[GZG] Full Sail and Morale

["Thomas Barclay" <kaladorn@xxxxxxxx>]

Unobtainium Ships and Squishy Men:

At GZG ECC IX, I believe Mike Hudak is running Full Sail, which is his Full Thrust on
water variant if I recollect correctly. Don't know if Mike is still list lurking or not.
Maybe someone can pass on the request for a copy of his rules mods. 

Morale:

I find it interesting that people think Morale in SG2 or DS2 necessarily implies troops
fleeing in terror. I always assume that Morale was a composite of fear, fatigue,
accumulated loss, and professional judgement. That is to say, sometimes a relatively
pristine force will fail its morale check... I assume this simply represents the commander
making a situational appreciation using factors available to him (which differ from those
available to the player) and his best decision is to retreat, pull back, etc. Sometimes
this results in momentary disarray until some re-org and rallying is done. 

I sort of viewed FT's Strike The Colours as the same. The Admiral (the player) may wish a
particular ship in his fleet to perservere in the attack. The striking rules mean that
captain has simply made an assessment based on what he knows and his understanding of his
duty and has elected to save his ship. 

So, I don't see a big problem with having striking of colours/withdrawing as part of the
game. This encapsulates some professional judgements. Now, I'd give an Admiral a chance to
rally a withdrawing ship (giving the withdrawing Captain a comm and being very clear about
his orders). But I think the idea missing from too many of the games I see is that their
are little imaginary people on these vessels (or in the tanks or stomping around alien
worlds on the two-step Black Cadillacs). They might just have plans of their own and a
different situational assessment than their high command (the player). 

This would, in some sense, help to explain historical situations where modern armchair
analysts look back on something, draw conclusions that X general or Y admiral made a poor
decision and withdrew when he was about to win/in a position of advantage/not seriously
damaged. Sometimes a vessel or formation takes moderate damage, but it seems like the best
time to withdraw to that units commander. Sometimes he is wrong, sometimes just short on
data, sometimes he might know things that aren't apparent to the armchair analyst. At any
rate, there are enough cases of people pulling out early to make me think rules that allow
this (just as we have Last Stand rules) help to make the ships and tanks and little lead
dudes behave a bit more like their real world counterparts - complete with frailties, bad
judgements, inconvenient timing, and sometimes with outrageously tenacious morale. 

TomB 
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