The AI in the other Fallout games is a little too simplistic. For example, in both Fallout 3 and New Vegas you you just run backwards tossing mines and melee enemies just run over them as it they aren't event there. I hope that Fallout 4 will address this issue and make enemies a bit more smarter, making them react differently based on the weapons you use rather than just their health meter. What I mean is many enemies run for cover when you damage them enough, why not make them run for cover when the player uses a mass destruction weapon like a rocket launcher or a minigun.

There are many examples based on enemy types and the scale of encounters. I really hope that in Fallout 4 we'll see smarter enemies than in previous Fallout games.

I agree AI could he smarter. Like.. if your guy at the door gets taken out by smg fire, maybe don't rush out the door, trying to charge me with a kitchen knife.

Maybe nests could even have a back/side door that they could use to try and flank you.

Yes. I want enemy flanking maneuvers, clever use of terrain, intelligent use of grenades and heavy weapons, hell maybe even some enemy snipers.

It was pointed out that when the Sole Survivor first entered Concord, the raiders can be seen taking cover against the Sole Survivor.

Anyway I'm really hoping the AI is better.

Not the drugged out raider should have the best tactics.

But someone should have good tactics.

Exactly. I'd like each set of enemies to have different feels. I would expect Synth enemies to have impeccable accuracy and strategic ability.

The brief glimpses of renewed enemy types has me optimistic that FO4 will feature more unique enemy encounters with interesting AI. I liked the mole-rats ambush and what looked like a boss type Death claw encounter. Feral zombies looked fantastic. I'm excited to see what they do with rad scorpions, hopefully giant rad scorpions will return and like death claws become more of a boss type encounter.

Nightkin with a smarter AI would be terrifying.

Yeah, stealth based enemies could be a little more stealthy. It's usually easy to detect them. Let's us a famous example - the Dunwich building in Fallout 3. Tense ambiance, predictable ghouls. That place could have been so much better if the enemies didn't reveal themselves when they detect you. Set them up in such way I feel I must look over my shoulder every 5 seconds.

Anyway, I'm not expecting miracles, but some improvements would be great.

Agreed. Especially for a first person game that looks like a shooter, even if it is an RPG, the AI has to react much much better. While i loved New Vegas, the AI is one of those things that just took me out of immersion waaay too much. Enemies were way to simplistic. Even Call of Duty seemed to have better AI. This might be a problem with Bethesda games. I'm not sure. I would imagine a lot of the problems we're use to have been fixed, considering it's 2015, new release, more polished engine.

As I posted on another thread and as was alluded to be some posters here, the problem is not having AI behave smarter, but rather having AI behave realistically based on how they are defined in the world context.

For example, Raiders shouldn't be using a lot of tactics or strategy because they would not do such a thing. They do not believe in such approaches and only take the "might makes right" viewpoint.

The same thing applies to Super Mutants.

Ghouls (well, Ferals and their kin) do not have the brains to do such things so having them be "subtle" even in a context such as the Dunwich Buliding in FO3 would not match their given character concepts. Developers would have to make a different enemy, or at least a different type of Ghoul, in order to that to work (perhaps, in that context, have normal Ghouls be collaborating with Ferals in some way that is believable, although the latter caveat makes this difficult to swallow given the respective character concepts).

The above characters would not and should not behave in a coordinated way, either, at least in most circumstances, because they do not have communications devices or abilities in order to do so. Brotherhood of Steel or Enclave did, of course, so they should be capable of coordinated efforts. Raiders and Super Mutants might use some very crude coordination by shouting to each other, but again they really would not think of such things due to their straightforward viewpoint. Seeing AIs behave in ways that violate their given concept elements only makes combat a total pain because it violates role playing and immersion in the world.

Animals should pretty much never behave with human intelligence. Seeing animal AIs behave as a human would, including tactical use of cover and flanking strategies, is absolutely horrible for combat, although the latter could happen with packs of certain animals (if actual packs can be put on screen, of course). See the above observation about AIs behaving in ways that violate their concepts and how this is immersion-breaking and undermines role playing.

So sure, improvements are needed, but such improvements need to be very specific and not be something that is applied across the board to all AI concepts because each AI concept has its own defined behavior within the world.

Gonna disagree here. First, raiders are not a large unified faction. Raider is merely the term for, well, someone that raids. Its easy to think of them as just mindless killers without discipline but that might not be true in every case. I dont see why there wouldnt be raiders that have survived a few encounters and know there way around a firefight. Or even raider groups composed of soldiers that deserted, or fled from combat in some battle. Or why not a bunch of raiders with a very effective leader that knows what he or she is doing? It doesnt require any tactical genius to lead a group of men into a skirmish and make sure everyone is in an advantageous position.

My point is, if bethesda has upped the ai(and it very much looks like they have) Raiders should see some better use of basic tactic and maneuver. It would make sense.

Some raiders should be very experienced enough to have basic tactics.

Most raiders should be drugged out of their minds or suffering a massive hangover and have very little tactics.

Also remember that raiders are rarely facing real military forces.

At least the smart ones.

it would be fun if the raiders had a set of perks to reflect their lifestyle choices.

At dusk for the next 6 hours, they could have Flying and it acts like an Psycho with some agility penalties.

Then Sleeping It Off for the next six hours, where once they are asleep they are unlikely to be woken up by any but the loudest noises.

Finally Morning After where for the next six hours, they are at penalties for the hangover they have.

i was going to make a thread about this. AI has been based on simple mathematics, none of it was scripted, this could have been the result of trying to minimize cpu usage, but not even the 'boss' battles were scripted. having an ai that just strove for a semblence of personal safety would drastically improve things.

raiders should have way better tactics than in New Vegas, sure they would run at you, but that doesn't work if there are just 1-2 of them, i could see them being hyper aggressive if they roamed in mobs of 4+ but some should be able to take positions near the rear and shoot from safety. Raiders aren't the smartest, but that is just common sense.

another thing that should be fixed is the detection events. sitting on a ridge and sniping a raider and his buddy doesn't even notice the body is kill. calling for reinforcements, taking defensive positions, all of that should have been possible even in fallout 3. It would be really, really good if they could open up the behaviors and make them more modular and moddable. More team work for certain factions would be a major plus as well. with the new follower system, this could very well be a reality.

Just had a thought on another thread about very strong enemies.

All the opposition is leveled now.

In the E3 Presentation, I saw a raider boss that was level 48.

They are also doing a much smarter auto-scaling.

"Bethesda is tweaking the way auto-scaling works for Fallout 4 to create more challenge. "We call it rubberbanding; we'll have an area [where enemies scale from] level 5 to 10, and then this area will be level 30 and above," Howard says. "You'll run into stuff that will crush you, and you will have to run away."

Now the scary thing is if the opposition has access to perks.

High level opponents will not only be tougher but have more tricks up their sleeves.

They could use even use Perks to give different opposition expanded tactics and abilities.

They could even use perks to give some of the opposition particular behaviors or penalties.

I believe they should have access to the perks. I remember in TES games that with a mod that made the enemies use their racial abilities was a noticeable impact in creating a difference in enemies because it was different with each race.
All they would have to do is slow the progression of how often the enemies get perks. They could make a predetermined list and make the level of difficulty how many they get. Say on easy mode, they get a peek every let's say 3 levels, normal gets them every 2 levels, and on hard they get it every level. The enemies would have the same perk list,nudist through difficulty there would be perks easy mode enemies wouldn't have access to and that same enemy on a different difficulty would have access to those perks earlier in the game.

I just saw a mod yesterday from Skyrim that made the AI much better.Civilians would run away to their own houses, people in armor would stand and fight (until they were too weak - and then they'd run away), etc. The videos made it look pretty good. The thing is, in actual gameplay, I'm not sure how fun it is to have enemies running away all the time. Sometimes I just want the fight to be over so I can do my thing and when enemies run away I have to go chase after them. Yeah, it's realistic but it also sounds really annoying.I think maybe the AI is dumb on purpose.Maybe smarter AI would be great in special areas.

As it stands the enemy AI acts based on their role (melee, ranged, hybrid). The diversity in AI tactics is something I had in mind when I made this thread. I am sorry it wasn't more obvious.

Second, my example was specific because I based it on the purpose of the encounter (Dunwich Building which was a lot more different than your typical ghoul encounter) thus making the enemy AI be a vital part of the ambiance the developers are trying to put forward.

Having better AI does not necessarily mean seeing mole rats with black ops ambush tactics or supermutants using victorian age army formations.

perks alone isn't really the issue. at least for me. you happen upon a small band of raiders, they just stand there and fire weapons, slowly at you, some will run at you, other will walk at you, none of them would actually try to flank you, duck down / go prone / make themselves less of a target, spray and pray, etc,etc. the style of combat ai was very minimal. I don't think it would be all that difficult for bethesda to take this into account; they could severely dumb this aspect down for casuals, but we cannot easily mod it / make it more difficult from its initial baseline.

the mods for changing AI are very basic, almost all of them have draw backs, like the most prominent change in every ai mod is to change the detection radius so that if you're firing from far away, the enemies will actually acknowledge something is happening and start to search for you. but this is a global and affects interiors as well, so if you had upped this global value, every enemy in a building would come running at you if you fired a gun or made a noise. I can see why combat ai is not a high priority of beth considering that their games aren't sold on the basis of their combat experience, plus adding realism to this may scare off casuals, but their ai system was just lazy. At least they could spend some effort to seperate some of the core components so that modders could have more control over the ai and make it more realistic / challenging.

The poor quality of ai is a major turn off for me, you spend 150 hours on a playthrough, spend hours trying to make the game more challenging, there is only so much you can do with worthless enemies that jump out and run straight at you. they just become fodder for your OP character. I would love to have a ten minute tactical battle with a group of soldiers or raiders and not because the raiders were bullet sponges.

It would be nice if that's how the difficulty settings worked in the game. The higher the difficulty settings the smarter the enemies.

Fiends had the best AI. Nothing like being high as a kite and relentlessly charging your foe before a 12 gauge slug gives you a closer-than-comfortable shave.

As players will be able to move vertically by using a jet pack, I would like that enemies like BoS soldiers are able to do that as well. I also hope that certain enemies such as synths or deathclaws have ability to scale or jump onto buildings.

I want them to use those abilities to actively ambush or flank players. If you can hamper their mobility by destroying their legs or jet packs, that would make combat more fun and tactical.

In the settlement defense video the raiders didn't seem to smart. They just ran in between the turrets.

Raiders are hilarious!

Yeah, its odd because comparing the raiders that attack the stronghold to the ones the PC fights, the ones fought in the microsoft press conference appear much more intelligent. They take cover and such.

Anyway, I just want raiders I can take seriously. I want these to be a mix of desperate people doing whatever it takes to survive and experienced killers that know what they are doing. The whole "run at him and shoot blindly from the hip with no thought to self preservation!" sort of ruins that. It has the affect of making them funny, instead of looking like a threat they look like clowns.

I really do think they will be better this time around. I can't imagine that the Ai is different for the Raiders attacking your town(s!) from the ones you find out in the fields.