Aliens pick up weapons?

[Markus Ramikin]

Is that option supposed to be doing anything? I've always had it on and never seen it work. I even threw a heavy plasma to a group of disarmed floaters, and none of them picked it up, not even the one under whose feet it landed. (Err, not that floaters have feet...) Does it only work under specific conditions which I am not aware of?

[Hollow_Fang]

i think if they panic they pick it back up i seem to recall a sectoid panicking and being last enemy walking buy it seeing the floor icon thing then getting shot buy it on next turn

[volutar]

The logic standing behind this feature was replicated from the vanilla and I believe (as the man who discovered it) it was disabled for the reason. I thought it might be "bad consequences", ability to exploit and bait enemies. But now I thing I was wrong. The reason of disabling that is the simple unfinished code. It wasn't properly tested thus they simply disabled it.

The fact is, being working with vanilla logic it makes really the mildest difference. In particular, it works only when aliens dropped their weapon during panic action.

In this form I don't think it even worth bothering. I believe the logic should be updated and expanded to be used in all possible cases, without looking back on possible exploitation and baiting. The alien who does have weapon or grenade doesn't care on other lying weapon. It care only when it's entirely unarmed. And in this case it doesn't even matter baited it or not. If alien was mced and under mc disarmed, why it should worry about baiting? For the God sakes, it was already mind raped. It should take any opportunity even desperate into work!

[Markus Ramikin]

In this form I don't think it even worth bothering. I believe the logic should be updated and expanded to be used in all possible cases, without looking back on possible exploitation and baiting. The alien who does have weapon or grenade doesn't care on other lying weapon. It care only when it's entirely unarmed. And in this case it doesn't even matter baited it or not. If alien was mced and under mc disarmed, why it should worry about baiting? For the God sakes, it was already mind raped. It should take any opportunity even desperate into work!

Agreed. It sounds like a potentially great (optional) feature if it did what it says on the tin.

I'm not sure that currently it even works with panicked aliens. I keep running into aliens who panicked during "hidden action" because I was killing their buddies, and who don't have weapons. I guess maybe they ran out of "attraction" range when they panicked...

[volutar]

Attraction range should be also increased. At least to cover standard module 10x10. Ie about 7 tiles. And really they should try to pickup more powerful weapon. Even xcom weapon. Why not? Sectoid with plasma pistol is ridiculous. Why shouldn't he pick up heavy laser and start shooting?

I just hope ai pickup will be reworked before tftd.

[Falko]

if the humans can not just pick up the plasma and start shooting
the alien also should not be able to pick up the laser and start shooting

[Markus Ramikin]

Hm yeah, I can see MCed aliens using X-com weapons, but not natively, for the same reasons we can't use theirs without research.

[volutar]

if the humans can not just pick up the plasma and start shooting

Because they are dumb and see it for the first time.

the alien also should not be able to pick up the laser and start shooting

Why not? They are observing earth for long time. They know how things work here.
Most of time they don't NEED to use earth weapon just because it's less powerful than theirs, but they can freely use it if they need.

In a fact, there is idea of a mod of civilians which can pickup ANY weapon and fire. Civilians in stressed situation are able to do anything. But their accuracy for alien weapon should be even negative. It would be realistic and fun

[yrizoud]

Before your troops can even all disembark, you'll see civilians raid the skyranger's storage tile, pick the heaviest explosive, set it off and panick.

[Hollow_Fang]

Before your troops can even all disembark, you'll see civilians raid the skyranger's storage tile, pick the heaviest explosive, set it off and panick.

Can the skyranger tiles not be set as out of bounds for aliens?

[volutar]

No guys aliens won't go that tile. They have powerful enough weapon already. The logic should be applied only if potential weapon is times more powerful, and won't work against xcom weapon by default. Only for mates weapon and only if they have ridiculous harmless weapon like plasma pistol.

[Markus Ramikin]

Sooo any plans to finish the code for it? If not, maybe it should stop being distributed with the basic installation of openxcom... it's misleading. (Amusingly, I totally forgot about this thread and actually re-tested this again because it kept annoying me that it doesn't appear to work).

[Countdown]

I can confirm that this feature does actually work, although not consistently at all. I've had at least one mission (TFTD terror mission on a ship) where a Tasoth who had panicked later picked up a weapon (I'll check later to see if I still have the save file). On those huge ship missions there is turn after turn after turn trying to find the last alien so he had plenty of time. Not sure if I've ever seen this work in UFO.

I like you, have tested this trying to give aliens a chance to pick up weapons (leaving one at the feet after he had panicked) and yeah, it doesn't work most of the time. Not sure what the factors are that contribute to it working or not. I can't remember for sure, but I feel like I asked about this once before on the forum and maybe someone told me the aliens will run if they're in sight of an XCOM soldier rather than go for the gun? I can't remember where I asked about this.

Anyway, I also would support this mod being strengthened a bit to make it work more consistently. I agree with the previous posts that a disarmed alien (who doesn't have psi abilities) should go for a gun at all costs because otherwise what else is he going to do?