AI Development Guide and M27AI v74 Devlog

v71 Mini-update
8 minor bugfixes and tweaks mostly relating to points I noticed when doing a couple of checks following the recent FAF develop release to see if M27 still appeared to work as expected. Since they generally relate to very niche scenarios, unless I made an error with some of the code (as a couple of changes were for issues seen in a video of a game hence I had no replay to test) they're unlikely to have a noticeable impact on how M27 plays.

Hey, not sure if it has been reported already: M27AI breaks when you re-host a game. This is reproducible.

1. Start a game with M27AI
2. Watch AI do stuff (for example by observing points)
3. Press menu button, click rehost
4. Wait until game closes and reopens in Lobby, press Start
5. Watch the AI do nothing, points stay at 0

That's probably due to AI names stacking up with every rehost.
After first start it's something like "Keiko (M27)", second one "Al-Zutov (Keiko (M27)", third one "MCB500 (Al-Zutov (Keiko (M27))" a.s.o.
Maybe the AI controller fails to recognize the players as AI?

Here's a replay: https://replay.faforever.com/20259077

Ah, I forgot to disable that when mods are enabled.

@chemo Also FYI never rehost with custom AI mods (or any sim mods for that matter). In the case of custom AI mods you'll end up playing against the default AI, but it will be described as the custom AI (so M27 in this case), due to a bug with FAF.

Similarly, don't click on the load presets option for game settings, as it causes a similar issue if you've got a custom AI selected in the game lobby.

I.e. if you want to play an AI game, always close down the current game and create a brand new game.

I am enjoying your AI very much, it is absolutely amazing ! I am playing the dark heart, 2v2v2 with all m27's, except 1 team has 2 dillidalis (they die fast, but gives me some time to prepare). Problem i am having though is that my team m8 commander seems to be very keen to do suicide. Almost 1/2 of games end this way. He goes next to enemys island and usualy gets killed by torp bomber. A game just ended where he kept reclaiming floating tanks while 3 or 4 torp bombers were killing him. Even when down to 2k, he didnt seem to mind.

Now i am guessing i should have done more to protect him but i would overspend to protect a fools errand. I tried yelling at him in chat to get back to base but clearly doesnt work. Is there any way, like signal or something, to tell him to not do suicide ? Its frustrating since when he dies, game is over for me as i have no chance to do anything against their mastery. Its interesting though that for some reason, the enemys commander almost never dies attacking our island. Obviously its because im not as good as M27 at multitasking. But i always feel like my M27 is the dumbest of the 3

ps: just 1 more thing i remembered. This sieging of enemys beach with commander sometimes goes on even when time passes 20 minute. I think by minute 20, commander should be in the base, otherwise its almost a sure way to get sniped. Again, wish there was a command to tell him to get to base. The amount of yelling and cursing this caused me

Most of its logic on whether to run is based on its health so if it's low health it ought to be trying to retreat. My guess without seeing the replay is that it has conflicting decisions - it wants to retreat due to its low health, but it also sees enemy units nearby that it wants to kill (or else it thinks it would die to them). So my guess is if you could temporarily clear away the nearby enemies when the ACU is low health it should try and make its way home.

It should also be more cautious later into the game, on higher eco, and/or when the enemy has experimental level units or a strong air force.

@maudlin27 I played all my last games on FAF so if replays are actualy public, i can link them, or to save you time, i can just fast forward to the moments of death and send you a short recording/s. If that happens, please don't mind my cursing, i completely lose it everytime. Prolly because it reminds me of my friend, who, occasionaly when he knows he cant win a battle, instead of retreating, he will just stay still or even walk in the direction of enemy, even though i warn him soon enough to start running. He doesnt understand that in a balanced 3v3 game of noobs, him doing unnecesary suicide means basicaly game is ruined for the other 2 players since we cant use his mass/mex in time.

Anyway, the last time i think M27 team m8 died was like this, he was in water marked by yellow, we had AA on island but torp bombers shoot before AA kills them. The enemy M27 sent like 30 of them and it was over before i could even respond. Other times he dies in area marked with black, thats most cases. Right when game starts, he builds factory and marches to their island, reclaiming their units. Which is good but as soon as first torp bomber hits, he should run back because there is a long way home when he never brings any AA units, before i can respond, enemy M27's both start spamming torp bombers. Sadly the opposite M27 is very smart and snipes him with ease. Occasionaly i will see him try to upgrade something on com when he has full health, near their island in the water marked with black. And 1 torp bomber hits, he stops upgrade, and right away starts it again. Then another torp hits and same again. He kept at this same thing until he died. I cant fend off attacks on my island and protect him at the same time near enemy territory.

I really love this map and this setup, learning a lot of new things. But to save my frustration i think i will swap positions with my team m8. Because his part of the island is a lot closer to enemy island than my position is. Maybe being further away will make him less keen to go that far with his commander.

But even if not, maybe that will be my new training goal - keep my team m8 alive when hes doing suicide, whether AI or real player Great work on the AI, its amazingly good and fun. If i didnt have soo much fun playing the game, i will be honest, i would be tempted to give it a go myself. Many years ago we did some custom AI's for age of empires 1 and then we had a mini tournament where we put AI's 1v1 against eachother to find out who can best all other AI's. But that was really simple scripts back then compared to SC.

Could you send me replay IDs with timestamps, one for when it gets hit with the torp bomber, cancels the upgrade, then starts again, and the other for when it's in the yellow water?
No guarantees when I'll look at it as my focus at the moment is on M28 but if/when I do another update for M27 it'll be on my list to consider if there's an easy fix

In the menatime another thing to try is having an Aeon M28 ally, since it should try and support the ACU with mobile AA and shields once it gets to T2 land

I will need to go through all the replays, i played this map like 1000 times in last weeks. But few newer instances of similar behavior:

#20303980 -> My team m8 goes to attack enemy island completely unprotected, has a good run but dies soon, like minute 16. Maybe its just me but when i detect torp bomber and im in the water unprotected, i drop everything and run to my home base.

#20316554 -> A game i just played where i switched positions. My team m8 simply wont get back into base even when he alarms me that they have T3 air, hes walking far from base completely unprotected like the game just started. And just when he finaly gets back to base and survives all torp bombers, i see enemy commander in the middle of the map, unprotected. It was time when i had a bug flying, which means a pro could have 3 spiders prolly. I dont know, maybe thats how ur supposed to play ? I just stick to my base, hoping for game to last as long as it can and have some fun. U can see i got angry cause the blue enemy basicaly ruined the game by doing suicide before the game even really started.

Playing against M27 is hard because he assaults you with commander early. But i still think after a certain period he should call it a day and go somewhere safe.

And again .. i think i will have to focus on keeping the ally's commander alive because this is just insane. But i dont understand why enemy commander is smarter most of the time. Hes on an island under the shields. My ally just walks in the water with zero defence, its like he wants to die.

#20319118

I hope this is one of the correct locations to post bugs

Challenging Ai but seems to break and crash when used with BlackOps units. Any chance you could update the Ai to be compatible with these unit packs?

Faf Client 2023.6.1
Total Mayhem - Burnie - v 137
BlackOps FAF Unleashed - Uveso - v 23
BlackOps FAF EXUnits - Uveso - v 21
BlackOps FAF ACUs - Uveso - v 19

Replay ID
https://replay.faforever.com/20336438 - Real Game

https://replay.faforever.com/20341841 - Solo Test Game

Thanks

BlackOps on its own is unstable at the moment

@jip
Whats odd is that All three of those BlackOps mods work just fine with other Ai's, base game Ai's, and in PVP. Its currently the M27Ai that seems to brake those units. They glide instead of walking, and you can hear them fire but no animation or "bullet" is then animated or spawned.

Im not sure how this Ai is interacting with the units that is causing this and hopefully it can be addressed because my small group of FAF playing friends love the difficulty of this Ai but also want to continue using the BlackOps units.

I haven't had the time to debug BlackOps yet, I'll post here more when I do

@jip Thanks, sounds great

@thewatcheral could you give an example replay ID and the time that the issue with weapons not working happens? From the issues you’ve described I’d expect the log to be filled with certain types of error message (not the normal M27Error and M27Warning ‘handled error’ messages that M27 produces)

@thewatcheral said in AI Development Guide and M27AI v71 Devlog:

Replay ID
https://replay.faforever.com/20336438 - Real Game - Base: Blue and Pink Units: T3 and T3 experimentals, most all experimentals from all tears after that
game_20336438.log
https://replay.faforever.com/20341841 - Solo Test Game - Time: 20min Base: Blue First Unit to show broken: Goliath Mk II
game_20341841.log
Thanks

Hope this helps

@thewatcheral Thanks, the replay desynced for me but the log you posted was a bit different to what I was expecting and looks likely to be something specific to BlackOps (based both on the logs and Jip's comment/other reports). I'll wait for now and if the blackops is updated to fix the separate issues I can look again if there's still an incompatibility with M27AI.

Hey I did some low mex games including a flat 1 mex and the ai seems to really struggle.