Unreal Tournament artificial intelligence rant

Artificial intelligence is a difficult thing to get right. I'll say right off the bat that I enjoy playing the Unreal Tournament games offline, with bots only. It's quite fun, once I find a nice difficulty where it's challenging without being overly frustrating. But I've noticed a couple quirks, mainly in Unreal Tournament 3, that bug me.

I should note that I was playing Unreal Tournament 3 on the PS3, not the PC. I doubt that makes any difference, but I figured I should make note of it anyway.

The first quirk that irritates me is the fact that the AI seems to know where you are at all times. It is impossible to sneak up on these bastards. Plus, the "feign death" function in UT3 is useless against bots. The AI somehow knows you're still alive, and will shoot you anyway. But anyway, they seem to know where you are, even if they haven't seen you. I could be hiding behind a column at my base for ten minutes, completely unseen by anyone, but the moment I peek out, I'll see a stream of projectiles coming toward me. For example, I was playing Vehicle Capture The Flag on Sandstorm, a new map in UT3. There is a large wall separating the two bases, and you're able to get on top of it. I got on top, and just peeked at the opposing base, when suddenly two guys and a vehicle were firing at my exact position at the same time. Despite none of my allies ever being up there that round, and the fact that none of them saw me go there, nor did any of them see me up there prior to me peeking out. They fired on me almost instantly, as if they knew I was up there the whole time, and knew exactly where I was situated.

This sort of clairvoyance makes playing the role of a sniper almost impossible, as a sniper is supposed to be stealthy, but it's impossible to be stealthy in a UT game. The AI always knows where you are, and if you pop out for an attempted kill, they'll blast your location with fire to the point where you'll be running around looking for the nearest health pick-up. And that really goes against what a sniper is supposed to do.

Which brings me to quirk number two: the AI seems to focus their attention on you. If they're able to shoot you, they will devote their entire existance to doing so. For this example, I'm going to reference the same round played on Sandstorm. There was an enemy running toward our flag. Two guys plus a Darkwalker were shooting him. I was simply watching, as a passive observer. Logic would dictate that the enemy should get to cover from the Darkwalker, and take care of the two guys trying to kill him. But he ended up firing rockets up toward my position, completely ignoring the three entities attempting to end his short, artificial life. It defies all logic that an AI character would ignore things that are trying to kill him, and only go after the player in some sort of kamikaze mission. Granted, it makes sure that the player is always part of the action, instead of passively observing, but I tend to like passive observation, and I can't really do that when being fired on, and I can't really enjoy it either when the AI seems to not care whether it lives or dies.

I've noticed this to an extent in UT2004, all the way to the Skilled difficulty. UT3 has this issue on Novice and Average, but I haven't tried the other difficulties yet. I would suspect, though, that the AI would more viciously target the player in the higher difficulties, anyway.

I suppose these issues can be forgiven. The games are still fun. Playing a sniper, while difficult, isn't entirely impossible. And I suppose the AI doesn't always exclusively target the player, though I must say that it chooses the most curious times to do so. They're more personal gripes than anything, and it does seem to help keep the game moving and challenging. So I guess it all works out in the end. Still, I wanted to point them out, anyway.