The bots have "issues", not all of which I think have been addressed here so I'll donate my list. 1) accuracy. As far as I can figure if a bot has a shot at you, he rolls the dice. Regardless of the shot difficulty, if he rolls a number above his setting, you get hit. Distance, foliage, motion of him or you, even what direction you're facing, doesn't seem to matter. That's a cheap cop-out way to set bot difficulty. Range shots with weapons without scopes should have an incremental penalty with range. Getting hit with a shock rifle by a bot that appears as a 3x2 group of pixels on my screen is unacceptable on anything but godlike. 2) omniscence: firing. This is the big one I have a problem with. OK, COUNT how many times you've been on a map with blind corners, and run around a corner just in time to MEET a rocket, grenade, link shots, SHOCK COMBOS, etc, that were fired 1-3 seconds ago? You had no way to know he was there, he should not have known where you were. I just finished playing some CFT and dear lord I hate CTF/bot maps where there are shock rifles. I lost count of how many times I got shock combo'd running around a corner. I got to the point that if I heard a shock secondary go off I STOPPED and counted 2. Sure enough a blue ball would go cruizing through the intersection I was going to be in 2 seconds. 3) omniscance: flags and superweapons. Ok everyone raise your hand, do the bots go APESH1T when someone grabs a flag or is it just me? I don't care to review the number of times I've been running past a pair of bots that for all intents ignored me or were taking harmless potshots at range, and suddenly one of the two flags gets pulled and immediately I am getting sniped and headshot from those same two bots. When I am going to go grab the flag, (and you want to arrive at the enemy base healthy) the last thing in the world I want is for the other team to pull my flag because I know my odds of making it to their flag have dropped significantly. I don't mind the bots' strategy changing when there's a flag on the loose (either side) but that should cause a CHANGE in their play, not a bump to their skill level. This also appears to apply to when you are near a "superweapon" or are carrying one. I HATE it when I spawn by a redeemer/painter pickup that's got one ready because I immediately start taking fire from every bot that has a shot at me. Raptors in particular seem to be a problem, it's as though they camp it when it spawns. There are several maps that I can tell just by the behavior of the bot in the raptor when a redeemer has spawned. Sometimes I get in a hurry and click respawn and of course spawn in the same spot again and instantly get pasted again. Two or three of those in a 5 second span and I'm saying to myself STOP. Choose different spawn point. That's seriously screwed up. 4) aim lead: Also tired of raptors so high up they need pressure suits, raining shots down on me while running on the ground. If they are so high I can't even SEE them anymore, (and MY raptor doesn't have zoom!) THEY should not be able to see me, let alone lead me perfectly unless I zigzag. Lost count of how many skirmishes I've had in a raptor that is so far away that even the lightning gun zoom I can barely make him out, and he's still hitting me. Several times today I got nailed by a bot as we crossed darn near on opposite sides of the map, he cracked off a shot with a rocket launcher that had a travel time of almost four seconds, and because I was running in a straight line, I took it in the teeth. Come on... really? The ability to lead a shot should also take into account range penalty. There are a few bots that I recall by name for watching out if they get in a tank. I've been eagle-eyed by the same bot in a tank four times in a row. I've gotten into numerous fights on the ground with lightning gun vs raptor and only by doing an extreme amount of dodging could I survive. The first shot you hit him with he swivles around, (knows precisely where the shot came from, must be NICE!) and starts firing and leadig me. Very hard to get in the next 5 shots required to splash him before he gets me. 5) stability of aim. when *I* get hit by a shock rifle (more likely a combo) I get spun around like a ragdoll and it takes me a sec to recover my aim and direction. Nothing in the world seems to disrupt a bot's ability to aim. If I'm chasing the flag carrier and raining rockets down on the ground around him, there's no excuse for him to be able to take me out with his assult rifle before I can drop him. I sure can't do that. 6) omniscence: defense. OK so I survived points 1-5 and got the flag. With humans you can take a random or perhaps planned route back to your base. But with bots in play, you can guarantee every bot on the other side knows precisely where you are at all times, and is taking the shortest possible route to you. It's like they have this radar and you show up as a big red blip. I know when I play with a mixed set of people and bots, and someone grabs our flag, I don't even attempt to guess where the carrier's at on a big map with options, I follow one of my bots. It's very tiring to play a game of CTF against bots and know that EVERY TIME I take the flag back, I am going to encounter MOST if not ALL the enemy bots on the way back. The only technique that is even remotely effective is to take a high road approach on multilevel maps such that the bots have to come up to your level, or if they're already high, jump down to ground near a lift and ditch them at the lift. I guess my summary of all this is simple. Epic can't manage a good enough AI, so they make the bots CHEAT. That's the wrong way to improve the bot play. I want conrol over: [x] bots are not omniscent ----[x] bots don't know where a player is unless they or a teammate has seen them recently ----[x] bots don't know if weapon pickups (super or otherwise) are available unless they see them [x] lower bot accuracy under circumstances -----[x] factor range to target -----[x] factor relative motion of target and bot -----[x] increase time between shots for weapons without zoom -----[x] major penalty to shot lead at distance -----[x] factor in disorientation caused by motion (falling), damage, or special weapons (shock rifle etc) -----[x] factor in speed of target relative to bot (eagle eyeing a speeding raptor from a tank should be rare, so the penalty should go up as the difference between speed of round and speed of target separate) I also experienced some cases of bots that "simply wouldn't die", where we pumped a bot full of lead and he just didn't drop. I don't have any hard numbers to go off from and as some here point out I might just not know all the details. I like the suggestion for a mutator to do WOW damage indicators, so I can get legitimately pissed when my flak grenade does 13 damage. I was shooting a LOT of bots today with rockets, as in, hitting them directly, more than once, and they still mowed me down. I also watched a shock combo take me from 165 to 15, and no, there were no other bots around as I had just killed the other three and we were on my side of the map. I'd also chime in that the bots are crack at switching weapons. They instantaneously switch to a better weapon and fire it at your head sometimes when they pickup. A bot should not be able to hit you with a shock rifle 1/8 of a second after they pick it up. There should be a delay from weapon switch start to first fire. Has anyone seen a bot MISS with a redeemer? afaik, it's not possible. They aim at the node and dumb fire it, and hit it every single time. And they don't take any time to aim, if you're watching them you don't even see them swtich weapons it happens so fast. As for stupidity, the only plus is I like to "link snipe". Use the lightning gun zoom to line up the crosshairs on a node, and then switch to a full (130) link gun and unload. By the time the first shot starts hitting, i have 20 more in the air, and it will be at that moment that I attract a headshot. But then those shots keep raining in for the next 10 seconds and sometimes that makes the difference.