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The Harder they Fall - Minor Combat Overhaul

Goal:

This mod aims add an opportunistic element to combat, and allow for new tactics based on situational factors. It increases the effectiveness of dragging down enemies with numbers, incentivises the use of melee over ranged, and applies dynamic unit effects that can swing the tide of battle if capitalised on correctly.
Be prepared to have your solo hero brought low by the masses, even with high defensive stats.


How it works:

Every unit type (except labourer) has the ‘combatant’ ability, allowing their attacks to inflict various debuffs on enemies which will reduce their combat effectiveness, as well as providing an after-combat heal if victorious.

The after-combat heal provides +6 health to all surviving units after combat if victorious. This promotes more aggressive play, and helps preserve the AI’s troops a bit longer as they tend to be quite reckless.

The debuffs can affect Defence, Resistance, Morale, Damage, Health and Movement, and will increase up to a capped value as more hits are landed.

Each hit landed will apply a -25 Morale debuff for 3 turns. Each hit landed will also prompt a resistance check of STR 8 for melee attacks, and STR 4 for ranged attacks. A failed check results in one of three types of ‘advanced debuffs’ lasting 2 turns, a successful check results in one of three types of ‘lesser debuffs’ lasting 1 turn.

There are 15 total ‘advanced debuffs’ and 15 total ‘lesser debuffs’ which can be applied; with 6 types of debuff in total.
The caps for ‘Lesser debuffs’ are: -10 movement, -5 attack, -10 max health and -125 morale. This requires 15 hits with unsuccessful Advanced Feat checks.
The caps for ‘Advanced debuffs’ are: -16 movement, -5 resistance, -5 defence, -10 attack, -30 max health, -15 health/turn and -375 morale. This requires 15 hits with successful Advanced Feat checks.

In addition to the combat traits units receive, the trooper level medal bonus now also gives +1 defence and +1 resistance for all tiers. This change was Integrated from my Tougher Troopers mod and provides a little bit more staying power to low tier troops once they start levelling up.


Effects Summary:

Combatant: This unit can make use of combat tactics
Regroup and Recover: This unit will regroup and recover at the end of battle if victorious, recovering +6 health.
Damaged: Loses -25 morale for 3 turns, stacking.

Advanced Feat: (triggers advanced debuff on enemy failing resistance check)
Suppressed: Loses -2 damage, -4 movement and -25 morale for 2 turns.
Vulnerable: Loses -1 defence, -1 resistance and -25 morale for 2 turns.
Wounded: Loses -6 maximum health, -3 health per turn and -25 morale for 2 turns.

Lesser Feat: (triggers lesser debuff on enemy succeeding resistance check)
Disoriented: Loses -2 movement for 1 turn.
Off balance: Loses -1 damage for 1 turn.
Grazed: Loses -2 maximum health and -25 morale for 1 turn.


Compatibility:

Dependent on all DLC.
This should work with most other mods except those that alter the main unit groups i.e. changes to whole Irregular Group, or Infantry Group.
This mod will load in Priority 0, so any other mod that changes the same groups should override it - you can check if this is working by looking at any unit panel and checking for the 'Combatant' skill.


Under the hood:

Changes made to: AOW_UNITPROPERTIES.RPK (in Title Packages) and TITLE.RPK (in Title Packages)
Settings: Added ‘Defence Upgrade’ and ' Resistance Upgrade' to ‘Iron Medal’ on all Tier Resources (i.e. Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4)
Requisite Type (Category): Added ‘Combatant Group’ skill to all requisite groups except Labourer Type (i.e. infantry, cavalry, irregular etc.)

Active Abilities – Modifiers – DLC2 (Category): Added the following
‘Combatant Group’ skill containing 4x Extra Ability Effects
4x Extra Ability Effects ‘Regroup and Recover’, ‘Damaged’, ‘Advanced Feat’ and ‘Lesser feat’.
3x Properties to trigger ability durations
2x Resistance checks
30x Status groups (15 basic, 15 advanced)