What is Suppression in real life?
When modeling the tactical combat in MENACE, we took a step back and looked at real-life firefights and small unit tactics. Throughout history, there has been a predominant aspect of winning these engagements, and that is suppression. The fundamental idea is when someone gets shot at, they will try to avoid getting hit. Ducking down and taking cover will reduce the effect of incoming fire, but also leads to not being able to see what is going on and more importantly not being able to effectively return fire. Additionally, suppressive fire is hindering any movement, effectively fixing a squad in its position. To sum up, a heavily suppressed or pinned down enemy can't see what's going on, is not shooting back, and can not evade or leave its position. This is the perfect setup for an assault element to move in and clear the enemy position in close-quarters fights with grenades or flanking fire. The above approach is embodied in the four Fs that were established in WW2 and are well known: [b]Find [/b]the enemy (we will talk about detection and concealment later), [b]Fix [/b]the enemy (by suppressing them with fire), [b]Flank [/b]the enemy (move an element around their cover or in close range) and [b]Finish [/b]them. Only now is this approach somewhat challenged by excessive drone warfare, but we take a bit of leeway to keep things more straightforward in MENACE. [b]Find, Fix, Flank, and Finish [/b]
How does MENACE model Suppression?
Suppression represents a unit’s performance degrading both physically and mentally due to being attacked, be it directly or indirectly. A unit is harder to suppress the more discipline (character stat) it has. When a unit accumulates suppression, it will move from [b]unaffected [/b]to [b]suppressed [/b]and finally to [b]pinned down[/b]. [i]There are several ways to apply suppression to a unit:[/i]- [b]Suppression Effect:[/b] Upon dealing damage and especially when killing elements, suppression is applied to the enemy unit.
- [b]Suppression Application:[/b] Suppression is applied per shot, so a weapon with a high rate of fire tends to apply more suppression. Also different weapons deliver different amounts of suppression.
- [b]Cover and Suppression:[/b] Suppression gets REDUCED when the target is in cover or wears heavy armor.
- [b]Discipline Impact:[/b] Suppression gets REDUCED depending on the discipline stat of the target (pirates are easier to suppress than marines).
- [b]Neighboring Tile Suppression:[/b] A portion of the suppression also gets applied to neighbouring tiles, not only the targeted tile.
[b]Modeling the Effects of Suppression: A Three-Stage Approach[/b]
[hr][/hr][b]Stage One - Unaffected[/b] As long as the amount of suppression is within the first bar no debuffs are in effect.
[b]Stage Two - Suppressed[/b]
The amount of suppression lies within the second bar. The target unit is forced to kneel down (“deploy”), which makes them stationary.
[b]Debuffs due to being suppressed:[/b]
- - 30 Action Points
- - 50% accuracy
- +15% Accuracy
- +15% Defense
- -15% Damage taken
- +1 Concealment
[b]Stage Three - Pinned Down[/b]
The amount of suppression lies within the third bar. The target unit is forced to lie down. It loses all action points and its view range is reduced to one tile.
