PP clearly doesn’t do this right anyway, hence AI often shooting into cover. You think it’s too difficult to make an interesting AI for the game with these specific rules? Like you are basing it on intuition or years of experience in game development?
AI is 5 tiles away from a target. Target is behind low cover so there is LoS between AI and target. Most of the target model it is behind the cover. AI prefers to take a shot, even if most of bullets hit the cover.
XCOM AI would first look for better position to increase the odds of To Hit, equivalent of PPs Damage Potential (just because we have ballistics here, doesn’t mean there are no odds to calculate). That’s what I would do as a human as well. I would consider changing position to find better target exposure before taking a shot.
No idea what’s your point here. Don’t you play this way as well?
There are thousands of humans in every factions Haven. The fact that you can’t recruit them is a game design decision. Do you really think if we pump the recruitment rate and change the price it will adapt to situation? If the AI is bias towards just killing a human, no matter of cost, rather than killing all of them, the decision making is even worse than I thought. Its purpose would be just to make Game more difficult in a long term (because of other game decisions) instead of making Battles more challenging. Where is the cunning plan?
It feels… bad. “Let’s make battle tedious, put as much sponges on a battlefield as possible and zerg them forward. Because all we need to win the whole war is kill like 30-40 soldiers.” Not saying this is how it’s implemented, but this is how you argument its Ok.
Edit: Split too long sentences.
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Ones I gave assault armor to a sniper. In the eyes of AI he was a priority target with less stealth points than other sniper. The whole mission AI kept rushing to that single guy pretty much ignoring the rest of the team even when they where few tiles away. This tells me a lot about “complexity” of the said AI.
If I would have to choose between dumber enemies or enemies who are blatantly exploit game mechanics, I would rather fight more of the dumber enemies. When AI pulls of a crap like that ^ you just get reminded that you are fighting an algorithm instead of approximation of living being.
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Not one guy, as many guys as possible. And it often succeeds. If you were playing for the Pandoran player, what would you try to do? How would you try to win, given that for the Pandoran player troops are expendable and for the PP player the resources are limited?
Are you trying to make the point that if raw recruits were cheaper for the PP player, Panda player should change its behavior to… What exactly? Seriously, at this point I don’t even understand what you want the AI to do.
(And I’m not getting into the fact that this whole discussion is a crude oversimplification, because the AI displays a variety of behaviors.)
No, my point is that the human player can’t calculate chances to hit a target from a tile to which it is going to move, prior to moving there (with some notable exceptions, like when there are no obstacles), so I don’t see how the AI can be called “terrible” and “shitty” for that.
And sometimes it makes sense because if it doesn’t move it shoots twice and the first shot can destroy the cover.
@BoredEngineer, you and I can disagree or agree to disagree on many things when it comes to PP, it coming down to that you want it to be a different game (which I can understand) and insisting that is not because of bad design (I assume not based on your years of experience as a game developer, but do correct me if I’m wrong). These AI complaints, however, I find baffling. I’m not saying, and I never did, that the AI in PP is somehow perfect, or outstanding - my point is that it can’t be called terrible, as in “I will stand here and let you shoot at me”. Let’s at least agree that the AI is not the issue, whatever other myriad of complaints you might have towards the horrible, terrible, no good design of PP.
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It’s irrelevant how I would play as Pandorians as that would be a different game. The purpose of AI in most games is to provide interesting challenge and fun experience for player, not to imitate some competitive PvP player. This means that AI doesn’t have to be using exactly the same sensors and data that available to player, he can do what ever heck is needed as long as it improves the game. Acting blatantly on the basis of exploiting meta mechanics doesn’t not improve experience, on contrary.
Yet, again, it doesn’t have to do only what player can do. We are not playing a competitive board game so I see no reason to have expectations of a “fair” AI. Should AI stop counting AP just because some players are really bad at math? The perception here is everything, if using some information hidden from the player improves perceived behaviour of AI then it should be done. Players can hate concepts such as rubber banding but it factually improves the game.
You are trying to disqualify my argument by the fact of disagreeing with me in past? 
This is not a political debate where we try to show off our skills in rhetoric. Having different preferences and tastes doesn’t disqualify other person argument. Perhaps you don’t see it this way and would prefer only “true players of PP” to express their opinion on this forums.
Ok, let’s not call it terrible, let’s call it mediocre, you are fine with that?
We are pointing our flaws in AI behavior that ruin experience for us, you are tying to paint it as a “natural consequence” of the game rules or as a “feature”.
Yes AI is not the main issue, and your point is? We have to judge a product only by it’s shitties/bestiest sides.
In your argument the “terrible” AI is AI that doesn’t exist, well, these are rather low standards for judging a commercial project.
I think the original poster was trolling!
@CorporalJonlan said, and you seem to agree, that it is smart decision making AI content of killing a soldier because that’s what it takes to win campaign in a long term. So… Will AI adapt to the fact soldiers are replaceable and it will not win campaign this way? If not, it wasn’t “smart”, but a game design decision. We’re talking about AI and decision making being poor (in my opinion), and the part about losing campaign because of lack of recruits is just out of scope of AI decision making.
To be better than it is right now? Not blindly shot cover if it can move for better shot?
Yup, “variety of behaviors” that “sometimes makes sense”. That’s the very accurate summary of PP AI decision making.
Most of the time it doesn’t make sense so AI doesn’t seem to care about cover destruction or not. It’s more like a squirrel on a caffeine rush. It just ignore the fact, that target is mostly hidden by cover with shooting at the top priority. Do you still argue that this is the best option considering circumstances? And moving forward 5 tiles before shooting is advanced military simulation we’re not ready for?
So human being is incapable of prediction and approximation on the fly? I am pretty sure it doesn’t require military training to know, that if you move past targets cover or at least get better angle it will be much easier to shoot an enemy. Geez, kids know that if your friend is hiding behind bench during snowball fight it is pointless to throw snowballs at bench if you can just move past the bench and throw one right in his back. Does the kid know how to calculate chance and compare it with current position? Is a snowball fight a military simulation?
“I will stand here and shoot cover and I will not care what you’ll do next” doesn’t seem to be much different, and that’s what very often happens right now.
Fun experience is playing against a human opponent, or an AI that plays like one. At least for me. Matter of taste maybe.
I would say it’s “good enough”, which is somewhere above mediocre and in the vicinity of good. But of course that is colored by my overall perception and enjoyment of the game, just as you assessment of the AI is affected by yours.
I wouldn’t call it great, particularly when it comes to human opponents.
What I object to is describing it as terrible and using F XCom for comparison, where the base mechanics are much simpler and the AI has very few options to consider.
OK, aside from the fact that your experience is ruined before the AI gets a chance to act (and no, this is not disqualifying your argument, because here there is none, but rather to suggest that perhaps you should acknowledge that in no small part you don’t like the AI in PP because you don’t like the game as a whole), the current discussion on the quality of the AI was prompted by following assertion:
How is this “pointing out flaws”?
Because that makes it look as if soldiers do something intelligent.
How do you play something like a GTA if you prefer to play against human opponents? Even in case of XCom your experience was probably subpar as playing against human in it is completely different story.
OK, so to sum up what you want is for the crab to consider moving to a better position before taking a shot?
Great, maybe it should. I would even recommend that you create a ticket for it, or start a specific discussion on the forum to see what other players think.
I don’t. Let’s at least stick to games in the same genre for comparison.
So your opinion on quality AI is based on table top games? Please clarify this for me so I can better understand your argument.
Just to place a bit of context, I really enjoyed CiVilization games when I was a kid but can’t stand playing against AI in latest games as it tries to imitate human opponent in a game that is solely based of meta gaming. In past it was just a abstraction and it was fine. But right now it all became very abstract, there is no feeling of advancing your civilization and competing with other nations, now you are playing an abstract game against other “almost humans”.
Firaxis XCOM is known for having very so-so AI (like, randomly go overwatch instead of shooting). Yet I consider it still much better than PP AI which more often than not make actions that are just plain stupid (equivalent of Firaxis random OW). It’s matter of semantic (hey, we’re discussing it in a “Phoenix Point is a masterpiece” topic!), but comparing to other games yes, it has terrible AI in my opinion. How is that not pointing out the flaws? I gave you example why I think it’s terrible, how it could be better and how difficulty is artificialy pumped to supplement lacks of AI battle challenge.
Yes, I used to play FXcom PvP (on the iPad) and it is a completely different experience.
Of course when the AI is substituting for a human player it needs a helping hand - or a few helping hands - to make it challenging enough for a human opponent.
My gripe with what is currently going on in PP is that Pandas just don’t have the tools to counter the player. For example, as much as everyone is complaining about crab armor, the Pandas themselves have nothing that can counter NJ heavy armor boosted by technician.
And just to add to this. Having PP AI behave more like a board game AI pretending to be human player is not in a by way a positive quality as this game is not advertised as a board game. I’m not paying for a Transportycoon to play Magic the gathering.
Expect you don’t because the game does that for the player and presents themr with a line of sight indicator. (I’d hazard that the AI is performing the same calculations for the player as it does for the Pandorans, then choosing one of those tiles to move to)
That was exactly my point - the human player only evaluates LOS, just like the Pandas, not the exposure. (except in cases where it is trivial to determine exposure, i.e. there are no obstacles in the way).
That is serious “manure”. Of course we do evaluate exposure, that’s the only way to counter cover (not entirely true, “cool guys don’t look at explosions”) in a ballistic system. Even if you have LoS you’re still looking for a chance to hit exposed target instead of shooting through partial cover. It’s a bread & butter of a system that relies on a direct targeting.
There’s a difference between the game being too hard because of the ability of an AI, versus the game being too hard because of the number of enemies that you face/your own troops not being easily replaceable.
Give me a squad of soldiers vs a squad of AI soldiers in a 5 v 5 skirmish battle, and I’ll beat almost every time.
Make it 5 v 50 with the AI having more HP/Armour/Better Weapons and what not and I’m going to start struggling a little bit 
You might not, but I’m looking also at how good the shot is. (As far as the camera allows me to that is).