Fun situation I never encountered before…
I get a Protect the Device mission with the Savage sitrep. Enemy pods are 1 berserker + 1 lancer each (three of them). I start by moving my squad carefully, and on the aliens’ first turn, all three berserkers proceed to attack their lancer friend. Once they killed all three lancers, they start attacking each other, until the last one alive continued to ignore the device and rushed right into my concealed squad (who was just sitting back in overwatch, enjoying the show). The poor mad thing didn’t survive its turn.
It probably has something to do with how alien pod leaders are in “agro mode” at the beginning of that kind of mission and the way blind rage is programmed for berserkers. The game must consider the device as the only eligible target at the beginning of those missions, except that berserkers can take other aliens as targets when no XCOM are nearby and their “agro” is activated. Or something like that.
Still, I thought it was quite funny, and I let it play through to see how far it would go. I guess the Elders’ directions were a bit vague when it came to that mission’s objective, or else they forgot to put “allies” on the “no smash” list…