After finally painting my minis and terrain and spending hours watching videos and reading the instructions ive played my first scenario against the AI. In fact my very first miniatures game
I played the tutorial scenario “Troubled beginnings”
I played as the survivors, and the Mutants were the AI, now the scenario is quite simple even for complete beginners like me but, I come across a confusing AI decision that didn’t make any sense… I just wanted to double check im understanding things correctly.
The first AI round the Super Mutant rolled a cola bottle “objective” action so it move towards the searchable marker and was within orange, ready to roll a strength test next round, however when it got to the Mutants second action I rolled nuclear symbol “attack action” so in theory it needed to move away from the searchable marker and move towards enemy. I thought this wasn’t very logical so ignored the dice role and carried out the “objective”
Did I make the right decision or should I of gone with the dice roll?
If I’m understanding the situation correctly it sounds like you’re rolling for each Action for an AI model as opposed to each Activation. Once an AI model is Activated you roll once to see what it does that turn. It does that for both of its Actions. There is some other nuance in there too but hopefully that will get you over the biggest hurdle and a quick re-read of the AI handbook etc will make more sense. And welcome to the wasteland!
No I wasn’t rolling for each action, one roll per round.
The first activation allowed the Mutants to spend their two actions to “move” towards the objective which was the searchable markers, the second activation round the Mutants rolled an attack action. If the AI was to follow the dice roll the Mutants would of moved away from their objective to attack and move towards the enemy, which seems an odd thing to do, surly you would try to finish the searchable marker test as the AI is already right next to it?
I’ve come across the same conundrum from time to time. I’m with you. I always have them finish the objective if that was the original goal and they are within reason of completing it. That’s just how I’ve always done it because it seemed to make the most sense.
You did the right thing. The blue box section in the Campaign Handbook on page 9 mentions that while the AI is designed to work in all situations, nothing can legislate for every possible situation. There may be moments that don’t quite chime with the character of the unit involved or seem odd in the circumstances. In such situations, there’s no problem with changing to a different listed behaviour if it helps your game feel more cinematic and narrative.
Funnily enough, I had a similar thing happen to me on my first play of that mission. I was playing against the AI, and had a Super mutant engaged in combat with one of my survivors. I rolled for behavior and it said the Super mutant had to go for the objective, which is the searchable markers. My first instinct was to ignore the roll and just letting the Super mutant continue fighting, but since I am still not 100% comfortable with the rules, I opted for doing what the AI card said, go for O. The Super mutants ended up winning thanks to that guy disengaging from combat and taking the last marker. So in a way, doing what I thought was illogical gave the AI the victory. And now I’m more confused than ever; should I use logic, or just go with it and see what the AI does?
I think it requires interpretation. I mean, in the situation you describe, it probably makes sense that the SM would make a desperate dive for the objective, even though he was engaged. In others, not so much.