Soldiers shooting soldiers

[frumius]

Actually in this one mission I had three soldiers panic. Two just ran or dropped their weapon and then ran but the third turned around and shot a teammate who was standing next to the dropship and then a couple of turns later he again shot another guy. Neither soldier was in the line of fire of an alien or anywhere near it. Unfortunately the panic soldier was using a grenade launcher and killed both friendlies then he just stood there until an alien came up and killed him. As you might guess I didn't win. Prior to this mission I have seen several panics happen. You would expect this with green troops but not necessarily firing on comrades.

[Noordung]

what version are you playing. its always fun to see panic, but rarely hapens in 2.6.

about vets and grees...in fighting aliens all vets are green

[frumius]

I'm playing 2.5. Whenever my soldiers shoot each other I just pretend that the alien psionic abilities have been implemented and the aliens just haven't perfected their use  yet. As if the aliens really need any more advantages.LOL  In spite of all this friendly fire I am still enjoying the game immensely.

[anonymissimus]

but the third turned around and shot a teammate who was standing next to the dropship and then a couple of turns later he again shot another guy.

This is called "mad rage" I believe and not panic. Can be seen written in the log and and sometimes on the screen as well. It seems that it randomly happens as an alternative to panic when moral goes low. Nearby visible friendlies dying and becoming wounded seem to support it.
Can be a great help in reducing alien numbers, if the first one causes mad rage on another one too and so on, hehe.

[DarkRain]

Yes, well it currently works like this: When losing morale a character (that includes aliens and civs) will either panic or become enraged, at that point they become temporally AI controlled (panicking characters will flee while raging ones will fight on their own) on top of that when either one happens there is a chance the character will go temporally "insane" among other things that causes *all* other characters — including teammates and friendlies — to become acceptable targets, they might shoot an opponent a teammate or a civ, but usually teammates are just nearer... unless they are panicking, in that case "insane" causes them to drop their weapon

The insane status only lasts for one turn, even if the character continues to panic/go berserk for longer (of course the shock of having teammates dying nearby — like those (s)he just killed — might cause a new temporary episode of insanity

So it should be a rare thing... (until psionics get implemented I guess), it's good when it happens to aliens, not so good when it happens to you...

[theDoom]

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/AW-XCOMAccuracy.jpg