Sick soldiers and Variable clock.

[DarthLuca]

Just started a new (short) campaign to do some more testing.
A thought occured that a lot of the time not much happens (yes I know there's a FastForward). Now in a real life situation personnel are only human. People get sick, get stressed (and even break) under pressure, need leave, have accidents.
So as the game progresses, why not have a daily check to see how the personnel are doing. Who's fit for duty, who's sick, who's requesting compassionate leave, who's suffering mentally and needs some R&R (slow decline of moral if things go bad and someone dies for instance - maybe a mission goes REALLY bad and several die, or Phalanx craft is shot down, there are bound to be mental repercussions). This could easily be adjusted for difficulty with more chance of personnel being unavailable at higher levels. Too much micro-mgnt for some? Give an option to include personnel problems or turn them off.
Again would add depth and challenges to the game. One of the biggest challenges and interventions required is when things don't go smoothly and personnel have to be replaced or moved around even if it's temporary.
Anyway just a thought - No doubt it's been thought of before.

Second thought is for a variable clock. Many times the standard 5secs, 5 mins, 1 hour seem either too slow or too fast. So why not have the clock speed variable. Very easy to implememt - A second (or more) click on the required time would increase the time flow by that amount. You want 25 secs, well that's just five clicks on the 5sec button. Pause would pause AND reset.
Again just a thought.

[ManicMiner]

To be honest, these "HR" factors should be screened out before you recruit the grunts. There'd be no point shortlisting a squaddie who faints at the sight of blood. Perhaps it's a bit more like that rubbish Kurt Russell film where the soldiers were "bred" and started their combat training as soon as they could waddle without diapers.

[geever]

It is not only about micromanagement. But it's a useless feature which take very much time to implement. And unnecessary pain to maintain.

-geever

[geisthund]

hmm I agree it would be rather complicated.
But a roster idea isn't bad in itself and could be easy to implement insofar as having basic stats :

- well
- in training
- in sick bay (88% health)
- offsite
- KIA

it'd kind of make the soldiers a little more... human

[hitch-22]

I suppose if the coders see it as useless, that's the conversation.. but still.

It would add depth to the soldiers, as you can't really screen so thoroughly that nobody you recruit ever suffers serious psychological trauma when exposed to constant battle against inhuman opponents who literally treat people as no more than cattle and guinea pigs, subjecting them to who knows what kind of horrifying experiments if not butchering them on sight.

By depth I mean, a guy with so-so stats might be mentally a super-soldier who just never, ever breaks while sometimes your otherwise super-talented recruit just checks out and needs to be psyched up to be effective in the field. Morale is already in the game, so this isn't such a far reach from that.

Might easily be that it's a back-burner kind of deal, but I think it could add to the experience. Unpredictable factors like this can increase the challenge in a very organic way as they force you to adapt your set plans. In my book, things that breathe life into the paper soldiers are mostly always good. (Thinking Jagged Alliance 2...)

[geever]

Aaaah, Nooooooooooooo! The next comes up with the idea of turning UFO:AI into Jagged Alliance 2 with detailed soldier psychology is to pay a fine of 1$!

-geever

[Quidgiboo]

maybe it can be put into the alien campaign  

[homunculus]

how do you measure soldier morale with a number like that?
i mean, shouldn't the current morale number be capped at some optimal value?
something like 'this soldier is in excellent calm mood and has good discipline' value.
how can you tell that a soldier is 50 or 100 morale points away from becoming scared when the soldier's current condition is perfect?

or, maybe higher than optimal morale values would cause the soldier to miss reaction fire?
because of being too calm and falling asleep, that is.