Player controlled civilians (brainstorming) ?

[robin]

Wanting to discuss an idea.
Theoretically, exploiting the item-spawn-unit mechanic, you should be able to populate the map with civilians under direct control of the player.
You have to disseminate the map with such items, with the flag that the unit spawned is player-controlled, pre-primed to go off on round 0 (this last bit should be doable, it is already used in X-Piratez to make minefields AFAIK).
The units spawned in this scenario are civilians (at least looks-wise) and they could also be armed too (using the builtInWeapons entry on the unit definition); but of course they could be any third party units that fit whatever narrative the mod adopts (soldiers, cops, friendly aliens).

(Then -but this is unrelated- I guess it is also possible to bring home the surviving "civilians" on the craft and turn them into regular soldiers... still haven't looked into those mechanics tho').

It it feasible or am I missing something?
Is anyone already doing this?

Thanks

[Meridian]

Yes, all of this is doable (already).

EDIT: You can't bring them home in the craft as soldiers... they are unsummonned at the end of the battle... but they can be transformed into real civilians instead of being unsummonned and you can use civilian recovery to turn them into soldiers/scientists/engineers/etc.

[robin]

This is great, so many possibilities!

[Meridian]

Here's the bit relevant for recovery: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5185.msg78206.html#msg78206

[robin]

Thanks a lot. I'll definitely use this stuff sooner or later.