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Marine AI is terrible!


Seeker of Truth

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Okay, I was playing Cauldron Base on Legendary this morning. I exited the heavily damaged Mantis I was driving, walked two steps, and one of the Marines sniped me through the head.

Has anyone else noticed that the friendly AI is horrendous? Marines just get in your line of fire, empty their clips into dead bodies, and shoot at you for no apparent reason. Spartan-IVs are terrible drivers, and not much better in combat.

I think this needs to be fixed, no?

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Well, the driving of the AI has gotten worse, but seriously, who lets the AI drive, they have great accuracy on turrets. The AI have gotten better overall though.

 

i think the ai has improved in halo 4 but still dont let then drive becase they most likley on the turret have better accuracey than me

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making the AIs effective is a matter of your own doing. To start, they are the most accurate gunners you will find for a warthog. they may not shoot the exact target you want them aiming for, but they are deadeyes on the turret. Also, loading up your AI companions with fuel rod guns is one of the smartest decisions you can make. AIs have unlimited ammo with their weapons and they are actually effective when they have a semi-auto covenant rocket laucher. Best combination is a fuel rod gun AI in the passenger seat while having one on the turret of a hog as well :thumbsup:

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You probably hit them with splash damage from rockets or something.

 

That being said, the marines were AWFUL in this game. In addition to having absolutely worthless AI (I don't know what game anyone else was playing who thinks their AI is passable), they actually have worse stats than ever before.

 

It used to be the marines would step out of cover and get stunlocked by enemy weapon fire, which would kill them pretty fast, but if you equipped them well they could potentially stun their attacker too and therefore avoid the stunlock ("Stunlock" being the condition AI suffer when they take a hard shot and have a stagger animation which doesn't end before the next shot, it's why you used to be able to snipe the caps off brutes and then just fire again to hit their head before they moved. Same with blue elites). They were also impeccable shots so if you kept them at a safe distance but gave them sniper rifles and beam rifles they could really speed up combats.

 

Now though they get stunned and die almost instantly, in addition to having the absolutely abyssmal AI from Reach. It's upsetting how many things Bungie did WRONG with Reach that 343 saw fit to carry on into Halo 4. There were good things about Reach, but instead of using those we kept miserable movmeent speed and retarded marines.

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You probably hit them with splash damage from rockets or something.

 

That being said, the marines were AWFUL in this game. In addition to having absolutely worthless AI (I don't know what game anyone else was playing who thinks their AI is passable), they actually have worse stats than ever before.

This isn't an RPG, the marines don't have stats.

 

Anyways I don't remember how marines worked in previous games. Did they ever advance past your character, because I like how they don't run ahead of me in this game.

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This isn't an RPG, the marines don't have stats.

 

Anyways I don't remember how marines worked in previous games. Did they ever advance past your character, because I like how they don't run ahead of me in this game.

FYI Everything has stats if it exists in a computer-generated world.

 

In Halo 3 for example spartans had 70 shield points and 40 health points. I only quote Halo 3 because I don't know what the numbers are in more recent games, but I do know the numbers from Halo 3 because at one point Bungie explained the damage system in an update. As far as I can tell that stuff hasn't actually changed much, although the values may be adjusted one way or another.

 

Marines also have so many health points. Except in Halo 4 where they appear to have a health point (That IS a bit of an exaggeration, but they really don't have many).

 

In Halo 2 Marines actually had more total health than the chief, but they couldn't regenerate any portion of it which made them less versatile. I learned this only from many hours invested in the Halo 2 campaign (I didn't have Live, so the only way I could practice was in Legendary campaign). In Legendary the marines could take 2-3 shots from a Jackal sniper but the chief could only take 1. Keep in mind the marines would get stunlocked by the beam rifle shots and so it was as good as dying instantly, but it showed without a doubt that the marines could take a greater amount of damage than the chief.

 

But in this game the marines are very frail and their A.I. is horrible.

 

As for your question about whether they continued ahead of you in previous games, I think they did at some times and not at others. Often they'd hang back waiting for you in a vehicle segment, but advance in a foot-travel segment. I distinctly recall them going off on their own in a Warthog when they had enough guys to run it though, so I think mostly the marines just waited to get a ride. I aslo believe they wouldn't advance without you in the Halo landing from Halo 2, but it's been so long since I played that I'm not 100% sure. Mostly I think it was scenario-dependent.

 

They have also adjusted the marine A.I. to advance a maximum distance before either standing down or dismounting from vehicles. It used to be marines were just sort of attached to you for the duration of their lives with a few exceptions, but in Reach and in Halo 4 they will stop for narrative purposes more often and they will dismount from a vehicle if you take it somewhere Bungie & 343 didn't want you to take it.

 

Previously you'd mount up a bunch of marines with sniper rifles and rocket launchers and then you'd maneuver your vehicle through the geometry barricade that was supposed to stop you from taking the vehicle, and then you had a fully loaded vehicle + badass marines. Now even if you get a vehicle somewhere you're not supposed to the marines will dismount and proceed on foot.

 

The problem I have with the all-new all-crappy marines is that they were never game-changers in previous games, they were just fun. My brothers and I would challenge ourselves to keep our marines alive for as much of the level as possible on Legendary, and outfitting your fellow soldiers with good weapons just makes all kinds of sense. It isn't a major sticking point, it's just one of those many little detail issues that I ask "Why?" when I saw that they'd changed it. Sometimes it was nice to have some A.I. buddies along, especially when you're slogging through Legendary on your own for the umpteenth time, it gives you something new in that playthrough.

Edited by Bloody Initiate
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