Re: DS confidence checks

John spake thusly upon matters weighty: 

> But under DS II rules, you can only loose two levels of confidence per

> check.  I don't like that--it should be entirely possible to rout a 
> platoon off the board if it takes 50% casualties in a few seconds- 
> -including the platoon leader.

Firstly, I was under the impression DS2 turns were on the order of 
minutes? But as this isn't germaine to the point, we'll ignore that. 
I'd agree that it is entirely possible for a formation to be routed 
within short order. 

Interestingly enough, another thing morale rules tend to not handle 
all that well is the tendency of men to do an ostrich - to hit the 
deck, get behind cover, and do NOTHING and not respond to orders, not 
move, etc. Most of our morale systems have them withdraw a distance 
or until they rally. In reality, they might just freeze. 

Morale is undoubtedly the most human, unpredictable and complex 
aspect of such games as DS2 and SG2. Humans react in various ways - 
soetimes fighting to the death over nothing other times routing in 
defence of important points. Sometimes one casualty will route a 
company, sometimes you have to kill every stinkin' one of them. The 
best any set of morale rules can do is reasonably cover most 
situations most of the time. Not cover all situations or work all the 
time. That's too much to hope for (especially since this aspect of 
human behavior is sort of unpredictable). Sometimes a crappy militia 
unit will hang on to the last guy, and sometimes the elite paras will 
punch out and didi real early on. All a morale system can do is 
represent tendencies. 

You want it to be possible to lose more than two morale levels, but 
not commonplace. Maybe certain circumstances (either a certain loss 
level or a certain number of checks you'd have to make as you passed 
breakpoints) allow the loss of a greater # of morale levels. This 
would represent single crushing events more accurately. 

Just my 0.02. 

Tom.