of officer losses upon morale. Again, the basic scenario is a squad full of rookies/squaddies with only 1 officer present.

 

Bravery    Rank
              Same/+1/+2/+3/+4
60            90/88/87/85/83
50            88/86/85/82/79
40            86/84/82/79/76
30            84/81/80/76/72
20            82/79/77/73/69
10            80/76/74/70/65

 

Conclusions:

- The morale drop is not dependent upon the squad size (my previous claim was wrong). Also the morale losses don't seem to be calculated upon a fixed percentage, when there are no difference in ranks. A soldier with a bravery of 60 will lose 10 points for every casualty suffered upon the squad. These values seem constant but I will do more checking.

- The only way to increase morale is by kills (+10 points for the entire squad, +30 points for the soldier who made the kill, although this number slightly varies, probably because of bravery/rank; or by panicking/bezerking +15 points).

- Friendly fire kills also have a negative effect for the soldier responsible, besides the automatic drop for all the squad. The value seems to vary between -16 and -20 points, probably also due to bravery/rank. I will look more into this later.

- In injuries there seems to be a correspondence between health points lost and morale drop for that soldier.

- Finally, I need to discover how these different charts relate when there are several types of officers present. Some things look intuitive, like the loss of a captain counts as a loss of the same rank to all the other captains present on the squad. This also applies when soldiers of an inferior rank die, i.e. to a captain the morale loss is the same whenever it is a rookie or another captain. But, using the data from the third chart, if there is a colonel present then what would be the captain's loss?

 

Hmmm...this needs more research.

Edited November 1, 2004 by Hobbes

[SubversiveAgent]

How about doing away with morale altogether? It's not like anyone's going to miss it.

[Hailfire22]

How about doing away with morale altogether? It's not like anyone's going to miss it.

 

Not quite. Morale plays a critical role in Ufo2000. It helps keep people from winning with one person when the other person vastly outnumbers them and is about to win (but that can be a good thing also ). Another is that certain weapons in the future (Psi Amp) depend on the morale factor to be of any use. Not to mention it adds some realism to the game

[SubversiveAgent]

Not quite. Morale plays a critical role in Ufo2000. It helps keep people from winning with one person when the other person vastly outnumbers them

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

And this is a good thing? As opposed to the last man standing making a phenomenal recovery? Yes, I very much enjoy knowing that, when I'm down to my last two men and they panic, my game is *ucked and I might as well exit right there because it's pointless to play on.

 

Yes, very critical indeed

 

and is about to win (but that can be a good thing also ).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Please tell me how it can be a "good thing". It's bloody random luck and it kicks you in the balls when you're already down on your knees. It was fun slaughtering panicked aliens, but did you ever have fun getting slaughtered BY the aliens when your men were panicked?

 

A good thing when you're winning, a bad thing when you're losing. If you're already winning you don't need it, if you're already losing you DEFINITELY don't need it.

 

Another is that certain weapons in the future (Psi Amp) depend on the morale factor to be of any use.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Then add morale when you add psi amp and trooper ranks, not now.

 

Not to mention it adds some realism to the game

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Errr... Sure. I'd drop my weapon and sit there watching the enemy advance and not run like heck. How very realistic. Berserk is tons more realistic, but I don't that implemented, do you? Even the aliens ran when they panicked (or was it when then became unstunned? I forget.)

Edited November 4, 2004 by SubversiveAgent

[Hobbes]

Please tell me how it can be a "good thing". It's bloody random luck and it kicks you in the balls when you're already down on your knees. It was fun slaughtering paniced aliens, but did you ever have fun getting slaughtered BY the aliens when your men were panicked?

 

Paying attention to the morale bar can help to prevent panic attacks. If several of your soldiers die during the enemy's turn you can always retreat to a safe position to recover morale. And you have to do some morale management, i.e., avoiding at any cost that the enemy kills more than 2 soldiers on his turn (so that morale doesnt drop too low) and, everytime you lose somebody, to kill at least one of his soldiers for the general morale gain to the entire squad.

 

Then add morale when you add psi amp and trooper ranks, not now.

 

It will be a lot more easier to add psi amp and ranks if morale is already working in a balanced way. Remember this is a BETA and therefore it involves a lot of testing and error to achieve anything.

Have you tried 519? There are several morale changes made by Owl to fix it, like giving a bigger morale increase to the soldier that achieves a kill and a 20 point increase right after a soldier panics.

 

As opposed to the last man standing making a phenomenal recovery?

 

I love when I can make a last minute recovery and I hate when the enemy can do it. I believe that morale will only be successfully implemented when the odds are 5 to 2 and the outnumbered player can, despite of some panic attacks, turn the tables around. However that involve not only a satisfactory morale system but also a knowledge by the player of how the morale system works to prevent catastrophic losses and incur them on the other player.

[Hobbes]

Well, just made a couple of experiences concerning morale to see how the new system works. The increases after kills and panicking seem to definitely help to recover soldiers but the morale losses need some adjustments.

 

Here are the morale losses for the number of soldiers. First column indicates the soldiers remaining, second column the points lost after the death of 1 soldier.

 

10 - 10

9 - 11

8 - 12,5

7 - 14

6 - 16

5 - 20

4 - 25

3 - 33

2 - 50

 

I haven't tried with bigger squads but is only a matter of calculating the math. To me the problem is that those losses are fixed values, not calculated in terms of the morale remaining. As an example let's imagine a squad reduced to 3 soldiers, each with an average morale of 40 after losses and kills. If 1 dies then the morale of the 2 remaining drops to 7 and they will panic right afterwards, effectively ending the game. Even if they panic and aren't dead right afterwards, their morale goes up to 27 (with the panic gain) but if one of them dies next, the -50 points morale loss leaves the survivor with 1 morale point. Dead duck in the water

 

One possibility would be to make those values as percentage of the morale remaining, giving them a variable number. On the above example the first dead would drop the remaining 40 morale by 33%, making it 27. With the next kill the morale would drop 50%, turning it to 14 (rounding up).

 

Looks better but, however, I think this is the wrong approach, especially considering if bravery is added later on, which would complicate the calculations. Therefore I believe that it is best to completely adopt the system on the original game. This would mean:

- Adopting a single value for each kill suffered. The mininum value on UFO is 10, if the soldier has a 60 bravery (I read that bravery can go up to 110 but that is rare considering how difficult it is to improve the bravery stat - and it would also mean a 0 morale loss. Perhaps the best would be to adopt an average value, like 14 (for a 40 bravery) or 16 (for 30).

- Keeping the morale losses/gains for kills, both for the soldier responsible (+20) and the squad (+10), injury (loss depending on the value of health lost), panicking/bezerking (+15 or +20), friendly fire kills (-20 for the soldier responsible).

- Taking away the automatic 5% increase, if no one panics in the squad. It doesnt happen on the original game (although it seems to happen with the aliens) and it gives pauses to combat, as players hold back to recover morale.

 

This solution would also mean that bravery could easily be added to UFO2000. Morale losses from kills would be calculated accordingly to the bravery (which seems to only affect morale): a 60 point bravery would mean a 10 points loss, etc. Probably the base value of bravery on the stats could be 30 or 40, with 10 or 20 extra points for a player to use there or in another stat, and a maximum bravery limit of 60.

Edited November 4, 2004 by Hobbes

[Hailfire22]

Looks better but, however, I think this is the wrong approach, especially considering if bravery is added later on, which would complicate the calculations. Therefore I believe that it is best to completely adopt the system on the original game. This would mean:

- Adopting a single value for each kill suffered. The mininum value on UFO is 10, if the soldier has a 60 bravery (I read that bravery can go up to 110 but that is rare considering how difficult it is to improve the bravery stat - and it would also mean a 0 morale loss. Perhaps the best would be to adopt an average value, like 14 (for a 40 bravery) or 16 (for 30).

- Keeping the morale losses/gains for kills, both for the soldier responsible (+20) and the squad (+10), injury (loss depending on the value of health lost), panicking/bezerking (+15 or +20), friendly fire kills (-20 for the soldier responsible).

- Taking away the automatic 5% increase, if no one panics in the squad. It doesnt happen on the original game (although it seems to happen with the aliens) and it gives pauses to combat, as players hold back to recover morale.

 

This solution would also mean that bravery could easily be added to UFO2000. Morale losses from kills would be calculated accordingly to the bravery (which seems to only affect morale): a 60 point bravery would mean a 10 points loss, etc. Probably the base value of bravery on the stats could be 30 or 40, with 10 or 20 extra points for a player to use there or in another stat, and a maximum bravery limit of 60.

 

That all sounds good, but have you taken into account ranking? Implementing a rank structure (rookie, squaddie, etc.) would most likely have some minor, if not major, effects on the morale system. At the very least you would have to give more +/- from your morale when one of your, say, captains kicks the bucket.