dethraker wrote:Once again this is all IMO, but please don't assume that you are the only veteran in the conversation and think that you can use that as a point of reference why you have better insight into something.
I don't.
First I'll talk about what I'm doing in the game. Down below I'll take up the matter of what it should be in a complete rewrite (and like you, I agree that games should model real life things realistically and only adjust them minutely for gameplay).
For what I can do now, it comes down to what I can metamod Grimy's to change the value of amounts and some other things:
1. Will lost per active mission.
2. Will gain per mission benched.
3. Will gained per day in Bar slot.
4. What GTS Tactics add Bar Slots.
5. How much Will the squad gains for friendy shots critting and how much lost for ADVENT critting.
6. The scale of Will lost to being attacked and suffering a Miss, Graze, Hit, or Critical.
7. A large XP bonus based upon how good the soldier's Will was in a battle.
#7 was what caused my soldiers in a previous LW2 campaign to get a promotion every mission they were on until they got to Sgt. After that, I suspect it was still a significant boost. There can be some argument about whether it is realistic, but it was warping my campaign's promotion progression with respect to other LW2 campaigns. So I zero the bonus.
#6 is very complex and a bit hard to see how the numbers in the INI lead to the Will losses in battle. I am loath to adjust it until I understand it better. Some soldiers break in combat and they either are out a turn or I use a Revival Protocol to get them back into the fight right away. Still have to follow up more but those soldiers who break appear to be a recovery problem after battles back on the Avenger. This mixes in with the stock Shaken effect which removes Will entirely. I have one wounded soldier in that state. Will have to see what happens when they recover from their wounds.
#5 seems about right, but I haven't noticed its effects that much. #4 I adapted to LW2's new GTS Tactics so both stock XCOM 2 and LW2 would start with 4 slots and go up to 8 with the most costly GTS Tactics.
Then there's #1, #2, and #3. Short of the soldiers who get wounded or receive a lot of shots (Assaults using Lightning Reflexes have a tough time), they're the ones that mostly erode and rebuild the soldiers' Will. And which we've been arguing about in a more realistic and full rewrite of the mod to reflect reality.
#1, #2, and #3 default to 12 lost per mission active, 8 gained per mission benched, and 1 gained per day.
Right now in the game I've been tinkering with #2, which by late April in my campaign was definitely too high. Was going to try 2 regained per mission benched, but decided to try 4 first. At about 2.5 missions per week and 5 squads in rotation, #2 is still the main Will recovery, usually gaining back 8 Will per week. Being in a Bar slot almost doubles that with another 7 per week.
(Have to be careful not to put soldiers in Bar slots who are infiltrating and especially using the AWC or the GTS. The former is just wrong, but if in the AWC or GTS when all Will is recovered, the soldier bugs out to the dreaded blank status and can't be used at all. Searched but found no way to fix this. Had to back up to an older savegame when I encountered it for the first time.)
Anyhoo, back to that rotation, with 2.5 missions per week average and 5 squads in rotation. Average Will loss will be 6 per week (1/5 chance of being on the 2.5 missions times losing 12 Will per mission active) and average Will recovery will be 8 (4/5 chance of not being on 2.5 missions per week gaining 4 Will per mission benched), so soldiers not in the bar will be steady if they don't get shot at much. With Bar, recovery per week could handle some shots and minors wounds. Being wounded means being out of the rotation longer and thus more recovery. So if a soldier doesn't break, the recovery at the current levels should be enough. As to soldiers that break, I'll need to note more of them and follow them to see if they become a low Will issue.
As it stands, I am sending out soldiers now with less than maxxed Will, likely due to really being between 4 and 5 squads in rotation as I've got a number of wounded and am still setting up the 5 squad. Promotions, which restore all Will, definitely help, but that will become less as soldiers get to Cpl and Sgt and above.
So, as for metamodding Grimy's, I'll continue with the values I have now to see what happens.
A MORE REALISTIC MORAL MOD
Well, this one is rather thorny when considering what to do. Looking at Grimy's, I think it strongly reflects stock XCOM 2, a few missions in a campaign. With LW2, despite having to skip a lot of missions due to not enough infiltration time or not enough soldiers available, there's still going to be a lot of missions, easily 2 to 3 per week. This is more like a real insurgency.
Even from a design viewpoint, I'd say having a day rate of Will recovery as the primary mechanism makes sense. And your idea of having a Will recovery boost from other soldiers being wounded or killed makes sense (an extension of the GTS tactic Vengeance).
As for soldiers that break in combat, that's certainly been handled in one way or another by soldiers for millennia. I know that in World War 1, the German Army would be kind to soldiers who had froze or broke in combat, but with an insistence they would have to return to the front trenches in rotation. This is one you don't always hear about in stories. One way or another, I think some sort of special recovery for shaken soldiers would be needed. Or some adaption of the standard recovery.
As to metamodding Grimy's to get close to this. I could up the number of Bar slots, which give a day recovery rate. I could add a slot for every GTS Tactics and start with more slots. Don't know the max number of slots I could put in. 8, 10 12? I think to work for LW2 I'd have to up the day recovery rate from 1/day to 2 or 3 or more. I would drop the per mission recovery to 1, which is minimal, but I don't want to zero it. Imagine it as the benefit of taking an active insurgency rather than XCOM just hiding.
Don't know if it would work, especially as I couldn't metamod it to use your good idea of a Will bounceback from XCOM soldiers getting WIA's and KIA's. May try it later in this campaign after I get a better feel for the other facets of Grimy's.