When playing CCV online, the standard was to play with moral off. There were many reasons for this that I can recall.
Playing with current moral system
First one was that a succesfull player would feel cheated when he could not press his advantage more and maybe clear the whole map but instead end up with at best 3 more isolated VL, simply because the other side’s moral broke.
Another thing I’m not a fan is the allocation of extra VLs after a moral failure. They are often completely isolated from the winner’s deploy and might end up unusable for the next battle because they are surrounded in enemy territory. It also look bad on the map :
Another drawback with the current moral system is that it can be exploited by the defender to stay on a map despite not having the troops to do so. In LSA, Eindoven is the perfect example of this. In my H2H experience, there is no way the german static BG can avoid a disband on the first battle vs an armored BG if the Allies player knows what he is doing. What to do to avoid that disband and delay the allies one more turn? Keep one team far from the enemy and rush all the other teams in front of the enemy so they get killed quickly. Bingo, moral will break and you will lose 3 VL but stay on the map for another turn.
Playing with moral off
On the other side, playing the new release with no moral means that an interesting new feature, the retreat, won’t be used.
Also, when there is no moral, disbands are much more frequent and will usually mean a lost bgs and could have severe consequences for the losing side, as disbanded bgs wont come back.
Another drawback of playing with no moral is that it often results in some unrealistic tactics like all out attacks regardless of losses. All in all, playing with no moral ends up in a more «arcade style» game.
So I was wondering if there could be some kind of middle ground between the current moral system and playing with no moral that could keep the pros and reduce or eliminate the cons.
Here’s an idea:
Instead of having the current VL losses of either 0,1,2 or 3 VLs depending of the moral difference between the two players, we could have either no VL lost because both sides are exhausted, or an automatic retreat off the map for the losing side if the moral difference is greater.
This could help solve the issues I have already pointed out.
When the moral breaks, it should mean a retreat from the map, no matter how many VL you owns. This would penalized player who’s moral break and prevent them from using gamey tactics like the one I’ve described earlier.
Also, the attacking player wouldn’t feel cheated as he gained the control of the map while the situation wouldn’t be so bad for the losing side has the retreat option would apply and his bgs would still be there to fight for another day on another map.
A more severe penalty would also result in the players doing the retreat themselves during battles, if they feel their moral is about to break. They will have to disengage and fall back manually and the other player could engage a pursuit if he is strong enough, thus grabbing those free VL’s he would normally grab automatically with the current moral failure.
In the end, this would actually force a defending player to plan a retreat route for his teams if the need arise, or organize a defense in dept and keep a reserve if he is facing a much stronger attacking opponent, instead of massing all his team right at the front line and expect to lose 3 VL’s at worst.
On the attacking side entering the map, it would not change much from the current situation, as a moral break early already means losing your only VL and being kicked off from the map anyway. If he is much stronger than his opponent, he can still push hard and pursuit the retreating enemy or clear the map thanks to the moral failure if the defender is careless.
So, what do you think? Would it break the game? Is the number of VL losses given when moral breaks moddable or it has to be changed in the .exe? Surely the current moral drop needed for a break should be greater with this proposition, has the consequences are more dramatic?
Fell free to add your suggestions and comments!
Cheers,
Serk
