Civilians Vs Aliens (no hostile actions between then)

[bulletdesigner]

I Several questions that i don´t know the answer but some of you must now..
 So i just created a scenario where i put 1 civ(vindicator) and 1 alien(predator) unit at range of each other and
  Both are armed, and both only start fire at each other on provocation from the other!
When i get at range with x-com units , predator starts fire without provocation!
I wanna a star a war between then without being me manually to start the provocation!
so do they need to move to detect or to fire? why no hostile action between like in terror mission? is it a point issue? a movement issue?

[Solarius Scorch]

AI for civilians and for aliens is different.

I am not 100% sure about the details (so this entire post may be somewhat inaccurate), but in vanilla OXC (and the original game), aliens only react to civilians in their own turn. They don't reaction fire at civilians, ever. This was fine for vanilla, as it allowed the aliens to preserve TUs to fight X-Com instead of spending it all on wandering civilians.
However, with introduction of armed civilians, the situation got complicated. The aliens kept ignoring civilians to a degree (to preserve vanilla behaviour), but this gave armed civilians an edge against the aliens. To make it more fair, Warboy decided that armed civilians would not reaction fire at all. This indeed made it more fair, but also made alien-civilian combat asymmetrical.
The solution would be to 1) give civilians the same AI as aliens, and 2) make aliens react to armed civilians like they do to X-Com, and to unarmed civilians the same way as before. Meridian expressed interest in adding this to OXCE+, but it hasn't happened yet and I don't know when - or if - it will happen.

I agree it is a bit of a problem now, since I also have military "civilians" in XCF... They are mowed down by pretty much anything.

[Yankes]

Civilian already have "same" AI as aliens, problems is that some things are hardcoded to aliens/civilians.

[bulletdesigner]

Just found on forum and read the tatical ai ufopedia https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Tactical_AI
so how can i switch the Ai modes to combat ? is that the solution?
i see in the bughunt turn 20 they all switch to combat, will that work?

[ohartenstein23]

Upping the unit's aggression makes them more likely to be in 'combat mode.'

[Hobbes]

Just found on forum and read the tatical ai ufopedia https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Tactical_AI
so how can i switch the Ai modes to combat ? is that the solution?
i see in the bughunt turn 20 they all switch to combat, will that work?

The default mode for each alien unit is Patrol - each turn the alien will choose a node and move between them. Once the alien sees an enemy unit the AI will switch the unit's individual mode to either Combat/Sniper/Escape depending on its rank, aggression stat and RNG. It will then remain on this state until the enemy unit is killed or, in case it can't see the enemy unit anymore, it will remember its location for X turns with X being determined by its intelligence stat before reverting back to Patrol.

So you can't switch the AI mode since it is determined individually for each unit. As for the turn 20 timer, what it does is that after turn 20 all the alien units know the location of all your units. They will not Patrol anymore but they'll switch to either Combat/Sniper/Escape

[bulletdesigner]

The default mode for each alien unit is Patrol - each turn the alien will choose a node and move between them. Once the alien sees an enemy unit the AI will switch the unit's individual mode to either Combat/Sniper/Escape depending on its rank, aggression stat and RNG. It will then remain on this state until the enemy unit is killed or, in case it can't see the enemy unit anymore, it will remember its location for X turns with X being determined by its intelligence stat before reverting back to Patrol.

So you can't switch the AI mode since it is determined individually for each unit. As for the turn 20 timer, what it does is that after turn 20 all the alien units know the location of all your units. They will not Patrol anymore but they'll switch to either Combat/Sniper/Escape

Thks Hoobes , just made it work with our explanation!
how to solve?
put 3 nodes under the 4x4 civ unit and linked it , now everyone wants a piece of the action, since you said they need to go to node to end patrol, i put nodes under the vindicator now vindicator is in combat mode, alien get crazy even in first turn