Talk:Berserk

Should we just merge this with the morale page? It's really short...

Also... do berserk units fire completely randomly, or do they actually bother aiming at units?

Maybe i should test this... yes, yes... i have my psi troops...

I shall test this and update then!

Jasonred 08:21, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

From my initial tests, it appears berserk troops actually prioritise enemies! Furthermore, scarily enough, berserk aliens STILL concentrated fire on my tanks. From what I can see, berserk behaviour seems to be:

1. Is there an enemy in front of you? a. yes. shoot it. Go to 1. b. no. proceed to 2.

2. Do you "remember" where an enemy is, within LOS and 10 squares? a. yes. Spin around and shoot it. Go to 1. b. no. Proceed to 3.

3. Fire a shot anywhere within your LOS, and within 10 tiles. Shooting at 45 degrees will make your unit turn, as normal fire. Proceed to 1.

Jasonred 09:34, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

I wonder if they're using the same rules that govern deliberate fire and reaction fire? Those that get 255 TUs when they go berserk would be at a clear advantage with their souped up initiative score! (though this may be version dependent) The rapid spinning, I would assume, helps them locate nearby enemies/friendlies that were probably not in view at the time the unit went into a panic - plus it makes them look agitated.

I too think this section would best fit into the morale topic. It's not large enough to need its own dedicated article at present. -NKF 05:46, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Actually, yes, I HAVE had a unit go berserk due to my team getting badly mauled... and... he shot 4 (FOUR!) aliens spread around in front of him, and turned the mission around for me! That berserk basically was the only reason we won that mission. Interesting... Jasonred 09:45, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

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Berserking unit made a 10 tries of firing. If it can autofire with current weapon - it autofires, otherwise it snaps. Firstly it tries to target enemy unit (which is can be seen and can be shoot). If there's no enemy targets around - it peeks random location within box (0,0,0)-(13,13,0) and shoot there (if there's LOF, of course). --Volutar 03:58, 25 September 2011 (EDT)

How many TUs are available for the erratic actions?

I've read at Time_Units#Percentage_Costs that units might "have more TUs than usual, due to going berserk". Does anyone know what the numbers are? -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 13:40, 9 April 2015 (EDT)

Says here that they get 255 TUs, and NKF said the same further up on this very page. Haven't tested it myself. Magic9mushroom (talk) 20:25, 9 April 2015 (EDT)

What luck. We had a recent discussion on Strategycore about this. See the very last post here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/topic/11076-berserk-and-sonic-cannon-v21/

The gist of it is that a glitch sometimes results in the berserk unit using more time units than are available, putting time units into a negative number. Since the game handles TUs as an unsigned value, the number rolls around to the high end. -1 for example would be interpreted as 255. Likely a bug, but the unintended consequence of the soldier appearing to go ape and firing the gun uncontrollably is quite fitting. Though, I must admit, a bit odd when it happens with the Sonic Cannon. 9~10 shots in one outburst is a bit much. NKF (talk) 03:32, 10 April 2015 (EDT)

Interesting read. However, the implied part of my question above was asking for a bit more detail than "when your soldier goes berserk, your Current TUs is pushed to 255 or slightly less points": Does this "push to overdrive" happen all the time? Is it dependent on some particular stat (like Bravery)? Is the "slightly less" part random, or deterministic? And i can totally understand if no-one bothered to get into so much nitty-gritty minutiae, but what would you recommend i should use to test this myself? Is the DosBox debugger enough, or were you using other tools?

And you're right: that very last post by Tycho makes a lot of sense: it would explain why not every berserking unit empties their weapon's clip. :-) Though this would mean that the "push" to 255 (or less, based on TUs used for rotations!) would not happen at the very beginning of the berserk mode, but after a few actions were already taken... Would you agree with these statements, or have i gotten some bits wrong? -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 07:09, 10 April 2015 (EDT)