Re: Morale and opinions

[Lincoln Peters <sampln@sbcglobal.net>]

On Mon, 2004-09-13 at 17:18, Stan Shebs wrote:
> Lincoln Peters wrote:
> 
> >I've been studying the documentation for morale and opinions, and based
> >on the documentation, both features appear to be incomplete.
> All half-thought-through. The concept is that morale and opinion are
> two different axes (low morale but high opinion runs away but remains
> loyal, high morale but low opinion is going to rebel and be dangerous
> subsequently), but useful parametrization was hard, very many different
> things that one might want to affect. To make progress, you'd probably
> want to pick a simplified situation that is interesting for a real game,
> make that work first.

As I see it:
* High morale and high opinion would (mostly?) negate a unit's chance of
retreating from combat or surrendering to another side.
* Low morale and high opinion would increase a unit's chance to retreat
as per withdraw-chance-per-attack or retreat-chance, or both.  If the
unit can get out of the fight, it would most likely proceed to repair
itself by whatever means are available to it.  Of course, that last part
would only apply if the unit is under AI control (although a human
player would probably order it to do the same).
* High morale and low opinion would have results comparable to the orc
horde scenario: the unit has a higher chance of surrendering to an
opposing side, as per surrender-chance or (maybe) revolt-chance.
* Low morale and low opinion would affect both the chance of retreating
and revolting/surrendering.  This could easily mean that the unit would
switch sides but refuse to fight for the new boss until some action is
taken to raise its morale.

I can think of a few factors to affect morale and opinions.  The
following would raise a unit's morale:
1. Defeating (or damaging) an enemy unit
2. Capturing an enemy unit
3. Being repaired

The following would lower a unit's morale:
1. Being damaged
2. Being captured

The following would raise a unit's opinion of its own side:
1. An enemy unit defeated (or damaged) within its vision-range
2. An enemy unit captured within its vision-range
3. An enemy unit within its vision-range revolts and joins its side*

The following would lower a unit's opinion of its own side:
1. A friendly unit killed within its vision-range
2. A friendly unit captured within its vision-range
3. A friendly unit within its vision-range revolts and joins the enemy
side*

The following would raise a unit's opinion of an enemy side:
1. Enemy kills a friendly unit**
2. Enemy captures a friendly unit

The following would lower a unit's opinion of an enemy side:
1. An enemy unit defeated (or damaged) within its vision-range
2. An enemy unit captures within its vision-range

* This should also work in situations where a unit is killed, wrecks
into another unit, and the wreck joins the other side.  I think that
this can happen in wreckreation.g, but I don't know about any other
games.

** This may depend on the general attitude of the unit, although if its
opinion of an enemy is not raised by the enemy's skill, it probably
shouldn't be affected by morale and/or opinions at all.

There is a significant overlap between all of these statistics.  If two
sides are evenly matched and killing each other's units at the same
rate, the surviving units will see their opinions of both sides vary
slightly but remain steady over time.  Morale, however, would be more
variable as it would represent the unit's opinion of itself, not its
side.  Thus, if a unit were successful in battle even when its side is
losing, its morale would be rising as its opinion of its side is
falling, and its chance of changing sides would rise.  If, on the other
hand, the unit was severely damaged in battle while its side is winning,
its morale would be falling as its opinion of its side is rising, and
its chance of retreating would rise.

The aforementioned factors that would affect morale and opinions are by
no means all of the factors that one might want to use in a game, but I
think that they would handle most situations properly.


I was hoping to use morale and opinions in the new version of knights.g,
so that certain kinds of cowardly and/or greedy soldiers (e.g. bugbears,
gnolls, goblins, ogres, orcs, troglodytes) would be generally unreliable
but could be made more reliable if they receive good treatment.

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln@sbcglobal.net>

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