Yesterday I got an idea from a mistake. I know, I know, I should get a lot of ideas, right? I certainly make a lot of mistakes. By making a typo, I put in a minimum range on 18th C drags that was larger than their maximum range. The effect was that they would go no closer to the enemy than that now large minimum range. They trotted around and would not obey any orders to move forward or attack. But they certainly would obey orders to retreat. Maybe we could; Create a morale score for each unit and formation; Change that morale score based on events; Apply loss of morale when that score drops below a given point. Apply loss of morale by increasing the minimum range of the weapon. I am sure such an idea is not new here. However, let's look at some more possibilities with this. Use the life-bar as the morale bar too! Yup, this could do double duty. When a unit's life-bar dips below 50% it could be considered to have lost morale. This could be varied from say 70% for peasants to 30% for some elite units. Each formation would use a calculation for the formation as a whole. Formation starting morale of fully healthy soldiers is the sum of all HP scores. The morale at any point in battle and after battle is the sum of the HP of all the remaining soldiers. If the second sum dips below 50% of the first sum then the formation loses morale. Possibly General WVPMs flexible formations code (which adjusts formation bonuses) could be adapted to manage this process. Introduce a morale variable. A radical extension on this idea (so that you don't have to change stuff for single soldiers) would be as follows. - Units start with poor morale. A single recruit unit coming out of barracks or stable has morale lower than what it needs to fight. Thus its default minimum weapon range is higher than its maximum range. - When placed in a formation, all troops get the morale bonus, which actually doubles their hit-points. Now, they can fight. When total morale (hitpoints) collapses to 50% of the formation's original morale (hitpoints), then the formation loses morale, the formation is automatically disbanded, all morale bonus is lost for those still above the standard level and the minimum weapon range goes up to the large default for that unit type. - These units then will not fight and are best returned to base for healing etc. Possibly churches and town centres could heal troops too. In addition, units which have not fallen below 50% hitpoints could very slowly self-heal. The way to think about this. Essentially the initial unit HP are hitpoints. The second 50% of bonus HP function as the morale component, the morale hit-points. This bonus is added to formations. Such a change would mean only formations would fight. This would take some player adjustment but would work play-wise in a mod like OCMOD3. Some formation adjustments would be required: smaller formations for Cavalry (add 20 as a formation size), and the capacity to make 17th C 15 man formations without officer and drummer. Without an officer and drummer they would attract less morale bonus but at least they would fight. Peasants might need special rules. Okay, this is just spit-balling ideas. There are even a couple of contradictions in the above ideas. This would need to be formalized and specified properly before any coding attempts. Any thoughts?
I think the idea is sound, not that I'm smart enough to fully understand everything you have done in OCMOD3, but wouldn't that mean that putting 2 or 3 Pikemen on guard duty at buildings become redundant.
As I already noted down in the text wall where I presented all the changes I'd like to do with an all-around rework mod, morale was on the to-do list. What I'd do wouldn't be using hp as morale but adding an extra value to units and formations. Let's do a brief mindstorming on how it could be done. I'll use only a formation for ease, we could add this variable "morale" as an integer which is equal to the sum of MoraleValue of each unit + drummer + captain; a formation of 120 pikes could have this form: -3 pts x 120 pikes -15 pts x 1 drummer -35 pts x 1 captain and so the sum is 410 points. which applies to the whole formation. Every casualty suffered subtracts a certain value from the total, like x points each soldier and a bit more if to die is the drummer or the captain and when the total drops the below the initial MoraleValue the formation would go riot. I think this way is way more efficient and bug-free than working with hp as morale. Moreover, this will lead to a more deep differentiation between units and nations, where some units will contribute with an innate morale value higher than the amount lost upon casualty, leading the formation to withstand more hits before falling, and vice versa, fast and/or cheap spammable units with very weak morale that will break the formation before losing 50% of its soldiers
Interesting idea. Sounds good. I can see a bit of officer sniping coming into the tactics. Not saying that would be a bad thing necessarily. It might give snipers more of a reason to be in the game and lead to the idea that skirmishers and snipers should be different units. Also, the days of the officer leading the charge might be gone. It might be better to have routines keeping the officer at the back of the formation in most engagements. In the current game (and mods), the cold steel officer wants to come through his muskets and fight in front. That ain't smart.
