I’ve made some replies over the past few days about my thoughts on how the AI should be handled, but now that I’m finally able to create my own topic I’m going to repeat those thoughts and explain them in greater detail.
Let me preface that these are just my opinions and suggestions. It is in no way a list of demands or an attack on the game’s design. I also want to say I’ve done my best to make these solutions as applicable as possible based on examples from other titles as well as Enlisted itself. This is also a really long post, so if you’re not into that kind of thing there’s a TL;DR near the bottom, but I humbly request you read this post in it’s entirey.
The AI as it stands are somehow both overpowered and useless. I know it’s a beta, and I’m not hating because I appreciate this game’s existence despite it’s flaws and P2W nature, but across the board everyone has complained that the AI squadmates are a hinderance on gameplay for one reason or another.
I’ve noticed three major issues that could be rectified.
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They’re one track minded.
Once they’ve engaged an enemy. It doesn’t matter if they’re behind concealment (“soft cover” like bushes and wood structures,) they’re going to slow walk and shoot at it until it’s dead or they’ve moved out of engagement distance.
This has two side effects:
Firstly: The slow walking keeps them exposed and causes them to get caught up on each other, leading to a quick demise by SMG, MG, or Sniper.
Secondly: If they aren’t immediately killed for walking around out in the open, they’re likely to OBLITERATE their target despite that target being in thick bushes or even behind walls.
Solution: This is a problem that is likely to go away with time, but I want to acknowledge it because even if it never gets fixed I have an idea to solve it.
Instead of letting the AI decide when to engage, we could have a toggle in the Pie-Menu called “Fire-At-Will” which takes away/gives the ability to fire at enemies unprovoked, letting the player decide when engagements happen. If a soldier gets shot while under orders NOT to “Fire-At-Will”, then only the soldier that was SHOT will engage the enemy.
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The current formations we can give them don’t change much about their behavior.
If you tell them to go into “Close” formation then you’ll likely get fully wiped the moment you engage with an enemy because they’re bunched up when they start their slow walk shenanigans.
The only use I’ve gotten from it is to go prone once they’ve bunched up on me because they reliably prone if they’re within about 5 feet of the player, and that’s only helpful if you don’t get engaged because the moment they get engaged they immediately stand up and start shooting.
The “Far” formation doesn’t fair much better. Even if they don’t get instantly wiped, there will be several soldiers that get distracted out in the open. So instead of getting fully wiped, you’ll lose about 50% of your squad to snipers or troopers. If that doesn’t happen then all you have are a bunch of respawn points for when the soldier you’re currently controlling gets killed because your entire squad is too far away to be helpful.
Solution: Formations could be reworked entirely to include REAL formations, like arrow, V, line, column, square, etc. This way if I want my squad to strictly follow my movement, I tell them to form a column. If I want them to spread out I tell them to form a line. If I want to bunch up I tell them to form a square. So on and so forth. In addition to this, we should be able to tell them whether or not to Prone, Crouch, or Stand.
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The contextual commands shouldn’t need to be contextual.
What I mean by this is that instead of NEEDING the context of the command, we should be able to give it at any time. Say I’m playing my Mortarman in my Mortar squad, but I want my Engineer to build a crate. The current process is: press Y, open the menu, build the crate, hope my Mortarman hasn’t wandered off or died, press Y some more to get back to my Mortarman, use up all the ammo in the crate, switch back to the Engi, rinse, repeat.
This is could be rectified by using a solution that already exists in Enlisted
When playing an Engineer, if you have another Engineer in your squad and start a build, you can order the other Engineer to help build, but the transparent model has to already be placed, and then you have to press X to give the command to build. Conversely, a building can be torn down by the ENTIRE squad by pressing X on it, this is actually a case where the contextual command makes sense.
Solution: Instead of restricting some commands to context, add a new section of to the Pie-Menu called “Squad.”
“Formations” and “Follow me” could be relocated there, and be accompanied by a new “Soldiers” menu.
It would look something like this: Pie-Menu->Squad->Soldiers->Engineer->Build Ammo Crate.
Now some semi-random ideas and suggestions with detailed explanations and rationalizations.
Pie-Menu Command: Reload
Currently, the AI have a bad habit of reaching 1 bullet and not reloading. A way to force a reload on the entire squad could fix this. This order could go under the previously mentioned “Squad” menu.
Pie-Menu Command: Throw Grenade Item
The ability to have my entire squad throw their grenades at once is much preferable to mashing Y and whatever hotkey their grenade uses. They would just throw whatever grenade item is in the first slot, and if they have a second they would throw that one next. I can’t think of a smarter way to make them throw a certain grenade unless we add yet ANOTHER menu to the Pie-Menu exclusively for designating which grenade they throw next.
Contextual Command: Man That MG.
On Normandy there are a ton of preplaced MG’s that the AI just don’t use. They shouldn’t just walk up and steal them from real players, but if a player gets there alone with just his squad, he should be able to tell his AI squadmates to man the MG’s by pressing X on them, and once an AI is mounted, they don’t get off of it until their orders are cancelled (As to prevent AI dumbly getting off their current MG when X is pressed on a different MG)
Complaint: Hold Position.
I’m not part of the military, so correct me if I’m wrong. If a SGT or LT gives an order, do his soldiers just ignore his orders once he moves 30m away? To me that’s ridiculous. They should hold position until told otherwise. The balance could be that they only shoot enemies in retaliation and not on sight, and if they’re given specific orders while the player is farther than 30m they don’t listen. Maybe if you have 2 Radio Ops, you have infinite distance for commands.
Pie-Menu Command: Fire On My Marks.
This would effectively be suppressing fire. It would make your entire squad hold position and then fire on your placed marks until their current mag is empty.
The number of soldiers firing on each mark would be proportionate. So if you place one mark, all soldiers fire on it. If you have a squad of five and place two marks, then two soldiers fire at one mark, and two fire at the other. If you have a squad of seven and place three marks, then two soldiers fire at each mark. The firing order would be based on their order in the squad and which marks were placed first, and they would fire at that location regardless of if there’s an enemy there. This would allow players to use their squad to suppress windows and trenches as they advance.
Once their mag is empty, they reload and either go back to following the player, or hold their position if they were previously told to do so.
Pie-Menu Command: Tanker Autopilot.
A mode that tells the driver to follow a set path (roads preferably) and lets you focus on aiming the gun. The balance being the path is predictable, making AT mines actually useful on maps that aren’t Omaha Beach. Pressing X while on Autopilot could make the driver go in reverse.
That about wraps it up. Looking back at it now, I should probably have contextualized this in the form of a Pie-Menu rework, but I’m too lazy to go back and change it all, so I’ll just bless you with the same benefit of hindsight that I now have and summarize.
TL;DR
Most of the problems with the AI could be solved by allowing the player to tell their squad what to do and how through a list of commands in a new section of the Pie-Menu called “Squad.”
Example: Go prone. Toggle off Fire-At-Will. Throw smoke grenades. Hold position until further notice. Fire on my marks. Toggle on Fire-At-Will. Follow me.
What do you think of these ideas? Good? Terrible? Let’s get a discussion going and see if we can collectively come up with a way to solve the issues of the AI in a constructive way that’s realistically applicable.