Bring back the Passive button?

[Abstracted]

Hold and Passive were different situational tools. Hold replacing Passive removed the ability to completely ignore combat for certain squad members. For instance, I want my doctor to not engage enemies at all unless directly attacked which is what I used to use block and passive for.

Currently Hold still has the AI focus on a target and avoid other duties (which it should do given it's use for ranged combat). I did a quick search of the forums for this and didn't really find much discussion about it? Does anyone else want the passive button back?

[Sol Lignum]

I really don't like the hold button at all. It works magnificently for shooters, but for melee units it's frustrating AF, and doesn't really have any purpose. In fact, chars on hold are more agressive then those that are NOT on hold, which kind of contradicts the description. Weird. Not to say that some, if not all jobs won't even be considered by a holding character.

So, i'd like the passive button to be returned as well, it worked nice and had no logic flaws.

BUT, hold should not go, but instead be restricted to ranged-dudes-only and moved to the AI panel, if possible. Then i'd call it a win-win.

[swillo]

I wouldn't mind a passive status for characters, but would certainly not want to lose the hold button. I use it to keep my characters out of the fight. and if I want them to do medic jobs then I put on block and remove hold and tell them to do it. It would be nice if they would do that them selves, but remember the hold option came into place because the passive option was not working. Passive characters wouldn't fight back when they were being attacked. The hold button was fix to that issue making them fight ready so they would protect themselves but not charging into the fray.
Yes it was nice when a "passive" person defaulted to medic instead of fighting mode, but it didn't help that they were too passive.

[Kwikwilyaqa]

Yeah, it needs to return for sure. Hold do not replace that feature and make several situations extremely annoying without the passive behavior. But hold needs to stay to - there is no such a thing as too many AI behaviors in this game.

[Abstracted]

What if we could have a 3 way toggle button? That way the UI doesn't need to change for more space, and it's not like you'd want someone on Hold and Passive together right...?

State 1: "Active...? Ready... Alert... Vigilant?" (if both hold and passive were off)
State 2: Hold
State 3: Passive

[Grimmrok]

and it's not like you'd want someone on Hold and Passive together right...?

Why not?

Character on passive.
Enemy attacks him anyway.
Now character is in combat.
Enemy focuses on another character.
Your character doesn't start chasing the enemy.

[Ocram]

You could also change the HOLD to be more like the old PASSIVE and leave to RANGED the job the actual hold does, if ranged is enabled characters try to prioritise shooting over anything else, engaging in melee only if npcs are too close. Hold would tell characters to not move or fight by any circumstance, unless they get attacked in melee. This could cause them to act like shooting range for npcs, but it may be this way already.
When the fight is over, RANGED chars that also have the medic/robotics/splint job can run to heal allies, but not HOLDing chars, that only do so if the injured ally is in close range. You won't get the ally healed anyway if he is in combat, so this is not helping(unbalancing) the player too much.

With a couple of tweaks: hold will prevent them to move when in ranged too, but they can still enter combat and shoot IIF ranged is enabled.
Also, I don't think there's a real need for the old passive, if you get attacked and really don't wanna fight you can use block.

[lucidmadness]

I didn't want to read the other comments but a simple solution to this would to put it in the AI options with everything else. Soon we're going to need categories from the hundreds of options we'll have.