Half of squad is running from battle.

[Snake Plissken]

I dont know what the issue is but some of my men just keep running from battle. Even if i pause and tell them to attack all they will just stand there or keep running away. Can someone please tell me how to make my meat shields functional again?

[Clawdius Talonious]

Did you set your squad to "Near" recently? Not right away, but if I set my squad to "Near" and then pass through a loading point, I'll often run into the same problem. I find that setting them on "Far" will make them act normally again, even if it does make them occasionally decide to run a thousand yards into a town to start a fight with shopkeepers guards instead of fighting the gate guards that I purposefully lured away from the city to prevent that sort of thing.

I also find that if I select my entire squad, save one unit, and tell them all to "guard" that unit and pass through a loading point or two, everyone but my primary squad member will walk through buildings like they're not even there. I keep meaning to make a bug post about these two oddities.

[Scotterius]

They will do this if both arms are crippled, or they dont have a weapon equipped.

[Blxz]

Also, often new guys will do it. I don't know if it is a fear thing or not. I've seen the objective or goal (or whatever its called) being set to "self preservation". So maybe they just feel they are outclassed and want to get away. Whatever it is, I don't like it.

[DrZamf]

I noticed this becoming an issue once my squad started getting large (~15 people). It's entirely possible that the AI simply can't figure out what its supposed to do. If you save, close, then restart the game it usually gets sorted though.

[Mattk50]

i think this happens when the enemy squad is split up, say they encountered some other foe awhile back and left a few of their guys there who got up later, healed. Your guys then go try to attack them because the "attack all" thing tries to target the whole squad or something.

tbh i wish the function of attack all didnt split your guys up so drastically, i just want a way to have my guys stand in a somewhat clumped group without only attacking and defending from a single person. Right now, they just run allover the place and every individual enemy will have one of your guys running away from the group to meet him.

[Blxz]

Yeah, some sort of clumped defensive group formation would be cool. Minimise attacks from the different directions.