Automatic fighter (re)positioning:

[FulcrumA]

Posting here an entry from Discord, as requested:
A request for

A hold position button, with AI otherwise automatically, during the fight repositioning slightly fighters so when I set up a group waiting for enemies, melee fighters will charge the enemy on their own and ranged ones hide behind stuff a few tiles away in their area while maintaining range to shoot at enemies

[IvanBajlo]

again patrol zones can be placed as you want with individual based on their equipment

[FulcrumA]

This request (bug report?) is meant more for AI, making characters automatically reposition themselves during combat. Currently ranged characters stand in a spot exchanging fire and melee ones often take said fire unless enemies come in range/some time passes.

[IvanBajlo]

[SerialKicked]

People under your direct control behave as they should, unless I'm misunderstanding something, there's nothing to fix here?

If you want your soldiers' internal combat AI to handle movement and positioning itself, use patrol zones. It's what they are made for.

[FulcrumA]

I guess just the direct control is a tiny bit too stiffling in how much direct input is required, to the point of soldiers showing little to no initiative beyond returning fire (and only if enemy gets in range), while I'd expect them to exhibit a tiny bit of self-preservation instinct if I send a group to particular location where enemies gather, rather than pause and fiddle with exact to-the-tile positioning of every single one of them, with them stubbornly, as it happened far too often, clinging to a single tile and being shot unless I directly move them and order return fire because the enemy in the meantime just moved slightly out of range.

Patrol zones are a thing, true, but they work only defensively, while enemy charges at the player's units. There seems to be no ability to just send a handful of soldier to a location on the same map and expect them to do anything but stand in that single place no matter what happens in it till they or the enemy is dead as a result of a slugfest.

[IvanBajlo]

that is whole point of direct control... works perfectly for micromanaging maniac like me :D

you can always order them to attack the enemy and they will go after it until its dead or you can set up very big Patrol zone in the place you want and set it to never leave while disabling shooting stance and they will attack anything there... but they won't do it as a single group (settlers in Patrol zones working as a group AI?) and it will be very messy

when doing my 300+ settlers run if you leave your settlers to act on their own combat AI can be very CPU heavy since all of a sudden dozens of settlers decided to fight and they aren't very bright so I prefer manual mode ;-)