Re: Morale Issues
Hi Krotos,
losses incurred in this game are not necessairily outright human kills. If a 10 men squad has 4 men left that does not men 6 men were killed. It means that there are 4 combat effective men left. The others are either KIA, WIA, POW, shellshocked, deserting, fleeing, gorging on captured supplies of french wine, etc. The game does call losses 'kills' but that is an abstraction to cover all possible reasons why soldiers become combat ineffective.
In other words, if 90% of the battallion is lost, not all of those have died. In fact, most probably won't have been. The troops you described with: "I think what they would be thinking is ..."holy shi*, lets bug out of here while we can"... or ... "run for your life"!!" are part of those 90% losses. Their state of mind is effectively beyond the limited time scale of the game to rally.
The 10% troops that are left constitute those soldiers who are still doing exactly what you see them doing in the game. And keep in mind they did not see 90% of their buddies being blown away; for one because only a fraction of those were actually killed and also because the troops on the field don't have the players godview. Individual troops will not be much aware of events beyond their own squad and platoon within the short time span of the game. They may very well carry on with their subunits mission when it is unlikely to affect the battles outcome. In the chaos of command breakdown a significant portion of the troops will simply carry out their last orders.
Also they will likely have seen some comrades get wounded. Besides flaming their desire for revenge they may well be motivated to fight on to buy the time needed to get their wounded comrades evacuated safely.
Narwan
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