Based on what you describe, it looks like standard minion AI in this game. I haven't tried the new class yet, but my main has been TA for years and this is exactly the same buggy behaviour you get with TA's constructs. It's especially noticeable with melee constructs, since they are supposed to charge into battle. Instead, they often just stop and do nothing for 10-15 seconds. Then they wake up and start fighting again. And so on and so forth.

It's an annoying bug that has been in this game for many years and is unlikely to be fixed. At least not without some kind of a general overhaul of AI, which - frankly - is extremely basic in this game. And since this game is now pretty much in maintenance mode, the chances of an overhaul are close to zero.

As far as companion behaviour goes, there is no intelligence there, just a very rudimentary logic: IF target_designator THEN shoot_target ELSE shoot_nearest_enemy; IF too_far THEN get_closer_and_shoot_nearest_enemy. That's also why they will happily stand in one place and shoot into walls if the closest mob happens to be standing behind a corner.

And that's also one of the reasons for the massive resist buffs to TA constructs a few years ago, since they can't recognise when they stand in bad stuff. They literally can't even register what is happening in their environment (except for 'enemy unit in range -> shoot it'). Neocore decided to simply buff the constructs enormously, so that they could at least survive, even with their next to zero level intelligence.