Morale and Mutiny

[Puchu]

The idea of a morale system has been in the head of many since early sea trials. This is supposed to be a thread on how a morale system might improove the game. The goal would be to - according to the actual historical background - make sinking ships less common, and preserving crew by striking colours the most likely outcome of a battle.

 

This is how such a system could look like:

 

1. Crew has morale.

2. Basic level of morale is dependent on

• Player rank (independent of ship, so a commodore on a trinc would have more morale than a post captain on a trinc)
• Crew experience (read laiks post for more detail. Basically the longer your crew has been fighting with you and the more battles they have gone through and even won, the more they trust in your command)

3. Morale gets lowered by

• Devastating hits (2 grapeshot rakes through the unarmored stern killing 40% of the crew might not have the best influence on crews morale)
• Long time at sea, inability to pay the crews maintenance cost and so on. There are many things that would feel natural here

4. Officers and Modules could have an effect on crew. e.G. a bard or guitars on board

 

5. Loss of morale can cause mutiny

• This is maybe the most important part. If a captain wouldnt strike colours after a few devastating blows, the crew would probably hang him!
• Here all kinds of tweaks could be made. Ideas: Morale might be influenced by the enemy you're fighting and so on. (pirate vs nationals and so on.)

6. Morale could also influence ships performance. 

 

7. Like in many other games that have morale, Morale would increase when the ship stops taking devastating fire.

 

 

Basically this system is meant to 1.Make surrenders more common than sinking  2.Make crew quality more important 3.Increase the immersion by applying a more realistic crew system.

Edited July 22, 2015 by Puchu

[Olof Cederström]

 

 5. Loss of morale can cause mutiny

• This is maybe the most important part. If a captain wouldnt strike colours after a few devastating blows, the crew would probably hang him!
• Here all kinds of tweaks could be made. Ideas: Morale might be influenced by the enemy you're fighting and so on. (pirate vs nationals and so on.)

I'm not quite sure how the game mechanics work right now, but if a ship has more officers onboard the crew should lose less morale in that case.

Edited July 22, 2015 by Olof Rudolf Cederström

[Robert Danforth]

I like most of this, but not the part where morale is based on the player's rank. I'd rather sail for a strong, fair, adventurous Lieutenant than an Admiral who was cruel and quick to take out the cat.

 

Honor may be a better thing to tie that too over rank.

[Puchu]

I think it would be hard to code "strong, fair, adventurous" or even "honor". Yes, tieing it to the rank might be an oversimplification, but the other stuff would probably just be impossible to implement, so we should go for the nearest approach. Since a good captain would eventually be promoted.

[Arvenski]

I'd say, if you wanted to implement a morale system, do it like Mount and Blade's: As in, the men need good food and frequent, successful action, or else they'll desert or (and I can't recall if this was the case in M&B, but still) be less useful in battle. Puchu's idea works as well, because his idea seems to expand on the system I just described. Also, like Puchu said, trying to implement an honor system would be difficult and probably wouldn't work out, anyway. 

Edited July 22, 2015 by Arvenski

[Robert Danforth]

I think it would be hard to code "strong, fair, adventurous" or even "honor". Yes, tieing it to the rank might be an oversimplification, but the other stuff would probably just be impossible to implement, so we should go for the nearest approach. Since a good captain would eventually be promoted.

 

There have been a few proposals for honor, so that's what I was thinking. I'm not totally disagreeing, by the way, it may be the best, I just want to explore other options.

 

And as far as promotions go, in the Royal Navy at least it was based on seniority, and frankly the Admiralty in most nations didn't really care if you flogged every single one of your crew each and every day and twice on Sunday, so long as you got results. But the morale of those flogged would be utter garbage and they'd mutiny the second you were out of gun noise range.

 

 

I'd say, if you wanted to implement a morale system, do it like Mount and Blade's: As in, the men need good food and frequent, successful action, or else they'll desert or (and I can't recall if this was the case in M&B, but still) be less useful in battle. Puchu's idea works as well, because his idea seems to expand on the system I just described. Also, like Puchu said, trying to implement an honor system would be difficult and probably wouldn't work out, anyway. 

 

Sid Meier's Pirates! does it that way too.

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

To be clear, the Royal Navy went to seniority once you were a Post Captain. Prior to that rank, merit or social standing is what drove your promotion. After you became Post, you were on a list and moved up in that list when those above you either died or retired (we'll ignore "Yellowing" for now). Merit had nothing to do with it at that point.

[yamms]

I like the idea, you could incorporate punishment decisions as well. Joe stole from Sam, how many lashes to give? etc. 

[Puchu]

It seems like everyone seems to like this idea. We're all waiting for some comments of the admin team. We know they read the posts, i really hope they can incorporate them.

[TommyShelby]

I read through the game files last night and with the new boarding system it looks like morale is going to be implemented.  
- It's listed as one of many parameters taken into a count during boarding. 

[akd]

Question is whether it will be isolated to the boarding "mini-game" or if it will be tracked throughout the battle.