Why were squadmates made to suck?

Isen't it set up for combo attacking?

I see you constantly rejoice at Andromeda. 

I forget actually which one but in the MET they did cut either the Companions weapon damage or power damage in comparison to Shepard's to, presumably, make Shepard more bad arse. They also limited the number of skill points the character got in comparison to Shepard.

Eh, what can you do. We still have the Horizon Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild reviews to go up as well, we didn't get any copies in early. 

EA has been good at helping us out, we got Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 ahead of time, and a preview of Knights of the Fallen Empire, my guess is they are more concerned now with the rather tumultuous reception Andromeda is getting in early access. 

Played almost 8 hours.. and while yet the AI is quite poor, I did spend a good hour experimenting with my squad AI in combat. Basically I hid in cover and used squad commands to move around / focus fire my squad mates. They are, in fact, quite effective when used this way and on normal difficulty more than able to finish almost every fight I got into without my assistance (other than using my powers whenever off cooldown to help setup combos... zero shots fired from my guns as I just hid in cover).

The downside is the squad AI here is far less able to make MOVEMENT decisions on its own than ME3 members. In this game the AI seems content to stand out in the open, not use cover 50% of the time and shoot at an enemy in full cover. In ME3, the AI would instead be very effective at staying in cover, but far less effective at actually shooting at enemies (80% of shots fired in ME3 by AI were often misses / into enemy cover.. I spent dozens of hours playing ME3 like this, watching them, moving them).

Squad AI here hits the majority of the time.. they just do stupid things movement wise unless guided. Honestly, the best tactic I find at the start of every fight is to take 2 to 3 seconds to order one member into cover on the right, another member to cover on the left and then you can jump into the fight yourself.. they provide surprisngly good support fire this way and don't get themselves killed standing out in the open.

Namely, if you want your squad to be less dumb than previous games in this one, you have to actually use squad commands (and if youtube videos of the trilogy are any indication... 99% of people don't even seem aware that you CAN command your squad as it's unheard of to see anyone order movement commands).

You need to play a little more the role of a "commander" in this game to get the most out of them. That said, repeatedly ordering Liam to position ahead of me as I advance on an enemy with shotgun works shockingly well.. so long as I tap the command a bit ahead of me he keeps up, stays as an excellent body shield for me and makes judicious use of his dual omni-blades as enemies charge up to him. Just takes some baby sitting is all. He is very effective when used this way I find.

Slower... Liam usually uses his grenade once per 5 enemies or so. Cora's charge hits about two times in the same time frame.

If you focus a target for Liam, he will use his grenade very frequently. If you don't give him a focus target he seems to rarely ever fire it. But give him a target and he will in fact toss a grenade almost every time its off cooldown. It hits quite hard too (on normal it will take off about 2/3 of the health from an unshielded average enemy)

Well, you don't have precise control like you did in DAO or DAI (in tactical mode you could properly micromanage them pretty much like you could in Baldur's Gate) as we can only tell them to move to a specific location or order focus fire on a target.. but in terms of how important it feels, I'd say micromanaging the squad here feels suitably helpful if one bothers to take the time to do it. This means you spend less time yourself fighting as you're governing your friends a lot, but it does seem reasonably effective if you take the time to do it (i.e. if a squad mate is swarmed, order him / her to move to new cover and they'll do a good job getting there).

As I said, on normal, you can win most fights with just the squad if you micro manage their actions. Haven't tried on hardcore or insanity, but I suspect you'll need to provide at least some gunfire support yourself on those difficulties. Nonetheless, the squad can and will kill enemies if you pay attention to their actions / position. So far I'd say Liam is one of the most deadly companions of the three I have so far (order him to move right up to an enemy and he'll dual omni blade them when he gets there quite often, deals a lot of damage).

I'm looking forward to getting the krogan companion... will just order him to move next to enemies all the time, I suspect he will just bash the hell out of them with good results.