Mehring
Posts: 2179
Joined: 1/25/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Red Lancer
Mehring is correct in his first statement. The only problem with morale in game is the name and the inference that people draw from it. If it was renamed to something like 'relative combat capability' then the discussions would be greatly reduced. The problem is that there is neither a snappy other name or easy way to change it throughout the GUI and Code.
WitE2 is IGO-UGO.
If you allege that game morale in no way represents real world morale, a critical combat element acknowledged at least since Roman times, then where the hell is it? Why has it been left out of the game? It hasn't, it's just been fudged and blurred with doctrine and combat efficiency. It's a design problem, not one of terminology.
Firstly, it is found in both leaders and combat units. Leader "morale," particularly in the case of higher command, is easier to understand in terms of combat doctrine, though how something imparted through training might change instantly with the appointment of new officers is less clear. Its property, for example, of rallying broken units also crosses into traditionally understood morale.
In passing, I did make a case a while back for the application of leader attributes to be reversed, which I think still holds. So, High Command provides the base leadership attributes for all units, and the ability to apply or perhaps over ride them to lower echelons is determined by qualities of leaders down to corps level. Makes infinitely more sense to me, particularly in an army like that of Stalinist Russia in which subordinate initiative was a crime usually punished by death.
Secondly, "morale" is a quality of combat units. Here I see no clear distinction between our two "morales." Combat competence is seen in unit morale affecting retreat survival, doctrine, in "morale" creating a ceiling for experience growth, yet actual morale is seen in both interdiction and poor supply potentially reducing unit morale. Both "morales" are found in morale being a major determinant of CV. Clearly, combat efficiency and doctrine play an important part in this, so too, does actual morale. This is also represented in game by the fact that failure of a CV ratio check causes retreat, ie the units are no longer willing to fight, their morale has broken.
In this last example- there are others- it can be seen how similarities of some functions of combat efficiency, doctrine and morale, might lead them all to be lumped together under one name. Unfortunately, there are other important functions that do not sit so well together. I think they need independent representation in the game.
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“Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.”
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