Suppression

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: Find the enemy (we will talk about detection and concealment later), Fix the enemy (by suppressing them with fire), Flank the enemy (move an element around their cover or in close range) and Finish 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.

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 unaffected to suppressed and finally to pinned down.

How to Effectively Apply Suppression

There are several ways to apply suppression to a unit:

• Suppression Effect: Upon dealing damage and especially when killing elements, suppression is applied to the enemy unit.
• Suppression Application: 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.
• Cover and Suppression: Suppression gets REDUCED when the target is in cover or wears heavy armor.
• Discipline Impact: Suppression gets REDUCED depending on the discipline stat of the target (pirates are easier to suppress than marines).
• Neighboring Tile Suppression: A portion of the suppression also gets applied to neighboring tiles, not only the targeted tile.

Influence of Different Types of Weapons

Not all weapons are created equal when it comes to applying suppression damage. As mentioned before, rate of fire matters when it comes to applying more suppression, but it is not the only attribute that matters when it comes to applying suppression. The Suppression attribute attribute on weapons plays a large part in applying the suppression effect to targeted enemies.

Burst firing mode, note the suppression damage being 3 per bullet

Sustained firing mode, note the suppression damage being 4.5 per bullet

For weapons with a high rate of fire, the suppression value can be lower and still be effective. A prime example of this is the M10E ESAW light machinegun. It has a high rate of fire of 15 with a decent suppression value of 10, delivering a theoretical 150 suppression to the targeted unit. However with its high negative accuracy modifier of 25, that suppression will be applied only partially onto the targeted unit and some onto neighboring tiles. Other weapons fire only a single shot and apply a high amount of suppression damage due to their high suppression attribute value alone. Currently in Patch 4 with 120 suppression damage dealt is the 120mm Mortar. This means that despite firing a single shell, it will deal a potentially large amount of suppression damage to whatever it hit.

Another aspect to take into consideration are the different firing modes that come with Squad Weapons. Assault rifles come with two firing modes, the regular burst firing mode and the Sustained semi-automatic firing mode. The latter not only increases the amount bullets fired from 6 to 8 for 80AP, but also increases the suppression per bullet to 4.5 up from 3.0.

Other weapons like the Battle Rifles provide two firing options as well, a regular 2-shot salvo for medium to long ranges and a full-auto firing mode that fires a 6-shot salvo at the cost of range and accuracy. Note that for Battle Rifles the suppression damage done does not increase with its second firing mode, only the amount of bullets fired.

Influence of Perks on Applied Suppression

Currently only the perk Suppressive Fire boosts the amount of suppression put onto the targeted unit with Squad Weapons.

Modeling the Effects of Suppression: A Three-Stage Approach

Stage One - Unaffected

As long as the amount of suppression is within the first bar no debuffs are in effect.

Stage Two - Suppressed

The amount of suppression lies within the second bar. The target unit is forced to kneel down (“deploy”), which makes them stationary.

Debuffs due to being suppressed:

• - 30 Action Points
• - 50% accuracy

Buffs due to being deployed

• +15% Accuracy
• +15% Defense
• -15% Damage taken
• +1 Concealment

Stage Three - Pinned Down

The amount of suppression lies within the third bar. affected units are forced to lie down. They cannot take actions and may only crawl two tiles.

Units get the following status effects:

• -50% accuracy
• +30% defense
• +30% damage reduction
• -50% vision range
• 1 concealment

The Defensive Role of Suppression

Even though it loses its ability to act freely, a unit gets more resilient while being suppressed because its combatants are forced to kneel or even lie flat on the floor when receiving a lot of fire. That means the more suppressed an enemy unit is, the less damage it takes. So when attacking a unit, it might make sense first to shoot to deal damage, THEN shoot to suppress.

Recovering from suppression happens automatically. It gets reduced by 1/3 at the end of a unit's turn.

Note that changing stances due to getting suppressed or pinned down happens instantly during the actual attack. This is not a player or AI choice but forced on the unit.

How to Effectively Play Around Suppression

Facing suppressive fire can be overwhelming at times, but there are a lot of countermeasures you can take.

Countering Suppressive Fire

The easiest solution would be to simply suppress the suppressing enemy. This is best achieved with units that are not affected by suppression themselves while being highly mobile, like vehicles. To this end, it is important to plan ahead and identify avenues of approach that you can cover with your own suppressive fire to make sure your lead units do not get pinned down.

Ideally, you suppress all enemies before they can suppress you. Should you not be able to do so, there are several options to reduce your unit's suppression.

Concealment and Speed

Using smoke to break up sightlines and conceal your troops from the enemy would also be possible. Regular squads can carry smoke grenades, but the smoke can also be deployed by vehicles in a large screen or even by mortars and the like.

By breaking Line of Sight, you prevent enemy units from building up suppression on your units so they can recover during the turns the smoke screen is present.

Combat Drugs

Another possibility would be to equip an accessory called “combat drugs” that instantly reduces suppression and grants a discipline bonus as well. These are somewhat rare and expensive, though.

Off-Map Abilities

An indirect way to reduce incoming suppression on your units is by disrupting the opposing suppressing units with so-called off-map abilities like dropship strafing runs or orbital rocket strikes. This is especially effective against unarmored, immobile enemy units like heavy weapon teams.

Squad Leader Perks

Several Squad Leaders have perks available to them to counter suppression.

• Charles Lim has the perk Blaze Of Glory, which removes suppression and Restores 40AP.
• Edwin Pike has the perk Command: Rally, which rallies allies and reduces their Suppression for 30AP.
• Kody Greifinger has the perk Recover, which reduces suppression by 20 points for each enemy element killed.
• Fedor Yazhov has the perk Gostepriimstvo Babushki, which in addition to refilling ammo and healing a Squaddies also reduces suppression
• Jacques Yves Vamplew has the perk Disdain, which allows him to ignore suppression damage from dying Squaddies.