A discussion on morale, and what effects it

[Mac]

I think we need to be able to send ice cream down. Ice cream always boosts morale. On a serious note it is so demoralizing to charge and be one of only 3 people because everyone else is too scared of the dark. Throw the flares, push in and the aliens will fall.

[Renomaki]

I think we need to be able to send ice cream down. Ice cream always boosts morale.

Heh, sometimes during moments of low morale, I yearn for [in game] booze to artificially make myself feel better.

Having some fun, silly items can help distract from the feeling of helplessness. Can't feel sad when you are drunk or high.

[Hastati]

The biggest morale breaker for me as a boot is poor communication. If things are getting hairy and SL or commanders aren't responding or giving orders, especially for prolonged periods of time, that it's where the issues start. The only thing worse is a SL giving confusing orders. The worst I see is "I need two men here" but the squad is already spread all over doing other things, and nobody knows who needs to leave their part to go do the other thing.

The best SLs I've seen have always followed one rule. Give specific people specific tasks.

[NoahKirchner]

To help morale always battlefield execute people for not wearing their helmets.

[Drownie]

To help morale always battlefield execute people for not wearing their helmets.

Erin AKA Apop have tactical skills on that.

[Self Exitium]

Another thing I've learnt is that marines are more likely to charge when there's a LT around, or especially when the CO or XO's down. Of course, atleast 4 SOs should be in CIC at all times to manage the squads, unless some squads have been completely wiped out to the point of uselessness. A good example of CO's improving morale is when a CO took a bunch of marines from the different squads, gave them epic gear and command radios, and led them into battle as Echo squad. They had such high morale and just kept charging, to the point that they single handedly won the round in an hour, and most of them survived because they charged as a group.

I am proud to say I was a person who saved the commander once, possibly twice.

[Vispain]

Competence is a biggie. A player with no confidence in the competence of his leaders will IC and OOC refuse or avoid doing an order.
REPETITIVE suicide orders and organization is another big factor. One or two suicide orders with time between them is fine...but ...here I'll give an example. So a few days ago we were on Ice and I was a SL. We cleared out a predator lodge and had killed several T3 xenos shortly after. The whole incident was rather bloody and it took all four squads to put the predators down. At this point we had barely killed any xenos and IC had no real knowledge or contact with them asides from some isolated engagements with a ravager. Word gets in from Command the xenos are on the under layer of the colony so we are told we need to go down there and kill them. Naturally Command has no real idea how to do this safely so they continuously ordered us down the elevators into massacres. After I think the 8th(?) time of being sent down there and losing even more men the SLs had to come together and basically just kind of had our squads bug out of there back to LZ1 and completely disregard Command orders to push underground.
Command kept giving orders when they didn't realize the situation was horrible. Command needs to keep in mind the NCOs know the situation and can gauge that better than them in the local area (not necessarily the whole combat zone merely the local zone of the SL, aSL etcetra). Command also needs to stay on track and MONITOR the situation before ordering. Written casualty reports by SOs are helpful. No names. Just having the Squad name, number of alive, number of dead on a paper helps.

Next thing is. Morale is really affected by organization. A squad with no organization and is spread out too much can't really be considered to have morale because at that point whatever group its men are apart of is now a adhoc unit (which has its own interesting form of morale -mob mentality mainly).

Blaming marines for cowardice and failure is another big thing about morale. Even if its true you don't say it. Find something else to say involving getting revenge for fallen brothers or one-upping another squad. As a Delta SL I found a good way of rallying my squad on me to move out was saying " Do you want to kill stuff and see some classified stuff" Waits "Rally on me then". Out of nowhere the whole squad came out of the woodwork and rallied on me so fast it was almost comical.

One interesting example of morale I've personally found was a curious case of when I asked for a casualty report, SO gave one on squad comms and later said that I ruined morale of the squad. In reply I said "Alpha doesn't need morale". The squad response: "Yeah fuck morale!" and the like. I turned a shitty mini-crisis a SO caused by pointing out the obvious into a nice little team bonding moment.

To Staff Officers: Remember you have Command Comms and can message your SLs. As a SL I try to never ask on squad comms for casualty reports. No need for the boots to know we got messed up.

Sorry for the mini-essay on this.

[Marine Tickler]

Marines ironically are the real team that relies on a hivemind. On paper, in the round beginning, they have more than enough firepower to devastate the aliens. Even factoring in RPing not knowing about them, once the meta begins 50+ marines armed with shotties, flamers, smartguns and OB's should have no problem rolling the hive.

But the first guy through the door gets shot!

Just like in real life, marines hesitate to charge through that door and get melted, slashed, and FF'd to death, even if they know 20 of their buddies are cramming in right behind them. Because, after all, they're dead! What's the fun in that victory? They spent 15 minutes prepping, 15 minutes beating their dicks during briefing, 15 minutes unga-dungaing around during planetside rollplay and they'll be damned if they're just going to be salt stained on the ground in the first 15 seconds of combat.

But if the marines all pushed as one, they would easily win! Every time!

In contrast the xenos don't need to coordinate outside of tier 3 + queen wrecking gangs. Each xeno is a regenerating, one unit insurgency. They can defend, harry and sabotage all on their own, and if they can delay the marines for even a half hour they basically become unstoppable colossi.'

The marines can't coordinate and the xenos don't have to so xenos win, every time (barring retardation)

[Skimmy2]

But the first guy through the door gets shot!

Just like in real life, marines hesitate to charge through that door and get melted, slashed, and FF'd to death, even if they know 20 of their buddies are cramming in right behind them. Because, after all, they're dead! What's the fun in that victory? They spent 15 minutes prepping, 15 minutes beating their dicks during briefing, 15 minutes unga-dungaing around during planetside rollplay and they'll be damned if they're just going to be salt stained on the ground in the first 15 seconds of combat.

They call it the "fatal funnel" for a reason, though IRL Room Clearing encourages you to move out of the entry way as fast as possible.
An issue is that its incredibly easy for xenos to turn what should be a simple skirmish into a high casualty engagement. Often times making the aggressive assault only causes pyrrhic victories for the squad, leaving the battered xenos a few mere minutes to recover while you're still dealing with wounded casualties and regrouping.

[ColdSuit]

Which is why I am happy about the Queen rebalance patches. Marine pushs came down solely to how well the Queen screeched, as a single screech can kill an entire push by causing high losses and demoralizing the marines.

[Dumblike]

and having to fight without screeches is cooler, now we actually have to do something Kappa

[Dumblike]

best thing to boost morale? FF Kappa