Morale In Battlefield/World War 2 Evolution

[weasel_fierce]

I'd figure that the extra dice from the "blast" of the main gun counts for suppression purposes, which should encourage people to spread out their guys

It seems based on what stats we have so far, that it will take an absolute minimum of 4 RPG or MBT cannon hits to knock out a main battle tank, so tanks will be very very scary things to confront.
Not sure what this will mean for tank vs tank warfare. Seems it'll be a pretty static affair, but Im not super worried about the tank rules in any event

Hopefully I will be able to do a playtest with the units we have so far, over the weekend.

 

[Col. Hammer]

It seems based on what stats we have so far, that it will take an absolute minimum of 4 RPG or MBT cannon hits to knock out a main battle tank, so tanks will be very very scary things to confront.
Not sure what this will mean for tank vs tank warfare. Seems it'll be a pretty static affair, but Im not super worried about the tank rules in any event

A kill is still a kill. Challenger will be taken out with a single 13+ roll. Challengers gun has damage value of D10+4, so a roll 9 or 10 will knock out the tank with a single shot. So there is always a risk of the armour not holding when the tanks slug it out...

 

[weasel_fierce]

yeah, I misread that part completely.

 

[tneva82]

yeah, I misread that part completely.

Also since main gun can be only fired once there's no real need for shoot-shoot actio. With tank vs tank battles(especially if more than 1 tank per side) seems like tanks will be more likely manouvering to get side shots. Doesn't sound too static for me

 

[GhostWolf69]

Seem to be my lot in life to dig up old corpses... maybe this topic is closed, I don't know but I want to talk about it.

The main thing after our first couple of games that I can say I wreally "miss" from this game is some sort of Morale rules.

My absolute favourite game when it comes to "near future" miniatures is Stargrunt II. Playeng BFE a couple of time have NOT changed that.

One of the biggest reasons for this is that I don't have any rules for Morale.

In SGII you have LOTS of rules for it:

Mission Motivation (Being extremely inmportant when it comes to how many casualties a unit can take and still think the mission is worth it.)

Leadership Value (for the Leader of the group, being CRUCIAL in almost all tests)

Confidence Levels (of troops shifts during play depending on casualties, wounded comrades that have to be left behind etc.)

Panic (even if you are a confident badass, sometimes you can be taken by surprise and panic for an action or two... even mnore so if you are a green rookie.)

Supression (in SGII works more or less the same as in BFE.)

In my opinion the most original part of the SGII rules is the Mission Motivation. Almost all Miniature games have some sort of Unit morale (excep BFE it seems), but not many have Mission Motivation to govern part of it.

Immagine if you will a Suad out on a regular Recon Patrol encountering Hostiles... They will probably try to evaluate the opposition, take a few pot shots if they have the opportunity, then fall back and call for reinforcements at the first sign of resistance. They are not motivated to do anthing other than that really.

On the other hand, if enemy forces have pressed you back and your fight is turning desperate, and you are ordered to make a last stand to buy time for your battalion to evacuate. You know that no reinforcemnts are comming, you know this action will save the file of thousand, you know this will be your defining moment, and you will stand here till the last man falls... you are motivated like hell.

There's a real difference.

BFE is simple, elegant in manny ways, quick, gamistic in a sense that you are suhfling pieces around trying to win... but I lack the element of simulation when it comes to morale. My units will not yield unless I tell them to. And why would I? Allways running fights to the last man is not very realistic. It's something that almost exclusively happens in games. And in BFE it sem to happen alot.

/wolf

 

[emperorpenguin]

woah thread necromancy! :lol:

I agree I find the lack of morale to be a weak point, but I've said that before....

My real disappointment from the games I've played is "demolition derby". Tanks seem to generate more kills in the game through ramming each other! With only one shot per turn I'm finding players just go for the ram with 4 dice

 

[cordas]

There is the shattered rule, and suppression. I think some of the questions can be answered by how you read the fluff on these rules.

If you take shattered to be that you no longer have enough figures on the field to complete your mission its one way of looking at it, you could also say that your forces have decided for themselves that discretion is the better part of valour and left the field post haste, which is mission motivation. You could also look at the rule and say that at this point higher command has lost its control of the forces and they have disobeyed orders and left.

Looking at Confidence levels and Panic, they are represented by suppression, the troops have been badly shaken up by that incoming fire (and causalties) and have got their heads down loosing 1 action, if a unit is doubly suppressed (whether by MGs or 2 lots of incoming fire) then they could be said to be paniced enough to have wasted both actions.
Yes they can take pot shots back, but not with enough accuracy of sustained fire power to endanger the enemy. I would say its also reasonable to assume they have got on the radio and squaked t their command that they have come under heavy fire and are requesting urgent backup.... its now upto the command whether they order the troops to fall back when they can, or to send re-inforcements. Or even just to leave them there to hold the position as long as they can.

The rules might not be there, but they are in the mix if you look for them.

 

[GhostWolf69]

IRT Cordas:

You haven't played SGII have you?

Casue if you don't know what the Panic rules in SGII does then how can you say they are covered by Supression in BFE?

And I disagree with you more than words can say about how supression and Shattered covers all aspects I listed.

A much firmer base for argument would just be to acknowledge that there are no rules to govern this but claim that you can have fun anyway, or that the game was not designed to include such things because this and that, or whatever.

But I'm not buying the BS about it really being there... just camouflaged as something as simple as Supression.

Also please keep in mind that I do like the rules for Supression in BFE they DO add some nice features that arelacking in much crappier games such as 40k and similar, but they are not as multifacetted as the SGII rules, and can nvere hope to be either.

Example:

You take fire so you keep your head down! (Supression)

is not the same as:

The first time your rookie unit even sees (have LOS to) an enemy on the Battle filed they roll for Panic, fail and freezes on the spot loosing their next action.

or:

After taking their first casualty your Elite unit decide it's time to evacuate, because this mission is not really worth it.

or:

Your regular infantery is under fire and is now Shaken, taking a penalty to all rolls, this will make it harder for them to remove their supression markers... but they have a really great Veteran Lieutenant, shouting at them for one action about the importance of this mission etc... moving them up to Confident again and they now have a better chance of removing thos Supression markers.

The Supression rules are quick, simple, nice and all over good to have. But they are NOT covering every angle, (or even more angles than ONE).

It is something not included in the game.

Wether this is good or bad is all depnding on what type of game you want I guess. But it is NOT included. (Fact)

Personally I'm not convinced this is something that "should" have been included, it's a design choice and too keep things as simple as possible, maybe it was the right choice to make.

After a few games though, I found it lacking in this respect.

We are now concidering "fixing" this by introducing Victory Points that reward pulling back when hurt etc. This way we can kind of break the "player's" morale rather than the "unit's".

/wolf

 

[Mr Evil]

MEA can have rookie units and they do panic and run from the battle field when bullets start to flay at them.

but as a whole i find troops retreating in evo to cover or out of los any way with their reactions as loosing those men can get you to shatter and loose you the game.

 

[emperorpenguin]

oh another thing I find odd, you can leave a model out of LOS of the enemy effectively making your squad immune to suppression, since all models must be allocated a hit to suppress them....

 

[emperorpenguin]

MEA can have rookie units and they do panic and run from the battle field when bullets start to flay at them..

they can also have entirely "immune to suppression" armies too though....

 

[GhostWolf69]

oh another thing I find odd, you can leave a model out of LOS of the enemy effectively making your squad immune to suppression, since all models must be allocated a hit to suppress them....

Are you sure?

I thought you were supressed when your unit had been allocated at least as many hits as it had models... regardless of what model actually took the hit...

Am I wrong?

/wolf

 

[emperorpenguin]

oh another thing I find odd, you can leave a model out of LOS of the enemy effectively making your squad immune to suppression, since all models must be allocated a hit to suppress them....

Are you sure?

I thought you were supressed when your unit had been allocated at least as many hits as it had models... regardless of what model actually took the hit...

Am I wrong?

/wolf

I'm not sure but Lorcan Nagle is and he knows the rules much better than me!

 

[Mr Evil]

yup mea forces at 5 points permodle can be immune to supression, its a good points filler if nothing else. they also have a few other fun things they can do as well

 

[GhostWolf69]

I'm not sure but Lorcan Nagle is and he knows the rules much better than me!

I have no idea who that is, but if it is true then that is a definite House Rule change on my agenda...

Man...

/wolf

 

[emperorpenguin]

I'm not sure but Lorcan Nagle is and he knows the rules much better than me!

I have no idea who that is, but if it is true then that is a definite House Rule change on my agenda...

Man...

/wolf

he's a regular on the forums here

 

[emperorpenguin]

yup mea forces at 5 points permodle can be immune to supression, its a good points filler if nothing else. they also have a few other fun things they can do as well

can you combine the immunity with the militia rule?

oh yeah and sniper rifles not causing supression, that baffles me too :wink:

 

[Mr Evil]

yup mea forces at 5 points permodle can be immune to supression, its a good points filler if nothing else. they also have a few other fun things they can do as well

can you combine the immunity with the militia rule?

oh yeah and sniper rifles not causing supression, that baffles me too :wink:

without evan looking at the book id say NO lol

 

[Mr Evil]

yup mea forces at 5 points permodle can be immune to supression, its a good points filler if nothing else. they also have a few other fun things they can do as well

can you combine the immunity with the militia rule?

oh yeah and sniper rifles not causing supression, that baffles me too :wink:

without evan looking at the book id say NO lol

grabs rule book

looks as though you can !!! crazy !!!!

all it would realy do is make your D10 weapons less effective as a result.

 

[The Old Soldier]

oh another thing I find odd, you can leave a model out of LOS of the enemy effectively making your squad immune to suppression, since all models must be allocated a hit to suppress them....

I'm going to throw a monkey wrench into that idea. Any die other than a 1 counts toward suppression. You need not see all the models in a unit to suppress it, nor need to allocate all the dice to all the models.