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mdiehl -> (4/1/2003 2:20:34 AM)
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[QUOTE]What is your point anyway? Are you saying abstractions such as expirence, fatique, readiness and morale should not be modeled in the game?[/QUOTE]
No. My point is one ought to know what one is modeling before one starts labelling it or assigning values. The *only* successful game designs that I have seen that use "Morale" invoke morale in the context of battle -- to wit, a "morale check" that occurs as a result of fire or related battlefield checks preparatory to doing very risky things. Experience is a separate design element, as is readiness.
The idea that a ship simply can't move because it has failed a "morale check" or "system shock" or "paralyzing respiratory virus" (which is an exaggeration but illustrates my objection to naming things when you're not sure what you are modeling) is silly.
When "morale" comes into play in the real world, it is inevitably something that comes up in the context of immediate peril. This brings me back to my suggestion: merchant vessels should only be subject to capture if in immediate peril. Until in immediate peril, players should be able to move them at will. Ships with system damage will move slower, and are thus more likely to be placed in immediate peril.
[QUOTE]If yes, then I guess your are out of luck because they are in UV and undoubtedly will be in WitP.[/QUOTE]
Since you are in the habit of asking and answering your own rhetorical questions, in particular the ones that posit a situation that is already obviously not the case even in the previous generation of this product, PW, (absence of EXP and all that) one hopes that in the future you can have your conversation with yourself. Congrats, you just tumbled over a straw man of your own creation. What a brilliant rhetorical strategist you are.
[QUOTE]As it stands in UV air units that fall below a certain level of morale are less likely to fly. [/QUOTE]
Frankly it's a wierd and poorly done abstraction. The closest that adverse morale ever came to preventing a "unit" from flying is measured in abort rates. Even the hardest hit units like the "bloody 100th" (100th BG USAAF 8th AF) had impressively low abort rates given their unit histories and the targets to which they kept getting assigned. It is entirely inappropriate to posit an entire unit refusing orders to fly.
[QUOTE]Don't see why merchants should not be treated the same.[/QUOTE]
All you have to do is document what, exactly, you are attempting to model with this and document why the values are chosen as they are and you are in position to add realism. But to merely observe that "morale exists" with reference to some trivial dictionary definition and then assert that it needs to be modeled for all circumstances is inappropriate IMO.
[QUOTE]Quite frankly I find it hard to believe you feel that a simulation that hard codes the capture of 60 ships is better than one that offers variable captures and forces the Japanese player to work for them.[/QUOTE]
Matrix/SSI's past performance at modeling these kinds of abstractions leaves me in doubt that the requisite research will be done, or that the Jpns player will have to do much real work to achieve better-than-historical results.
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