the effects of defeat

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Moriarty
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the effects of defeat

#1 Post by Moriarty »

Lots of ship combat threads (that'd be 0.4 being designed then) and lots of interesting ideas.

I'm not sure if FO is planning on having morale, or some such similar thing for planets (can't find anything about it in the wiki, and the forum search is pretty useless for just about everything), so this idea may be out of the window immediatly.

Basically, if you loose in a major fleet encounter (i.e. a substantial chunk of your fleet is defeated by an enemy force), then there are negative repercussions on the morale of your empire ("s/he can't defend us from the evil hoard of hoonimans")
Similarly if u win against a major chunk of an enemies fleet, you will get a big increase in morale empirewide ("Ha, we shall crush the pathetic numihums before breakfast!").


Also, whenever you loose a planet (or conversly conquor one) there could be corresponding morale effects to the surrounding planets in your (and the enemies) empire.

Ranos
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#2 Post by Ranos »

I fully agree with this. Wins and Defeats both should matter to your population and should effect happiness, production, money etc in some way.

There could potentially be morale on ships as well that would increase or decrease their combat skills depending on how high or low it was.
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MisterMerf
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#3 Post by MisterMerf »

Epic last stands and underdog victories are an important part of the game. If crew morale suffers from defeat and there isn't a straightforward (non-micromanagement intensive) way to increase it again, it will be hard to balance.

General W
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#4 Post by General W »

I agree with Ranos - victory and defeat should matter. This will make it very important for a player to look for battles they can win in an effort to build momentum in a war. Should also cut down on nuisance battles (ie - ah ha! here's my 1 scout come to do a suicide run on your fleet of Battleships!)

However, I really like the idea of those heroic last stands and underdog comebacks.

Perhaps the negative "snowball" effect could apply - but only to a point.
It makes sense that as an empire is wiped out, subsequent battles get easier as forces become increasingly demoralized (See: France after the Maginot line fell) This would work until the empire is on the point of extinction. (this could be based on galaxy size, how far the game has already progressed, etc.)

Basically, the goal should be that when a losing Empire gets down to their last world or two, the whole race rallies to save themselves from extinction. (ala Independence Day) – Massive moral boost kicks in.

Just a thought.
Still, it cannot be called skill to kill one's fellow citizens, to betray friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; by these means one can acquire power but not glory
-- Machiavelli, The Prince

Ranos
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#5 Post by Ranos »

The changes wouldn't be drastic. Something like a .5-1% drop in damage and evasion on ships and the same for efficency, industry or whaever else on the planets. It would be a minor thing that, over time, would mount up to make a big difference. There wouldn't need to be any micro intensive things to fix it. Contact another empire and convince them to be your ally. They join you in a battle, your side winsand you get a nice morale boost.

There should be a base number that all races start out with. There couldbe race picks that effect it. When you lose, the number goes down and when you win, the number goes up. If you don't have any wins or losses, the number slowly rises. If you have a victory when your morale is down quite a bit, that would be a huge morale boost causing say a 50-75% recovery of all morale lost.

If you face extinction, morale will also take a huge jump up no matter how low it is due to the drive to survive. At this time, morale could even jump above the base rate. Remember, a cornered animal is a lot more dangerous than one out in the open.
200 and still a Wyrm!?! I don't want to be a Wyrm anymore. I've been a Wyrm for 100 posts now.

Moriarty
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#6 Post by Moriarty »

I wasn't really refereing to morale on ships (that's been done before in other games, though i can't recall which), more the generic effects that victory of defeat will have on your overall population (or the population in the nearby systems).
i'll leave you folks to argue over it though. ;)

Ran Taro
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#7 Post by Ran Taro »

MisterMerf wrote:Epic last stands and underdog victories are an important part of the game. If crew morale suffers from defeat and there isn't a straightforward (non-micromanagement intensive) way to increase it again, it will be hard to balance.
So are long, drawn out, boring, mopping up operations. But they shouldn't be.

I think General W's idea is a great one, if it can be well implemented...

iamrobk
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#8 Post by iamrobk »

I definately support the ideas of Last Stands and whatever, and how wins increase moral and losses decrease it. However, I think the effects should be more than just like 1%. I think that maybe the bonuses should range from like 5%-15%. Anything smaller would be pointless, anything bigger would be too unfair for an empire with high morale.

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#9 Post by Ranos »

I wasn't thinking that morale was a set number but was a percentage itself. So the game starts and morale is at 100% and you lose a battle and it drops to 99.5% or something.

The reason for it being a percentage is to make it easy to factor in to either combat related morale or population related morale. If morale is at 100%, then damage is multiplied by 1. Morale drops by 2% and it is now at 98% and damage is multiplied by .98.

The reason it should be so low is because you could be fighting multiple battles in one turn and if the increase is 5-15%, it would only take 7-20 battles and an empire would be at 200% or more. Morale only increases subtly, unless morale is down and the troops are looking for a victory to give them hope again. That is when it should take a significant jump.

Another thought that occurred to me is that there could be things that effect morale. If a large empire starts a war with a smaller empire, the larger empire is going to have more confidence and therefore more morale because it looks like an easy win. The small empire is going to see a larger empire as being able to squash them and would have a lower morale. That would be for population only. Combat morale would be effected by the size of the opposing fleets. If my fleet is bigger than yours, my morale is going to be higher because I have the upper hand in the battle.

All leaders, if they are included in the game, would have some effect on morale too. Some would give a boost to morale all of the time. Some would be those leaders that get up in front of troops and or people at a time when the other empire looks like it will squash the little one and give encouraging speeches, thus boosting the morale of the underdog. Others would say to the underdog that all hope is lost and we should flee, which wold reduce moreale for the underdog. Others would urge caution to the race that clearly dominates which would lower morale for the guy with the upper hand.

There could also be techs that effect morale.

I think morale has a huge potential for being a big part of the game.
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iamrobk
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#10 Post by iamrobk »

I meant like 5%-15% total. I thought you meant that it would change like 1% total.

Moriarty
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#11 Post by Moriarty »

Were the above ideas to be implemented, something else to take into account would be government.
If you have a totalitarian gov, then you can probably guess morale isn't going to be as effected by defeat, as it will be covered up ("we did not just loose a major chunk of our fleet, enemy news broadcasts saying otherwise are propeganda. our main fleet is currently engaged in top secret military activities... yadda yadda").

where an open gov (like a true democracy) would have all info available to everyone, so the effects would be worse.

General W
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#12 Post by General W »

I think we've got some really great discussion going here.
I am inclined to agree with Ranos - the percentage should be small to avoid destabilizing the game.

Unfortunately, the drawback to this is that as we make the impact less and less, the effect becomes increasingly likely to be simply lost in the sea of information and tiny variables that affect morale. (This doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t be included – victories and losses should exert a constant, albeit only barely noticeable, effect on planet morale.)

In order to make this meaningful and interesting, perhaps we need something more direct and tangible that the player can readily comprehend.

Just as an example: Perhaps every defeat could increase the potential for one of your ships to disobey orders and retreat in a future battle. The leader who is constantly losing battles and/or throwing away his ships in pointless battles will quickly find his ships less willing to follow orders and stay and fight.

This isn’t the time or place to discuss the specifics of how this would be calculated, but I think we need something simple and direct – where the player can easily see and comprehend the consequences of his actions. (“Man! Another battleship just ran away! Maybe I should stop picking all these nuisance fights.”)

Hope this helps kick the ball in the right direction.
Still, it cannot be called skill to kill one's fellow citizens, to betray friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; by these means one can acquire power but not glory
-- Machiavelli, The Prince

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utilae
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#13 Post by utilae »

General W wrote:I think we've got some really great discussion going here.
I am inclined to agree with Ranos - the percentage should be small to avoid destabilizing the game.

Unfortunately, the drawback to this is that as we make the impact less and less, the effect becomes increasingly likely to be simply lost in the sea of information and tiny variables that affect morale. (This doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t be included – victories and losses should exert a constant, albeit only barely noticeable, effect on planet morale.)

In order to make this meaningful and interesting, perhaps we need something more direct and tangible that the player can readily comprehend.

Just as an example: Perhaps every defeat could increase the potential for one of your ships to disobey orders and retreat in a future battle. The leader who is constantly losing battles and/or throwing away his ships in pointless battles will quickly find his ships less willing to follow orders and stay and fight.

This isn’t the time or place to discuss the specifics of how this would be calculated, but I think we need something simple and direct – where the player can easily see and comprehend the consequences of his actions. (“Man! Another battleship just ran away! Maybe I should stop picking all these nuisance fights.”)

Hope this helps kick the ball in the right direction.
You could have some kind of 'morale break' where if X% of a taskforce is destroyed, X ships retreat.

guiguibaah
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Positive feedback

#14 Post by guiguibaah »

- I don't like the effect of morale on wins and losses, because it creates a positive feedback effect. You lose a system, and your attacker gets a bonus to attack other systems, which make your population suffer more and bonus him more..

If anything, I'd prefer a negative feedback system, where winning a system makes it a little trickier to win another.
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Bastian-Bux
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#15 Post by Bastian-Bux »

Actually I think morale should be computed not in an arithmetic but in an logarithmic way.

"Did you hear it, we won that battle at Xddfjhf."
"Yeah, those bugs got a real kick in the, well whatever they have."

2 years later.

"Did you hear it, we won that battle at Refkuue."
"Who cares, we win and win and win, heck, and nothing changes. Maybe its even a great makeup by the media?"

Or from the other side

"Did you hear it, we lost that battle at Xddfjhf."
"Yeah, those humnas did real kick our lower abdomen."

2 years later.

"Did you hear it, we lost that battle at Refkuue."
"Who cares, I'm working 16 hours a day, havent seen my lill eggs since weeks, ah no time to talk."


So for the first won or lost battle you might get that 2% increase, but after that you only get: X/current morale^Y.

With Y we can finetune the moralchanges. An Y of 10 for example would lower the 2nd battle morale win to 1.65.

On the same way morale would recover: if your morale is low, then every victory is new hope.

If we also include a threshhold into that formulae, then we have our last stands (and overconfidence) also.

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