RE: Alien Thinking

G'day,

> For Flight, which appears to be the default Herbivore response, you 
> could do the following:

There are quite a few herbivores that don't do that and a fair few
carnivores that do. Its a size not diet based response for Terran
animals at
least ;)

>      When a unit is activated, it must immediately make one 
> confidence check for every Suppression marker that it has. 

You'll find that leads to a LOT of rolls which terribly slows things
down.
Instead trying adding a few confidence test triggers, or applying the
Panic
mechanisms a bit more liberally. There is an increase in rolls, but not
by
the same degree. If you find that is still too much try giving them a
die
roll modifier to their confidence checks to make them more likely to run
in
the first place but also slightly more likely to come back (so your
force
doesn't just dissolve on you permanently). After much playing with my
Greys
that's what I've settled on as a good compromise position.

> Are there any other obvious options that I'm missing here?

Off the top of my head...
-  the "play dead" option. If you think of Motie warriors wounded get
one
final activation before dropping out of the game (particularly in
melee). If
you think opossum then when they fall to some confidence level they
literally play dead until threat moves x " away and then they magically
revive. 
- less quality units could sacrifice themselves to take the bullet for
higher quality units (or within a squad a trooper takes it instead of
the
CO). 
- replacement of leaders who aren't good
- single motivation chit for all units
- motivation/quality changes based on distance to other units. For
colonial
units you could have the further the way from friendlies the worse it
is.
For territorial units it could be that the closer other units get the
more
likely they are to do some pre-programmed response (like attack)
- there's single minded objective taking with all confidence based on
whether you're there or not regardless of losses and the status of other
units friend or foe

You can also represent different social systems/psychologies by squad
chit
differences 
- so if they get to be leaders because they're the best then leaders are
always one better than marked
- could be as you age you get better (bit like some of the KV warrior
type
ideas
- concentrating on green-3 or vet-1 depending on prevalence of bribery,
military training etc etc etc

I've probably missed something glaringly obvious, but hopefully these
should
help you a bit.

Cheers

Beth