[Mod idea / question] Morale and psychological warfare

Started by Holvr, March 19, 2017, 04:44:17 AM

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Holvr

Greetings, fellow Rimmers!

Since it's my very first post on this forum, I want to use up a little corner of my message to:
1. Thank Tynan for the awesome work. You've created an awesome world!
2. Also thank all the modders for probably equally awesome work. You keep said world alive ;)

Now that this little note is done, let me go straight to the point of this post, which is a question about a mod:

Is it possible to utilize the morale of raiders (and ideally your pawns as well - for balance) to create a system that'd make it either easier or harder to break their will, depending on circumstances?

I haven't looked into Rimworld's code so I have no idea how does the current morale system work. I don't know if there's actually a hidden stat or is it just some random chance when killing raiders or perhaps hardcoded "we run if we've lost >50% of our dudes". I have no idea and hence the question:

Could morale be expanded to make it possible to wear raiders psychologically (especially later in game in greater raids)? A couple ideas of how it could work:
- Unburied non-colonist corpses left to rot would each demoralise the raiders. Even more so if the deceased was of the same faction as the beholder. Similarly - corpses of your colonists would do that to your pawns.
- Special items created with use of the corpses, like: crossed corpse, bone pile, impaled body, pile of skulls etc. would take the demoralising effect to higher levels, showing the cruelty and savagery of your people towards their enemies BUT non-psychopath pawns would get negative moodlets by passing by those "deterrents", so it would be a good idea to place them in chokepoints away from your base.
- Witnessing an ally getting shot down would, naturally, lower the morale BUT each enemy shot would raise it.
- Being on fire seems like a quite good reason to say "F**k this s**t I'm out!" and run away from the fight.
- This could open a path to a couple of traits to add some spice. For example: "Vengeful" trait would reverse the demoralising effect IF the observed corpse belonged to the same faction as the beholder, making them want to kill you no matter what and they won't quit. The other one could be "Undaunted" - simply put, all those things would have no effect on an undaunted person.

You get the idea. So, would something like that be possible to mod into the current build or is it impossible?

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read this and even more so for responding.