The AI struggles because of the size of the map, the vast number of objects/obstacles, a huge number of turrets and the use of warp gates which force the AI to recalculate their flight-path to you. AI is very ‘reactive’ where a play can pro-actively make decisions and move in a manner completely illogical to the person they are chasing - based on gut feeling. It’s virtually impossible to replace this behaviour, nor would you want to - the mission is hard enough as it is for the average player. (Emphasis on average, which is important. The fact that the experienced/veteran player base can farm this mission is not relevant as we’ll farm any mission you end up throwing at us. If it’s beatable, there’s a way to chain-farm it with the right set-up / people)
As for rewards - I agree that they are not spectacular, but at the same time the mission doesn’t exactly take long. Completing it in under 10 minutes is perfectly viable (it’s not that much longer than any other PvE mission) and you gain around half a million credits, give or take 100k based on performance and loot. Add on top of this a guaranteed green or purple, and you’ve got a way to gain equipment relatively quickly.
That all said, I hope that doing PvE gets made more interesting in the future. Perhaps different loot tables for completing each mission, giving us a reason to actually do specific ones.