Put friendly npcs under player control once you reach them

[happystrawberry1]

At least make it worth it to have your troopers risk their lives instead of leaving it to an AI. It would definitely be a nice upgrade and noticeable change from X1 and X2. Heck if you rescue all the civilians, get a temporary funding increase for the month. That would add more to the strategy layer and gives you a reason to risk your soldiers.

 

What do yall think?

[GreyICE]

I love the idea of giving points for rescuing civilians (similar to original XCOM) but hate the idea of having to control those jerks.  Let them run around like idiots.

Maybe make rescuing civilians worth points, dead civilians cost points, rescuing army and losing army worth less (since army are risking their lives standardly)

[Serious Sponge]

I personally do agree that it's a bit dumb that the civilians don't do anything to protect themselves and will do things like run away from the soldiers that are trying to save them and instead run straight into the 'loving arms' of the aliens. Though I could understand that they're basically supposed to be panicking.

Having thought about this since Xenonauts 1, I feel that one of two things could make it better. The first option being your same suggestion that once one of your soldiers gets up close to a civilian you can 'grab' them and they get placed under your control. The other option I've thought about being that your soldier can give the civilian orders to make their way somewhere/seek shelter somewhere. Like you can order them to go hang out at your dropship and they'll start going that way on their turn.

[Raffik]

6 hours ago, GreyICE said:

I love the idea of giving points for rescuing civilians (similar to original XCOM) but hate the idea of having to control those jerks.  Let them run around like idiots.

Maybe make rescuing civilians worth points, dead civilians cost points, rescuing army and losing army worth less (since army are risking their lives standardly)

love the idea of having extra funding or a one time bonus payment for saved civilians - perhaps have a certain amount per each saved from the given region ať the end of the ground combat  mission..

[Wont Tell]

I have faith the the AI rework will address this. From how I remember the 90s UFO Enemy Unknown, the civilians ran into the Skyranger and stayed there in relative safety - I never aborted a mission back then so I am not aware if that behaviour counted towards saved civilians when retreating from the battlefield - which would be pretty cool, actually. But, yes, the current headless chicken behaviour is mildly frustrating - I've so far had two civs running into the airlock area of a crashed UFO, right between my soldiers and the aliens still inside. I was mentally prepared for my own folks' reaction fire to hit them but they went inside further on their next turn and got turned to bloody vapour by alien reaction fire.

[Raffik]

9 hours ago, happystrawberry1 said:

At least make it worth it to have your troopers risk their lives instead of leaving it to an AI. It would definitely be a nice upgrade and noticeable change from X1 and X2. Heck if you rescue all the civilians, get a temporary funding increase for the month. That would add more to the strategy layer and gives you a reason to risk your soldiers.

 

What do yall think?

having control of the civilians, no.... I dont like that idea.

What would be nice, if the armed civilians (like police/soldiers) would not act on stand alone basis, but work together, like in real life. Police could take cover and return fire, soldiers advance more aggresively as a team...

I once saw a freelance civilian, who killed 2 sectons on his own with a pistol. I believe he did not make it until the end of the mission, but seeing a civ fight with such efficiency was fun.

 

[happystrawberry1]

1 hour ago, Raffik said:

having control of the civilians, no.... I dont like that idea.

What would be nice, if the armed civilians (like police/soldiers) would not act on stand alone basis, but work together, like in real life. Police could take cover and return fire, soldiers advance more aggresively as a team...

I once saw a freelance civilian, who killed 2 sectons on his own with a pistol. I believe he did not make it until the end of the mission, but seeing a civ fight with such efficiency was fun.

 

Well this is a video game and one way to simulate what you specifically want is to put the armed civilians under your control. If you just leave it alone we are left with the headless chicken problem.

[SoulFilcher]

I saw an armed farmer kill 2 aliens. I wanted to hire that son of a b!%ch.

[cman1983]

I think that if the soldiers or police are still alive after a mission then they should be free recruits and put on standby if got full amount at base 

[alienman]

I like the randomness of having AI doing whatever they want. Sometimes they help you, sometimes they die a screaming horrible death. I vote keep it as it is. AI could always be improved though.

[cman1983]

Keep the civilians the way it is 

[kingsword]

Civilians should run away from the aliens instead of charging towards them and blocking the paths of fire. It should be a simple AI alteration.

[A_Magical_Potato]

I really don't like how the current civi ai behaves. It makes no sense that a civ would run straight past a squad of armed soldiers, into and alien ship, onto a teleporter past another squad of soldiers that are stacked around and up into alien fire. There's stupid but this is downright deranged and suicidal behavior. Id imagine that the AI is going to be reworked and eventually saved civs are going to be counted towards your mission end score and help with end of the month calculation but as it stands they are simply moving early warning detectors.

Ideally I would like to have them just run away and towards the ship.

[Mr.Xia]

Civilians should:

 - Not run towards the aliens and back in a marathon

- Not crash into windows and jump back out like professional schizophrenics

- Only have a small amount of TU to move as to simulate panic instead of being headless chickens

- Have a cower animation to simplify everything, static civvies are much more desirable.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Mr.Xia

[Alienkiller]

Yeah, the Civilians are in the atm Waypoint-Form a little bit stupid. On the one Hand we all wanna have such Games best realistic (Standard-Civilian Panic etc.) on the other Hand you wanna save them in such Terror- / Catching- etc. Missions. That´s no easy to sovle about 2 important reasons:

1. Standard-Civilians aren´t trained like Police / Military / Special-Troops to pear down Panic. That´s the running around with their time units. That´s the Main-Point for about 80% of them. Have you spoken fully normal to someone which is in Panic?! Do it and then we can talk again.

2. Otherwise the not paniced Standard-Civilians wanna see what´s there about human curiosity and for armed Civilians help the Police / Military / Special-Troops against the Unkown for the about remainin 20%. Have you spoken fully normal to someone of them?! You can do what you want and the Curiosity-Persons do anyway ignore the orders to catch an view to the unkown for satisfy their curiosity.

You see only with an 24 Hour Narcosic-sledge you can distract them from getting moving the incorrect direction or doing stupid Things.

I have an Solution, but that doesn´t appeals everyone. To avoid the 2 announced Points make an similar Standard-NPC-Rescue like in XCOM / XCOM 2 to Terror-Missions / Catched & Rescued-Missions and similar after you are in the near of the Civilians.

[Komandos]

On 7/29/2023 at 3:40 AM, happystrawberry1 said:

At least make it worth it to have your troopers risk their lives instead of leaving it to an AI. It would definitely be a nice upgrade and noticeable change from X1 and X2. Heck if you rescue all the civilians, get a temporary funding increase for the month. That would add more to the strategy layer and gives you a reason to risk your soldiers.

 

What do yall think?

Srglasen. It would not be bad to add a function to your soldiers: "give an order to a civilian." A civilian with a certain probability can obey the order, and may ignore the order. Among the orders should be the following: "Stay here (don't move)"; "Give way."; "Run to the transport."

[GIraaa]

I think that civilians should disappear from the map, or run towards exits once reached by X2 squad members. except of the armed ones, who could assist in battling aliens.