AI soldiers have a certain amount of courage. In normal play this is (at least partly) determined by their rank. When they get scared, they run away. How do you scare them? Shooting at them works, and killing the other members of their squad. Other people getting killed around them seems to have an effect too, though I'm not so sure about this.
Where do they run to? Well, away generally, but they do go in the same direction in a given situation so I would say it's not random, there is some coding. They like their starting position, or a previous waypoint, or perhaps woods or other, unengaged groups on their own side.
Once safe, and particularly if they join up with other members of their group, they can rally and start following their waypoints again.
allowing fleeing 0 means a unit will never flee. Otherwise it will still behave normally. I think and allowfleeing 0 unit tends to hide in cover a bit more than you might want, but at least it's not running away.
allowfleeing 1 means "always run away" though I don't know what that means in practice.
I use allowfleeing 0 quite a lot for AI groups. It means that they will continue to attack, which in turn usually means the group will get wiped out. This is desirable for making triggers fire: say you want the armour to attack after the infantry attack has failed, how do you define failed? In certain circumstances the infantry attack could flee almost without casualties, fire your "not present" trigger so that the armour comes in, then theinfantry rally and join in. If you force them to continue attacking then it makes the game easier to control. It's slightly shoddy game design, but makes life a lot easier and makes it more fun for the player.
As an experiment, set yourself up in a nice bush on a forward slope with a long clear field of fire. Arm yourself with an MG. Make sure you have binocs and have a couple of sidekicks: medic, MG and sniper. Set up some enemy groups to come towards you across the huge killing ground. Spend a happy hour experimenting: you will find that with sufficient suppressive fire from the MG they will run away. You hardly even need to hit anybody, which is just as well because at 500m with an MG you aren't going to hit anybody anyway. (An AI MGunner can though).
Play with ranks and allowfleeing in the enemy groups till you get the effect you want. Once you know how it works how you use it is limited only by your imagination.
Topic: Scared??? (Read 470 times)