Obviously one is more important than the other. I don’t mind if my turret gets destroyed but the second one of my soldiers dies, that’s a reload. Essentially a game over because the game is so unforgiving.
The enemy even abuses it. I had a sniper mind controlled. They shot my turret with a paralysis pistol until it killed my sniper with return fire. They would have lost control next turn. It’s a real dick move. Would have won the following turn too.
What’s very ironic is that AI goes to great lengths to avoid harming their own mind controlled crabs while my soldiers happily use overwatch on a soldier with a facehugger on her.
I must say that I am fairly impressed with the AI in PP; it has served me my teams ass on a golden platter several times.
But I have to agree, the eagerness of my soldiers to kill one of their own, as soon as they get mind controlled is a little bit messed up.
Even when the Siren is even distance away from my mind controlled unit and my soldier goes to take the shot, the game zooms in on my unit first; why?
I do believe that the AI’s priorities are a bit wonky, when my units prioritise killing their own over killing the actual enemy.
I wish my soldiers wouldn’t fire back at one of my own while MC. The whole idea is to free of MC and get them back to base, not kill them. The game treats your soldiers as if they were toilet paper.
It’s like what said here, the game will prioritize your soldiers for death over a crab breathing down his ear.
Your soldiers must really hate each other.
Or they’re just too stupid to know the difference. Face huggers aside, think about this from an immersion standpoint instead of a mechanics standpoint.
You’re going head on against aliens and suddenly one of your own troops turns and points a gun in your direction and starts firing. It’s not like the Siren blurted out, “Mind controooolllll!!!” When she used her will to control him.
If there was some visible link between the two I’d understand not firing back on a mind controlled soldier, but for immersion’s sake it likely just feels like your buddy just turned on your group and shot you in the friggin head. I don’t think I’d let that slide either. Kill that bastard.
To add: In the case of a mind fragger though, I mean…he’s got an alien on his face. Clearly he’s not himself.
You go to fight pandorans, who as you know from standard drill, can mind control. Then your first assumption if fired by ally: “Stinking traitor! He is with the crabbies!”… RIght.
Maybe not so much that as “he’s gone mental”. Your troops also don’t know anything about Sirens until after you encounter them for the first time, and don’t know/understand their mind control until after you research them.
So perhaps, after researching Sirens, it could unlock no more return fire in mind controlled units.
I think seeing it once in combat should be obvious enough, even before research. At which point it’s just weird to code special behavior for 1st encounter.
But that’s precisely why it is the way it is now. No additional coding needed. They’re either an enemy troop or one of your own. If they’re your own, then they can’t be targeted as an enemy at all, and if they’re an enemy then you’ll return Fire.
Firaxis fixed this issue as well, but it took them a long time to do it. Soldiers used to fire at friendly units when panicking, but now they hunker down or fire at the enemy.
I’m guessing these types of patches will come much further down the road
For a little revenge, mind control one of their guys and run through their overwatch/trigger enemy return fire.