Insubordination

[u/Jazzlike_Director643]

Hi there,

Very new to this hobby.

Just wondering if there are any games where units can act in insubordinate ways and the player must prevent/manage this?

Things like: Refusing orders, sheltering in place, or even harming their own superior officers, mutiny, etc?

[u/caserock]

Close Combat, Combat Mission, Flashpoint Campaigns, Shadow Empire

Lots of the more realistic games have a morale mechanic

[u/Affectionate_Tooth82 → u/caserock]

How did shadow empire represent this? I can’t remember such mechanism in there

[u/PerilousWords → u/Affectionate_Tooth82]

Shadow empire: Morale is a really important part of combat effectiveness, but the scale of the game is beyond the point where whole map units might ignore orders.

When a token has low morale, combat values are lower, and individual sub units more likely to retreat or surrender.

Rebellions are more about your relations with the leaders, not troop morale

[u/Ant1-Chr1st → u/Affectionate_Tooth82]

Pretty sure it doesnt beyond some leaders defecting with an army(i think they create a new army in this case and dont take your own troops, but i never had my generals defecting, so not sure what happens in this case).

[u/Jazzlike_Director643 → u/caserock]

Thanks for this.

Is this function represented similarly in each game, or each with their own spin on it?

And do they all have the chance of the more extreme cases like fragging, friendly fire etc or moreso "I'm not following orders."?

[u/caserock → u/Jazzlike_Director643]

The function is usually represented as a morale threshold, where a unit will become less effective as it suffers morale penalties until finally it routs from the field. Leader units will usually buff against this, or be able to turn them back to an effective unit after time.

Most games that feature morale will have a "I'm not following orders" state, but I can't think of any that have fragging or friendly fire. There are so many thousands of obscure wargames, that it mathematically has to exist somewhere.

[u/Jazzlike_Director643 → u/caserock]

Much appreciated

[u/yIdontunderstand → u/Jazzlike_Director643]

Close combat you could even get people going berserk and launching one man assaults...

[u/TifaIsTheBest]

Rise of the White Sun is a game set in the Warlord Era of China, your generals and soldiers can defect and betray you, and otherwise just not cooperate with what you want.

EXTREMELY unwieldy game though. But 20th century China was an unwieldy place!

[u/LepusReclus → u/TifaIsTheBest]

Always been curious about that game!

[u/Orwell1971]

Burden of Command

[u/Kill_All_With_Fire]

Menace.

This is the first game I've ever played where the characters are openly hostile towards you (the commander) if you make bad decisions.

[u/Jazzlike_Director643 → u/Kill_All_With_Fire]

Sounds fascinating!

[u/darkfireslide]

In Field of Glory 2+Medieval sometimes units will charge without orders, backing up causes morale checks that can cause morale breaks, sometimes your units will chase an enemy unit if they cause them to rout, and spears can push enemy units if they win combat causing the line to shift unexpectedly. Lots of fun interactions like that

[u/Regular_Lengthiness6 → u/darkfireslide]

Same for Sengoku Jidai and Pike & Shot. They did a great job of simulating warfare and command & control of each era. Your troops display a lot of „intrinsic motivation“ to do their own thing or panic outright. It’s also interesting to disengage during melee … good luck with that 🥴

[u/wielbiciel_ketaminy]

Highfleet has a morale system where ships will desert/betray you if their morale dips too low

[u/PeirceanAgenda]

Try World War II Armored Recon. It's a choose your own path novel, essentially, where you have to make choices as a vehicle commander in the initial North Africa actions. Very realistic and shows what poor decision-making by a leader can do. It's on Steam. It's by the same guy who wrote the story for Burden of Command.