Leadership ?

[weapon2010]

 How can a leader have a -2 leadership modifier and a +1 motivational modifier on morale?It doesn't add up. Isn't rallying troops a prime factor of a great leader?

[ASL Veteran]

The motivation modifier is for himself not for others.  So a leader with a -2 leadership modifier and a +1 modifier on morale is a bad leader who has high personal morale.

Perhaps another way of saying it is that the guy is brave but stupid. 

Edited January 3, 2016 by ASL Veteran

[weapon2010]

ok I see ,but what  about a squad?not an hq unit, the manual says under attributes "the units ability to perform", says nothing about the individual leader with in the squad.

[womble]

The individual leader within the element is the individual who gives the element's Leadership rating. You'll note that if all the "Leader" types (Leader, Asst) die, the Leadership rating of an element will reduce. In a Squad, the Asst often seems to have the same rating as the Leader; you'll see that if you split into teams: the teams that have Asst/Leaders will have the same rating as before the split, but a third team will have a lower rating. Usually.

So you can have a Leader who's no good at facilitating the rest of the Squad doing their thing (-2), in a squad of dedicated Fanatics (+2 Morale). Because the Morale rating of an element is more of an average, the Leader of a Fanatic squad is probably also Fanatic. The poor leader probably won't be able to gee the troops up as much as a good leader would. A poor leader and low Morale in the same squad is a recipe for running away, I'd imagine, whereas a good leader might be able to stiffen the resolve of low Morale troops. I suspect that, as is arguably true in real life, having a good leader in a squad of experienced, high Morale troopers isn't as useful as having a good leader in a squad of craven conscripts.

Note that we have been told by BFC that having any  superior echelon HQ, no matter how poorly rated, is better than having no C3 link to an HQ. But the effects of Leadership are broad and subtle, and the effects of variations in Leadership of HQs on the performance of their subordinate units in C3 range are difficult to isolate, and therefore aren't precisely understood (outside the creators).

[Bulletpoint]

As I understand it, a squad's Leadership modifier is only based on how good their leader is. If he gets killed, the whole squad loses his bonus. But the squad's Motivation modifier is based on all squad memebers. If the leader gets killed, the rest of the squad retain their motivation (or lack of it).

So, if you have low motivation troops with a great leader, they may perform well until their leader is killed, at which point they'll suddenly turn pretty useless. On the other hand, experienced and motivated troops with a poor leader will not change much if that leader is lost.

I've never seen any squad *increase* leadership modifier if their -2 leader is killed. You'd think if your crappy sergeant (and team leader) got shot, there would at least be a small chance some random squaddie would take command and show just a bit more talent. But no. Never happens.

This makes me believe that the game assumes that the worst possible leaders simply provide no leadership bonus at all, basically same as being absent. So, a -2 leader doesn't provide a negative modifier, he just does nothing. In reality, I suppose a really bad leader might actually be worse than having no leader at all.

 

[RockinHarry]

Oh...never "underestimate" a bad leader. A lot of bad things can happen, with increased probability of surrender for the whole team/squad in appropiate battle conditions. I´d playtested just those situations with bad leader troops often enough, that I can make that statement from lots of experience. Only a zero (neutral) leader does actually nothing on performance of his troops. If a leader is replaced one needs to consider that the on the spot replacement "leader" does not have the "leader" tag, which obviously means he never got any particular training for squad leadership. If he suddenly gets into the leader job and unless he´s not a very intelligent and talented guy, he´d likely be a bad leader. No idea if veteran+ experience troops spawn a more talented leader than green or conscript ones, but I´d assume this to be the case. If doctrines have their role in the system, I´d suspect that germans maybe have an edge in leader generation, since they´re taught to think and act at least a level higher from their own, though I´d expect that only from at least regular experience troops which are assumed to be sufficiently educated in doctrines and roles. Beside that the game surely does a number of die roles with random outcomes.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

 How can a leader have a -2 leadership modifier and a +1 motivational modifier on morale?It doesn't add up. Isn't rallying troops a prime factor of a great leader?

It is unlikely but possible. Considering your example we would be looking at a pretty hopeless tactician but he partially makes up for this with his charisma. This sort of thing would be unusual of course. In most cases the numbers involved would be about the same. This way you have the option of fine tuning various ratings for a squad. Not just leadership but experience. motivation (morale). fitness (are they tired/out of shape), supply (short on ammo). headcount (re they below strength)

[Michael Emrys]

I've noticed that at least in QBs the game has a strong tendency to average out the overall performance of a unit as it is being spawned. That is, if it has a high leadership rating, it probably won't also have a high experience or morale rating. It can, and sometimes does, have high ratings across the board, but that does not in my experience happen very often. At times, when the game throws up a particularly incongruous combination of traits, I will adjust one or more of the factors to what I consider a more realistic combination.

Michael