I have a gripe about the AI

[Aria Athena]

I played the game solo, but at when I got Harbinger I decided to take her along in order to increase her computer skill. Hardest thing has been keeping her alive, it doesn't even come close to anything else in the game.

The AI is hellbent on killing her no matter what, it's ridiculous. I constantly go out of my way and waste so many resources, it's not even funny. That's is the whole game now, keeping her alive. At least melee enemies target me, thank god, it would have been impossible otherwise, but everything else is on her ass.

Surviving the Shadow fight, in which she was locked in btw, hardest fight, easily. The fight in the Armoury if you side with the Monks was straight up impossible with Cobra around, but at least I could dismiss Harbinger. The second fight in the armoury I had to reload thrice, even though 3 out of 4 of us could solo it. I have her go invisible and sit in a corner silently, yet they still manage to get kill her from time to time.

It's a major nuisance and shattered any desire I had about going through the game with a party, ♥♥♥♥ that noise.

[skaudus]

The AI targets characters who are close and easy to hit. Giving Harbinger good armour coverage (no significant gaps in DR for any body parts) and upgrading the Cloaking Field she starts with should be more than sufficient to keep her from being targeted.

As a rifle sniper, she has great synergy with the cloaking field, as she only gains a small amount of detection per hit, and is far away from enemies.

[Aria Athena]

Originally posted by skaudus:

The AI targets characters who are close and easy to hit.

I am calling bs on this one, I am just harder to kill and getting ignored. Doesn't matter if I am right next to someone, shooting him in the face with a shotgun, if they have line of sight they will attack her. Robots will shred right through her first chance they get, no exceptions. I had to put Shadow in a stasis and then kill him within one round of getting free, cause he was ignoring me. Every turret was also after her, even though she was in cover and in a smoke cloud. In one of the armoury fights which lasted more than 3 round, she was dead the moment her cloaking stopped and I didn't manage to find a workaround.

Fights literally became 3 times harder with her around, cause now I am on a time limit.

[skaudus]

Would you please share a screenshot of Harbinger's equipment so I can help out?
I've done extensive testing of the AI targeting for the tutorial videos and I have done multiple duo runs with Harbinger, and I've never really had an issue with survivability.

It depends on what tactics and equipment you use for both your character and your companions. If you keep Harbinger behind cover and in smoke, while your own character is out and about, Harbinger should almost never be targeted. For the armory fight, you can even move her out of sight of enemies in one of the corners and pop her in and out for shots.

If everything fails, you can send a save right before talking to Carlos for the Armory fight and I'd love to take a look. :)

[Aria Athena]

I am done with these fights now. I don't have a save before the first armoury fight, but I have one before the Shadow fight.

https://we.tl/t-dnNKSP9agQ

[skaudus]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3117791812
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3117791756
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3117791627

This was the result of the first try, after giving Harbinger the Eye implant and some upgrades, in addition to another regular rifle with ammo.

Harbinger got knocked out right at the end because I got a bit greedy with consumables. I did not use regen on Harbinger despite affording the AP to do it.

I could have avoided this by not equipping stasis grenades, since I ended up not needing them, but again, this was a blind first attempt.

The trick is to take Shadow out first and use pulse grenades to remove the turret shields. Place your main character to block the line of sight of the bottom right turret, while placing Harbinger in cover and high smoke relative to the bottom left turret. Activate your cloaking field later, after she first takes a bit of damage.

I'd recommend getting a better battery for Harbinger, this way her field can last a lot longer.

[Aria Athena]

I managed to do that fight with her alive on my 3rd attempt with only one stasis grenade, but the whole fight, and most that followed, was a puzzle centered around keeping her alive. Worst case scenario, I could had kept her in stasis for most of the fight, but I didn't know how many stasis grenades I would need in the future, since there had been 2 fight in the past I couldn't have won without them.

Now the game is finished, Harbinger didn't manage to get Computer 9 and all was for naught

[grraf]

Originally posted by Aria Athena:

I managed to do that fight with her alive on my 3rd attempt with only one stasis grenade, but the whole fight, and most that followed, was a puzzle centered around keeping her alive. Worst case scenario, I could had kept her in stasis for most of the fight, but I didn't know how many stasis grenades I would need in the future, since there had been 2 fight in the past I couldn't have won without them.

Now the game is finished, Harbinger didn't manage to get Computer 9 and all was for naught :lunar2019crylaughingpig:

On the bright side with a party run set up(starting in the pit ya greedy resource hog ) the evasion&armor SP gets more evenly split between crew men and you won't find yourself in a similar 'focused fire' predicament(unless you fully skill monkey Faythe and leave her ar$e to dry with no defensive tags&feats and $hitty implant&gear selection then you will once again reapeat your previous experience)

[Wrath of Dagon]

To get to high tech skills, you have to use them to solve quests, for example either disabling the turrets or making them hostile in the Shadow fight. This works a lot better with Faythe, since you get her at level 1. You don't have to take her to most fights either.

[LDiCesare]

I don't understand why the AI focusing to eliminate half your offensive power is bad AI? If she's easy to take down, it wouldn't make sense to focus on you and let her snipe away.

[Aria Athena]

Originally posted by Wrath of Dagon:

To get to high tech skills, you have to use them to solve quests, for example either disabling the turrets or making them hostile in the Shadow fight. This works a lot better with Faythe, since you get her at level 1. You don't have to take her to most fights either.

I was trying to increase her disposition towards me, cause she was unhappy and had a -35% to skill xp. Even though I wasn't using Faythe, I tried to take her with me through the factory, but guess what, she couldn't survive a fight I wanted to do either and I didn't have cloaking yet.

Originally posted by LDiCesare:

I don't understand why the AI focusing to eliminate half your offensive power is bad AI? If she's easy to take down, it wouldn't make sense to focus on you and let her snipe away.

Annoying AI, is what it is. It's not like she is taking aggro with her awesome damage, they just focus her down cause she is standing there menacingly. Without cloaking, she is dead on round one. Even with cloak I had to jump through hoops to keep her alive half the time. What about the other half of the offensive power? It's silly how taking her with me made everything much harder. She only helped save cells with the Jellyfish, she was a hindrance in every other case.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Originally posted by Aria Athena:

Originally posted by Wrath of Dagon:

To get to high tech skills, you have to use them to solve quests, for example either disabling the turrets or making them hostile in the Shadow fight. This works a lot better with Faythe, since you get her at level 1. You don't have to take her to most fights either.

I was trying to increase her disposition towards me, cause she was unhappy and had a -35% to skill xp. Even though I wasn't using Faythe, I tried to take her with me through the factory, but guess what, she couldn't survive a fight I wanted to do either and I didn't have cloaking yet.

She can get cloaking for you before you go to the factory. To improve her disposition, resolve the Morgan quest peacefully with her present, needs some speech skills. Getting her through the factory alive is still a bit of a puzzle.

[Aria Athena]

Originally posted by Wrath of Dagon:

Originally posted by Aria Athena:

I was trying to increase her disposition towards me, cause she was unhappy and had a -35% to skill xp. Even though I wasn't using Faythe, I tried to take her with me through the factory, but guess what, she couldn't survive a fight I wanted to do either and I didn't have cloaking yet.

She can get cloaking for you before you go to the factory. To improve her disposition, resolve the Morgan quest peacefully with her present, needs some speech skills. Getting her through the factory alive is still a bit of a puzzle.

I found one when I returned, I think it was behind a force field, but I didn't have high enough skill to get it before leaving, so it wasn't an option then. I didn't even know they existed until Act 3.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Cloaking field is good for very weak companions, the ones who are more capable may do better with a distortion field, or if they can wear heavy armor with energy armor. I once did a two person combat run initially using Faythe, but for later very tough fights switching to Knurl in heavy energy armor.

[Aria Athena]

Originally posted by Wrath of Dagon:

Cloaking field is good for very weak companions, the ones who are more capable may do better with a distortion field, or if they can wear heavy armor with energy armor. I once did a two person combat run initially using Faythe, but for later very tough fights switching to Knurl in heavy energy armor.

Maybe I'll do a full party run eventually, but I am probably going to try a pacifist run.

[bekhas]

I had the same issue, but with Garret. It was simply easier to fight solo than bring him to the fight (especially considering he has a very low armor skill).

By the way I almost finished my second purely solo run (no Garret this time, thank you) and only had trouble with the early frog fight (you can win easily, but very-very annoying).

If you have the right build and skills, you will have the right gear and consumables, which will turn most of the fights into a joke. I try to keep enemies alive for longer now, so they can shoot at my character more (and vice verse) for more skill xp.