Fear mechanics

[Sombre]

Kristoffer O said:
Why very wrong?

1. is in accordance with the manual.
2. The manual doesn't say anything about this, so I'm not sure if it is actually wrong or just omitting stuff.
3. No it is not. (unless the affected squares stack on top of one another or some other bug)

1. Yes it is. I was documenting things fear does, not points on which the manual was incorrect.
2. I think it's a major omission because it's a major featue of fear, but ok, technically I suppose it isn't wrong to omit that.
3. The test I ran seemed to indicate otherwise.

Let me put the full text from the manual up, regarding fear.

"Units in a monster's Fear are of effect must take a morale check against the monster's Fear, or rout. The basic Fear effect requires a check against 10. Unlike Awe, the bonus to Fear indicates the additional area of effect, not the fear strength. So a Fear +4 monster has normal Fear that radiates to 4 additional squares. The Fear strength itself is increased for every full +5 fear, so a fear +10 unit would radiate to ten additional squares, and force a morale check against 12. The base area of effect (Fear +0) is 6 squares."

Things that are wrong (not just omitted).

Units are routed by fear - I haven't seen individual units rout, just groups. If units refers to groups, why is the 'monster' referred to as a 'fear +10 unit'?
Fear value is aoe, not power - With fear 14 my monster should have had a fear radius of 20 (6+14) but the only units with reduced morale were directly adjacent.

I can't comment about fear value not = strength, because since the manual omits the whole thing about fear reducing morale, there's no reason it should mention that a high fear unit causes far more morale reduction than a low fear one (more than the +1,2 or 3 to the morale check requirement would suggest).


I'm not making this thread to complain, just to get some more info on how fear works. I went with the manual regarding the aoe but the tests don't appear to show it working that way.

[MaxWilson]

Sombre said:
Fear value is aoe, not power - With fear 14 my monster should have had a fear radius of 20 (6+14) but the only units with reduced morale were directly adjacent.

AoE 20 will be a radius of about 2, not 20. The ones directly adjacent are closer to the center of effect and will get hit more frequently; it's possible that others were getting hit too occasionally and just recovering. (The penalty to morale wears off.) It's hard to say. I'd probably try testing with Fear +50 or something, where the results should be more dramatic and obvious.

Edit: whoops, KO already mentioned this possibility.

-Max

[Sombre]

MaxWilson said:
AoE 20 will be a radius of about 2, not 20. The ones directly adjacent are closer to the center of effect and will get hit more frequently; it's possible that others were getting hit too occasionally and just recovering. (The penalty to morale wears off.) It's hard to say. I'd probably try testing with Fear +50 or something, where the results should be more dramatic and obvious.

Sorry I meant aoe not radius. With aoe 20 I would have expected to observe units that weren't adjacent losing morale, which I didn't. However I was unaware units recover morale. That complicates things. I've learned several things from the test and this thread which aren't in the manual and aren't obvious at all.

As for testing with fear+50 - 14 is the highest base fear I could mod. I could have added death magic to get it higher though I'm not sure what the roof is. Base prot has a roof of 40 for example.


With fear decreasing morale constantly it's easy to see why Baalz dumping 6 lesser horrors onto an SC (regardless of his high morale) worked great and caused him to flee almost immediately, possibly autokilling him. The SC can only avoid this by being mindless because the reduction to morale apparently cannot be resisted. I imagine the same trick would work with big squads of ghosts and the like.

And yeah, standard is basically fear in reverse, so enough units with standard can counteract fear. That's assuming standard actually works the way the manual describes which in my experience is not a safe assumption to make.

[MaxWilson]

I thought for some reason that Morale 30 units were unaffected by Fear. I'm AFG so I can't check, but there are multiple Morale 30 SCs available.

-Max

[Kristoffer O]

I don't think morale 30 is immune to fear. They can rout IIRC, but don't trust me on this. 30 is just a way of saying 'practically unroutable'.

I'm starting to think that you should not trust what I'm saying, so I'll say some more to confuse matters further

- Moral loss might have replaced the fear bonus
- Morale loss (and gain from standards) gets halved each round.
- Morale regain will only affect those not in melee.

Neither of these comes from trusted sources, they come from me.
JK is on vacation playing golf or something, so he can't shed light on matters

[Edi]

Kristoffer O said:
I don't think morale 30 is immune to fear. They can rout IIRC, but don't trust me on this. 30 is just a way of saying 'practically unroutable'.

I'm starting to think that you should not trust what I'm saying, so I'll say some more to confuse matters further

- Moral loss might have replaced the fear bonus
- Morale loss (and gain from standards) gets halved each round.
- Morale regain will only affect those not in melee.

Neither of these comes from trusted sources, they come from me.
JK is on vacation playing golf or something, so he can't shed light on matters

IIRC you have said morale 30 means a unit is considered unroutable for the purposes of spells like Panic, Fear etc and tests have borne this out. The units can still get lowered morale from fear, but considering the types of units that generally have 30 morale, a unit with fear will usually be hacked to death before the fear will have had enough effect.

[JimMorrison]

Kristoffer O said:
I don't think morale 30 is immune to fear. They can rout IIRC, but don't trust me on this. 30 is just a way of saying 'practically unroutable'.

I'm starting to think that you should not trust what I'm saying, so I'll say some more to confuse matters further

- Moral loss might have replaced the fear bonus
- Morale loss (and gain from standards) gets halved each round.
- Morale regain will only affect those not in melee.

Neither of these comes from trusted sources, they come from me.
JK is on vacation playing golf or something, so he can't shed light on matters

I do love you. <3


Now, I am curious, is it just that 30 is the "practically unroutable" score for "normal" units? Is 50 reserved for Mindless? Because I thought 50 was REALLY unroutable, so I had been wondering why 30 also supposedly was.

Granted, failing a morale check against 30 is like a Markata hurting a geared Cyclops, but it could happen!

[Micah]

Well, morale 30 units will retreat during army rout or when they get beat up enough, mindless units will either keep on keepin' on (golem) or dissolve from lack of leadership.

[MaxWilson]

Kristoffer O said:
- Morale regain will only affect those not in melee.

If this is true, it probably explains why Sombre's Fear +14 commander only caused visible morale drop to adjacent units, because they're in melee with him and therefore don't recover.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Kristoffer O said:
I'm starting to think that you should not trust what I'm saying, so I'll say some more to confuse matters further

- Moral loss might have replaced the fear bonus
- Morale loss (and gain from standards) gets halved each round.
- Morale regain will only affect those not in melee.

Neither of these comes from trusted sources, they come from me.
JK is on vacation playing golf or something, so he can't shed light on matters

It turns out that morale regain can affect those in melee after all. See the final arena battle in the attached. At one point the Van's morale goes from 12 back up to 16, just before he dies.

-Max