Called for Help During a Mech Raid....

[Tochimo]

The calling for help feature is neat, and eventually they found the Mechs attacking me and went full blitzkrieg on them. That said, it seems like there needs to be some fine-tuning to this.

Upon arriving on the edge of the map, my allies moseyed to my base while the Mechs bee-lined ASAP. I think I had killed or incapped 2 or 3 scythers before they even reached my Home Region around my actual colony, at which point my allies moved through my entire base on the West side and just stood around having chats for a while as I continued fighting the Mechs on the East side.

As soon as they realized the fighting had already started they dashed in, which was great and fun to watch. I even got a good laugh when one of the visiting allies fell asleep as soon as they got behind some sandbags, but before they took any shots! After the fighting was over, two more of them just lay down and took naps - and it seems like a majority of them didn't bring enough food as they're all starving on the way back to the edge of the map.

Currently, two of them are asleep just outside my base, one is being treated/rescued in my hospital, and the rest have been sitting on the edge of the map but not leaving - assuming they're waiting for their sleeping friends to catch up....but they're also starving and run the risk of losing conciousness if they don't leave soon.....

All-in-all, it's probably not bad because rescueing them will restore the faction hit I took to request their aid. Just seems like this feature might need some fine tuning though =)

[Tochimo]

So ultimately, they never left until one of them had a mental break and they all started shooting each other.

After they incapped the guy who had the break, I got the "blah blah blah faction is fleeing" so I guess it kind of solved itself?

[Cultist]

Yeah the assistance you get from other factions (called or otherwise) are pretty much suicide squads. They never have very good armor or weapons, at least not in my experience.

However, the initial behaviour sounds familiar. Friendlies will always move normally to your base, then hang around a bit. I think the idea is to give you a chance to assemble a squad before they engage. Then they move a top speed (running) towards the threat and attack head-first.
They're only really useful if you call them in before the attack happens. Great when you need cannon fodder to take down a psychic/poison ship.

[Blue Mouse]

Yeah they will always get slaughtered by mechs. But they can be helpful with sieges if you can coordinate your own shooters, let the assisting faction rush the siegers like dopes while you set up and take out their own snipers and whatever.