I was thinking about heavy armour and although there are only a few tanks that come close to that in the current beta an idea suddenly popped into my head about what I think could be added from a game called Darkest Dungeon.
Darkest Dungeon is a turn based RPG focused on cleaning up an estate that you inherited from someone who dabbled with the dark arts. What does this this have to with SD? Well they both have Morale Bars and "Stress" mechanics:
Once a character has taken enough Morale Damage they go insane, gaining debuffs and depending on what sort of madness got them, they could do things that hinder you (like moving them to the back of the formation ruining your positioning or saying depressing things causing stress to the rest of the party). It was a neat system but some players during Early Access noticed that once the character had maxed out his Morale bar then that character could no longer be affected by Stress Damage which meant certain monsters were less challenging and they openly embraced the madness.
So, what did Red Hook studio do? They grinned and rubbed their hands together, coming up with the "Double Stress" mechanic, once a morale bar had been filled up and the madness debuff applied, a new bar then popped up, and when it filled up with stress damage it causes a Heart Attack which kills the character:
As you can guess, players then started to respect the morale system again.
Why bring this up for SD? IMO I think the system that Eugen has for stress is just about right for infantry, heck they even have their own version of the "Heart Attack" with Surrendering units, if you position your unit badly and they get pinned then they will be instantly taken off the map rewarding good play which is a very good thing.
That said, stressing out for vehicles is a bit... meh... at the current moment, as "Falling Back" is nowhere near as threatening as being pinned down into a single position and it tends to actually save the vehicle! I think there is a greater chance to penetrate armour or getting a critical hit but it’s just very ambiguous for what it does at the moment. It is not too much of problem when dealing with most of the tanks in the game but when it comes to heavy armour on the other hand...
I was thinking about what the role of armour was and it has always been about mobility but most heavy tanks in the game are used as mobile bunkers in the open fields not really moving when that was not the case as tanks need to keep moving like sharks, the problem with stress and heavy tanks is that they just move backwards and the player just has to wait for the morale bar to empty and then send them back into the fight with no long-lasting issues nor FEAR of getting a heavy armoured unit stressed out.
I believe that there should a Double Stress mechanic for armour, once the morale bar has been filled and the unit is in the "Falling Back" state then ANOTHER morale bar should appear and if that bar is filled then the crew would BAIL OUT of the tank no matter the condition of the tank.
Before you panic, I should note that this second bar would only show up when the armour is in the "Falling Back" status and once that status is gone then the other bar will go away. At the current moment, there is a bit of a skill gap between heavy tanks and medium tanks, medium are MUCH harder to use than heavy tanks and there is no point thinking about "Quantity" in Phase C as "Quality" is just simply better due to how tank combat works (you cant just park a Sherman/Panzer 4 in the middle of a field like you can with a few tanks).
The threat of stressing out a crew unit so much that they have to bail out of the tank means that players would have to be far more cautious when using them and use more skill (just to make clear, getting a tank to 200% stress means throwing everything at a single tank in a very short space of time), just like how a mighty Fallschirmjager if used badly can be made to surrender to a lesser unit if that lesser unit is used more skillfully...
NOTE: IIRC most of the "Big Cat" crews that lasted through the war had bailed out of their tanks many times, so what I am proposing is not unhistorical at all...
Darkest Dungeon is a turn based RPG focused on cleaning up an estate that you inherited from someone who dabbled with the dark arts. What does this this have to with SD? Well they both have Morale Bars and "Stress" mechanics:
Once a character has taken enough Morale Damage they go insane, gaining debuffs and depending on what sort of madness got them, they could do things that hinder you (like moving them to the back of the formation ruining your positioning or saying depressing things causing stress to the rest of the party). It was a neat system but some players during Early Access noticed that once the character had maxed out his Morale bar then that character could no longer be affected by Stress Damage which meant certain monsters were less challenging and they openly embraced the madness.
So, what did Red Hook studio do? They grinned and rubbed their hands together, coming up with the "Double Stress" mechanic, once a morale bar had been filled up and the madness debuff applied, a new bar then popped up, and when it filled up with stress damage it causes a Heart Attack which kills the character:
As you can guess, players then started to respect the morale system again.
Why bring this up for SD? IMO I think the system that Eugen has for stress is just about right for infantry, heck they even have their own version of the "Heart Attack" with Surrendering units, if you position your unit badly and they get pinned then they will be instantly taken off the map rewarding good play which is a very good thing.
That said, stressing out for vehicles is a bit... meh... at the current moment, as "Falling Back" is nowhere near as threatening as being pinned down into a single position and it tends to actually save the vehicle! I think there is a greater chance to penetrate armour or getting a critical hit but it’s just very ambiguous for what it does at the moment. It is not too much of problem when dealing with most of the tanks in the game but when it comes to heavy armour on the other hand...
I was thinking about what the role of armour was and it has always been about mobility but most heavy tanks in the game are used as mobile bunkers in the open fields not really moving when that was not the case as tanks need to keep moving like sharks, the problem with stress and heavy tanks is that they just move backwards and the player just has to wait for the morale bar to empty and then send them back into the fight with no long-lasting issues nor FEAR of getting a heavy armoured unit stressed out.
I believe that there should a Double Stress mechanic for armour, once the morale bar has been filled and the unit is in the "Falling Back" state then ANOTHER morale bar should appear and if that bar is filled then the crew would BAIL OUT of the tank no matter the condition of the tank.
Before you panic, I should note that this second bar would only show up when the armour is in the "Falling Back" status and once that status is gone then the other bar will go away. At the current moment, there is a bit of a skill gap between heavy tanks and medium tanks, medium are MUCH harder to use than heavy tanks and there is no point thinking about "Quantity" in Phase C as "Quality" is just simply better due to how tank combat works (you cant just park a Sherman/Panzer 4 in the middle of a field like you can with a few tanks).
The threat of stressing out a crew unit so much that they have to bail out of the tank means that players would have to be far more cautious when using them and use more skill (just to make clear, getting a tank to 200% stress means throwing everything at a single tank in a very short space of time), just like how a mighty Fallschirmjager if used badly can be made to surrender to a lesser unit if that lesser unit is used more skillfully...
NOTE: IIRC most of the "Big Cat" crews that lasted through the war had bailed out of their tanks many times, so what I am proposing is not unhistorical at all...