Chainman Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 In a recent PBEM scenario Riesberg, I (and supposedly the enemy) had a dramatic drop in morale. Is there any way to recover morale points? By achieving objectives or is this not modelled? Has anyone seen this in a game? PS My PBEM Partner is MIA. If you read this ... I would still like to continue. [ July 30, 2003, 04:41 PM: Message edited by: Chainman ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Louie the Toad Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Did you split up a lot of squads? This will cause your total morale to drop. Put them back and you should recover. Lowly Toad 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chainman Posted July 30, 2003 Author Share Posted July 30, 2003 Yep. Quite a few. And I lost quite a few. As my opponent wrote: we will soon be throwing stones at each other. But thanks for the tip. I'll think of it next time. Chainman 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigDork Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 Originally posted by Chainman: Is there any way to recover morale points? By achieving objectives or is this not modelled? Is there a way to recover morale??? I don't believe I've seen it happen in the game but I'm not 100% sure. Anyone? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Major Jerkov Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 Time. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chainman Posted July 31, 2003 Author Share Posted July 31, 2003 Time? Well, in my 30 minute engagement that will have an effect tending to nil. Too bad. Chainman 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Louie the Toad Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 Chainman. Splitting squads make them less powerful. (The whole squad is greater than the sum of its parts). Try using half squads in observation/scouting missions or to create diversions. Together.. Toad 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted July 31, 2003 Share Posted July 31, 2003 Just to make sure everything is clear, there are two kinds of morale in the game: 1) Individual unit morale, shown by the unit's 'status' (i.e., OK, 'alerted', 'cautious', etc. This type of morale is affected by the amount of incoming fire a unit is taking, casualties, etc. This type of morale also recovers of it's own accord over time if a unit gets out of the line of fire. The rate of recovery depends on factors like unit experience, whether or not the unit is in command of an HQ, and the quality/bonuses of said HQ, etc., and other factors. In general, a unit that has taken serious casualties and/or has reached broken or routed status will recover it's individual morale only very slowly, if at all. 2) "Global" morale. This is the percentage shown on the lower left side of the screen. This percentage reflects, abstractly, your entire force's feelings about how the current battle is going and their prospects for winning and/or surviving to fight another day. This is the type of morale that I suspect Chainman is referring to. Global Morale is affected by all sorts of stuff, including: - The morale of your individual units. The more units you have pinned or worse, the worse your global morale will get. - Split squads. Split squads lower global morale. I guess this is to reflect the fact that soldiers running around in small groups tend to be more jittery. - Casualties taken. In my experience, this is the biggest determinant of Global Morale. - Units exiting the map. The more units you have leave the map, the worse your Global morale will get. This is especially important to keep in mind in exit zone scenarios. I suppose this is to reflect that soldiers left behind to fight the last rear guard after everyone else has left tend to be rather unenthused about their job assignment. - Apparently, Global Morale is also affected by the "Victory Percentage" also shown next to the Globale Morale. The higher your Victory Percentage, (and the lower your opponents'), the better your Global Morale. Keep in mind the "Victory Percentage" is a reflection of how well your units *think* they are doing, not what is actually going on. If you nearly have a VL in control, but it hasn't actually switched over on the screen, you haven't gained any Victory Percentage benefit yet. Also, your Victory Percentage goes up a bit for every enemy casualty you cause AND confirm - if you don't actually verify the casualty (or the vehicle KO), you don't get any Victory Percentage gain from it (until after the battle is over, of course). - Ammo situation. This is a maybe. BFC has stated that low ammo can create a forced cease-fire situation (I think this may be a new feature for CMBB), but I'm not sure if it does so by lowering Global Morale, or by it's own independent mechanism. There are more, but these are some of the big ones. Directly, the only thing that Global Morale does is force a cease fire/surrender if one or both side's percentage drops low enough - the exact percentages for this to happen are in the manual. Indirectly, though, Global Morale affects all of your individual units' morale. The lower it gets, the more quickly your units panic or rout, and the slower they recover to Ready status. For this reason, bad Global Morale can rapidly snowball out of control - units panic more easily and are therefore more likely to get caught in bad situations with no escape, which further worsens Global Morale, etc. So, my very long-winded point: Time, in and of itself, does NOT affect Global Morale, and simply waiting will not necessarily help you recover Global Morale. Time can help your global morale indirectly if you have a lot of units pinned or worse - as they recover, so will your Global Morale to an extent. Other causes of bad global morale, like high casualties and units exiting the map, are irreversible and no amount of waiting will help you with these. There are other causes of bad Global Morale, like split squads and VL posession, that can be mitigated or eliminated by player action. In my experience, once your Global Morale drops below about 50%, offensive action becomes progressively more difficult, and you are generally best off attempting to hold on to what successes you have already achieved, rather than taking new objectives. If you are 'on the edge', though, and feel like a few more Global Morale points might help you complete you battle plan, you can: 1) As much as possible, get Pinned or worse units out of the line of fire so they can recover morale. You should be doing this anyway, and it will definitely help your morale recover. The problem here is that if your Global Morale is already pretty bad, it may take quite some time for units to recover their individal morale. 2) Re-join split squads. This is usually the easiest fix to implement. Unfortuately, it also isn't going to help you a hell of a lot. 3) If you're thinking of exiting any crews, out-of-ammo units etc. off the map to get them out of harm's way, DON'T. The best place for 'used up' units is some nice hiding place back near your map edge, where they are out of the line of fire but don't negatively affect your Global Morale as they do when they leave the map. 4) Try to raise your Victory Percentage. Again, this is something you're probably trying to do anyway, but occasionally there are simple things you can do to raise your 'Perceived Victory Percentage' quickly and at little risk. For example, if there's a flag that you've overrun but don't presently have a unit 'babysitting', send a low-value unit back to sit on it and this will help your Victory Percentage (and by extension your Global Morale) a bit. You can also help your Victory Percentage by verifying enemy casualties - if you're pretty sure you've KOed an enemy gun, but are seeing only a 'lost contact' marker, sending a scout forward to verify the KO will help your Victory Percentage a little bit. Only do this if you can verfy the casualty at little risk, though - if you take more casualties in the process of trying to verify enemy casualties, you'll probably just end up worse off than before. Hope this helps, YD 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spud Posted August 1, 2003 Share Posted August 1, 2003 Fantastic writeup YD! Learned a lot from that one! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chainman Posted August 1, 2003 Author Share Posted August 1, 2003 Since my "perceived" victory level is very good, and no units left the map, I believe the drop in global morale is due to high losses and low ammo. I will also think twice about splitting squads next time and thanks to YankeeDog I will watch over the other factors as well. Chainman 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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