Question on Bravery

[Kennethlumina]

I was hoping someone could fully explain the effect a pilots bravery has in the course of a battle. Having read the unofficial guide posted here there were only two things I could gather from it; that bravery is used a modifier in ejection skill checks, and that starting with line of sight and within 3 hexs of the squad leader allowed a pilot to use the leadership score of the squad leader. This leaves me wondering if there is any more to Bravery, as I'm sure there probably is. This question was finally brought up when I noted in a mission two of my pilots doing absolutely terrible at shooting anything. ~30% chances to hit at a few hexes away, firing at stationary (or turning) targets, with over 70% skill with the weapons. I checked the pilot info just to see if anything could be gleaned from that, and the only thing I could noticed was the bravery scores of 15 and 7 for the two pilots.

Just wondering what's up, what's the full mechanics going behind all this, and is leadership a skill everyone should have at least some training in to prevent abysmal bravery scores?

[LarkinVB]

Bravery does provide bonus/malus for nearly all skill checks.

Bravery  Modifier
> 90 :     +6%
> 75 :     +3%
<= 25 :&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; -3%
<= 10 :&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; -6%

Bravery is calculated by taking the jocks own OR the maximun leadership skill of *any* fighting squad member in range of 3 hexes, whatever is higher. For range 4/5 the leadership of squad mates is halved, for range 6/7 one third etc.

Example: A jock has leadership 15. A squad mate with leadership 30 is at range 3, another with leadership 80 is at range 5. The bravery for the jock is 40 (80/2) as this is bigger than 30 or 15.

Bravery is further modified by allied/enemy casualties. Even downed titans modify bravery slightly.

It is advisable to bring leadership up to 26 to get no bad modifiers while not fighting near squad members with high leadership.

Since the maximum penalty is -6% your bad shooting must have had more reasons. You can press 'B' key in attack mode to see all attack modifiers.

Because I made some fixes to bravery calculations all this applies to v1.2.2

[Kennethlumina]

Thanks for the quick reply. Bravery wasn't the overwhelming factor like I thought it might have been but the explanation of the mechanics is much appreciated. Also it brought to my attention the v1.2.2 patch which I downloaded and installed. Pressing 'B' for the breakdown of to hit chances is a wonderful addiction and showed the cause of my poor shooting (In this case it was the cover bonus from dense woods and the penalty caused by enemy shields being far more effective than I ever previously thought).

[LarkinVB]

Shields are bad for energy titans but are usually only available for heavier designs. It is vital to have a squad with mixed weapon types. EM Pulser can shut them down if you hit the shield slots and teslas might overload them.