Fleet File vol 3R review and Morale system

 Fleet File Vol 3R review

I am not sure what the R series of Fleet File Volumes is supposed to represent or be different compared to the normal series. For example the more recently announced vol 10R is very similar to the 10 from the regular series which has been not available for a while. On the other hand volume 3 and 3R are completely different with only the Perceval and Hyperion ships in common.

In any case this volume includes 10 ships, 5 FPA and 5 Empire. 

 Perceval : beautiful model, luckily only available in the Goldenlowe version since the ship was built after Reinhard became emperor. The detail is excellent and crisp but particular attention needs to be applied to make sure not to bend or put pressure on the very fine and pointy tip.

 

 Hyperion : Yang's flagship is also included as another example of one of the few ships with a different color palette. The model is very nice but had a lot of issues installing the antennas, this volume seemed to have more issues than others due to either too small holes for the pieces or imprecisely manufactured antennas that did not fit.

Imperial battleship (788 UC era) : Goldenbaum and Goldenlowe version of the standard battleship, very useful for filling out the army ranks.

Vissarr (Goldenbaum and Goldenlöwe versions) : very beautiful model unfortunately with some noticeable back smudges near the metal details near the command bridge on both versions of the miniature.

Alliance battleship (788 UC era): Two copies of the standard alliance battleship, again, very useful to fill out the core of the army.

  Alliance carrier (788 UC era): one of my favorite ship models. It's so different to the slim profile of usual alliance ships and is instead very wide and thin vertically. The detail on the Spartanians fighters arranged in rows and columns along the belly of the ship is great. 

The set comes with a generic carrier version and a named 133-A Ameretat Iselhorn defense force version. They are functionally identical apart from the numbers near the front of the model.

 Overall this set is fine, it would be better if it didn't have the duplicates of the Volume 3 named ships. It is a needed buy if you'd like to have the alliance carrier models as they're only included here.

Morale system

As mentioned in the previous post I'm planning on using a morale system similar to Snappy Nappy rules' one. In this framework damage taken by a unit does not correspond to a percentage loss of people and/or ships but rather a hit to the morale of the unit. In most of warfare through history battles did not have very large casualties during the actual fighting, units broke and fled not because half of the people were dead but rather because they felt like they would not be able to win or were faced with what they thought were unbeatable odds. Using a morale system each unit can maintain high combat effectiveness while also moving closer and closer to breaking. Being under the receiving end of fire and not being able to fire back is also very demoralizing so this model should put higher penalties on the morale rolls of units being attacked from the flanks or the rear.

The core of the system would be that upon receiving a hit a unit will roll against its morale rating, upon a fail its morale will move down one step on the table shown below. The unit would then have to roll again and apply the steps of each failure until it succeeds. It is therefore possible for a unit with low morale rating (maybe a militia or from an army that survived a decisive defeat) to immediately break under a decisive and determined attack.

Units that suffer more than 2 steps of morale hits would start breaking formation. This will be important in helping us define some effective and interesting rules for deploying units in formations and any bonuses or negatives connected to it.

Likely the morale rating for each unit would be something like a 6 to 8 value and the player would have to roll under that value to not take a hit. It is interesting how some systems use the roll under or roll above method even though they're functionally identical. Intuitively a roll under makes sense for a "save" roll where whatever value we're rolling under is better if it's higher and lower if it's worse. For "hitting" or opposed rolls it instead makes sense to have a number to go over, to overcome, to be able to score a hit. 

I will be using this logic to decide if a roll over or under is more appropriate for any rule. 

The current state of a unit would be easily described by a d6 positioned on or nearby its base so no special bases or counters would be necessary. 

Modifiers to the morale rating of a unit would be applied depending on the condition. As i mentioned before being attacked not from the front would likely impact the ability of a unit to withstand attacks from enemy ships and thus correspond to a negative modifier. Being in a stable formation within the army likely give an opposite, positive modifier.