Did OXC change alien psionic targeting?

[Fraktal]

See title. I've repeatedly run into missions where disarmed psi-baits don't work anymore the way they did in the old game.

I'm currently assaulting a landed Sectoid battleship in early August and turn after turn after turn, half the squad are constantly out of action because the aliens constantly keep rotating targets for psionic panic. It's never the weakest soldier like it used to be, it's always 2-3-4 soldiers in random order. Not only that, but the aliens also seem to prioritize armed soldiers over unarmed ones: more than once, I had everyone drop their weapons and as soon as I confirmed which soldiers on the squad were being targeted, I only armed the rest - which immediately caused the aliens to switch targets to the armed soldiers over the unarmed ones.

It's starting to get really annoying. I don't have Psi Labs yet, don't expect to for at least several more months and I'd preferentially not turn on LOS psi unless I have to.

[Meridian]

no, it's still the same

btw. neither the OG game, nor OpenXcom do any such "advanced" decision making they don't care whether your soldiers carry weapons or not, etc.

the game just creates a score for each target and the target with the highest score gets attacked;
the score depends on:
1. attacker psi stats
2. target psi stats
3. distance between the attacker and the target
4. some RNG

If your 2-3-4 soldiers have roughly the same psi stats, both the distance to the attacker and the RNG will have non-negligible impact... mystery solved

[Fraktal]

Ah hah. So if I use the baits' good Bravery rolls to bring them under the ship, the Sectoids will keep focusing on them?

Because it would REALLY help if the aliens would stop making the assault team randomly run up the gravlift trying to path into the engine nacelles while the last four Sectoids are taking turns dodging in and out of the blast doors at the top level without ever triggering reaction fire.

[Meridian]

Not absolutely guaranteed (RNG remember?), but much more likely, yes.

Even in 1994, designers didn't want you to just have a win button.

[Fraktal]

Ultimately ended up restarting the mission and the second time around, it was less hectic: the aliens were still switching targets around, but at a slower rate.

Few days later ran into an Ethereal terror mission as well, didn't have nearly as much trouble as with that battleship (albeit it also wasn't the same ground team); in fact, all of the Ethereals ended up as laser scorch marks on the ground before the first Sectopod did. So I'm guessing that battleship was probably just a freak combination of circumstances.