M28AI Devlog (v126)

There was nothing left, just the ACU. It built a land factory first and then just went around in circles, never building a power gen or a mex. (ACU was in its spawn point with mex spots around it.)

What's meant to happen is the land factory builds an engineer, and that engineer builds the power gen and/or mexes. ACU behaviour is expected since it will by that stage of the game should be terrified of anything that moves and wants to just run instead of spend time building anything (unless enemies get near to it where it might attack them).

With UEF it works (although the AI tends to build one offensive unit in the land factory before it builds an engineer). With Aeon, not so much: https://replay.faforever.com/23171674

Hey Maudlin,

are there any other differences between the M28 and M28easy other than the "dodge micro" or is the general micro better on M28?

Do you have any experience on what maps the M28 is the most agressive? On the more normal maps, the M28 often stop attacks after T1 and then it starts again with T4.

It should use T1-T2 and to a lesser extent T3 on most maps, particularly if 1v1, so I'm guessing it's your particular playstyle that leads it to doing that but without a replay I couldn't tell. E.g. I'd expect if you pick any 5km or 10km (and probably also 20km) map in the current mappool it should be getting T2 land.

M28Easy disables various other micro not just dodge micro (which can now be done separately via game settings as well). For example, air units shouldn't use hover-attacks; units shouldn't kite; it doesn't handle power and mass stalls as well (re pausing and unpausing units), engineers dont reclaim hostile units near them, etc.

v122 Update
New hybrid AI option - you can now have M28AI take over control of any or your units (temporarily or permanently). To enable, set the "M28AI: Combined human-AI armies?" option in the lobby game options to "Yes", and then click on the M28AI icon on any selected units you wish to enable the logic:

If you encounter any issues (or if you use it and it works as expected) please let me know as I've only done limited testing of the feature.

[Edit: I’m aware of issues with this feature not working properly which I’ll be looking into shortly]

13 other changes made, including:

• Adjustments to experimental selection, in particular for the first few to make it more likely the cheapest experimental gets built
• 1 LOUD specific change relating to units on attack-move that in LOUD end up moving far inside their normal range (so M28AI should now manually attack units)
• M28Easy should consider moving units towards the enemy if they have t1 arti (instead of attack-moving)
• ACUs should go back to the initial build order if all factories end up being destroyed (previously they'd just rebuild a land and air fac and then go back to standing in base)
• Optimisation of logic for tracking mobile units with long ranged missile attacks (e.g. nuke subs) so it takes less than 10% as long to run with large unit counts

Acknowledgements:

• Nomander – suggestions for getting AI button to appear on selected units
• Azraeel – various LOUD replays (although I only managed to get through 1 for the changes in this update, but I’m hoping to work through the others in later updates)
• Emerald – replay where M28 suffered performance issues with lots of nuke subs
• Penny – posting a couple of replays against M28Easy

v123 and v124 Hotfixes

Fixed a couple of issues with the shared human-AI army feature/AI assistant not working on certain maps, along with the following smaller changes:

• Fixed a typo with the label of the shared armies option in LOUD
• Fixed a rare issue if units died a fraction of a second before logic for the zone they were in was about to run
• Naval facs should be more likely to build subs if the enemy has a limited anti-naval threat relative to their anti-surface threat
• LOUD naval facs should be more likely to upgrade than before (while more generally they should upgrade sooner if faced with torpedo launchers)

Acknowledgements

• Fearghal, Tematus and chucups - replays with issues involving the shared armies (and in the case of Tematus noticing an incorrect 'mouse-over' description in LOUD for the game setting).

v125 Update
New MOBA mode! Ever wonder what FAF would be like reimagined as a MOBA? No? Well you can still get an idea - set M28AI to MOBA mode (in the shared armies game option), and you can take control of your ACU while M28AI handles all other units.

• 7 improvements and fixes to the shared AI armies, including a MOBA mode (M28 gives orders to every unit except the ACU), and the ability for units to inherit their M28AI control setting from their 'parent'/constructing unit. For example, build a land factory at an expansion point, toggle it to be controlled by M28AI, and with this setting M28AI will also take control of any units built from that factory (and any units they build). Essentially allowing you to hand off control of expansion points to the AI while you focus on something else. Also fixed a bug that could sometimes crash the game in LOUD.
• Skirmisher units should no longer try and kite enemy land scouts
• Water zones should track enemy T2 arti firebases, and be a bit less likely to request lots of engineers or engage with enemy forces within range of said firebase
• Added 'netting off' logic for engineer allocation - if one land or water zone decides to send an engineer to another zone, and that engineer already has engineers travelling to the first zone, then no engineers should go to either zone. While this doesn't eliminate the issue of large groups of engineers moving from one side of a pond to another (to assist the naval factory) it does at least reduce the frequency/severity of it.

Acknowldgements

• Fearghal - Replay with shared armies where M28 built in it's/Fearghal's base
• Azraeel - Replay on a water map
• Tematus - noting a scenario where LOUD would crash with M28 shared armies enabled

v126 Update
Smaller update that improves M28's game-ender template's defences, along with 7 other changes

• Game-ender templates should now build SAMs pre-emptively, and also build PD and T2 arti if faced with a ground attack
• New spirit attack mode (partly to experiment to see if it's any good) - spirits should be used as an attacking force initially, making use of their long range and good intel to gradually lower the health of enemy units
• MAA should be more cautious than before of enemy tanks when there aren't many friendly units to protect them
• Fixed an issue with deciding what experimental to build initially (where no experimental might be chosen)
• 1 minor LOUD specific change relating to the experimental sniper bot categorisation so it gets used similarly to a t3 sniperbot