Re: [FT] Morale (was: Re: [SG2] weapons)

>On Thursday 20 November 2003 7:53 am, Damond Walker wrote:
>
>>  I think it would be nice to have some type of morale system at the
>>  fleet level such that if you ordered Frigate Flotilla A to engage
the
>>  Dreadnought of Deadly Doom that the Flotilla Commander should roll
>>  something to send his ships to their (almost) certain destruction.
>>  Something that takes into account the mission motivation like SG2.
>
>I've tossed around the idea of how to model (ruleswise) different
qualities of
>crew and/or captains without upping the complexity too much. 
>
>I really like the idea of reflecting those variables, but I'm not sure
how to
>approach it.

It's a very difficult question. To my mind, the "quality" of a 
Captain should reflect his/her tactical ability and judgement - but 
then tactical ability in FT is very much a PLAYER function rather 
than a rules-driven one. I suppose it MIGHT be possible to introduce 
some (very optional!) system of rolling against captain quality to 
see if a ship or flotilla actually follows its written orders exactly 
(which represents the ship exactly following the plans of the 
commanding admiral) or if they suffer some random change to the 
written orders (meaning that there was a communication breakdown or 
misunderstanding between Admiral and Captain, resulting in some ships 
NOT doing exactly what the Player/Admiral intended).

This might be interesting in certain scenarios - eg: convoy escort 
games, where some of the merchant captains might decide to ignore the 
orders of the escort flotilla commander if they feel too much at 
risk.... (eg: convoy suddenly scatters while the escort commander is 
trying to keep them in a defensible formation....).

Jon (GZG)

>
>--
>--Tim
>http://geocities.com/flakmagnet72
>"Who draws his sword against the Prince,
>best throw away the scabbard." early 17th Century English Proverb