While fatigue for forced marching would certainly be a useful addition to the game engine - especially with the large maps that we now have - the treatment of fatigue has always been more sophisticated (even in the BG games) than the way that disruption is handled.
The straightforward and rather simplistic system in which a unit is either in good order or disordered could surely be improved upon?
Also the fact that disrupted units have their movement reduced by 1/2 doesn't really make a lot of sense, especially when the troops are attempting to get <i>away</i> from the enemy.
So, I'd strongly recommend that disruption should only have an impact on combat effectiveness, not on movement. Instead, perhaps highly <b>fatigued</b> units should have their movement allowance cut by 1/2 and medium fatigued units by 1/3. Units at max fatigue could have movement reduced to 1/3 normal rate.
Also, I'd suggest a disruption system on a scale of 0-9 (or maybe 0-99 would be better), so that the more disrupted a unit becomes, the less effective it becomes in combat. Perhaps a unit reaching max disruption should automatically rout?
Every time a unit gets shot at or meleed it would become more disrupted and even movement would have some chance of causing some disruption, especially in difficult terrain. Forced marching would be liable to cause disruption as well as fatigue and there should also be a chance of losing stragglers.
Although movement would no longer be reduced by 50% for disrupted units, a disrupted unit could use up part of its movement allowance attempting to recover from disruption - automatic if more than 5 hexes from the enemy or out of LOS, but still possible to attempt if near the enemy. Units stacked with a leader would have a greater chance of recovering from disruption.
Revising the disruption system would make a significant improvement to the game engine and would would penalize forced marching and encourage players to rest their troops more and move them back out of the front line when they start to become brittle due to accumulating fatigue & disruption.
Col. Rich White
3 Brig. Phantom Cav Div
III Corps ANV
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