M28AI Devlog (v165)

A Former User

Er... why is it allowed to reclaim my buildings? As an ally

maudlin27

@melanol It isn’t, please send me a replay with a timestamp if it does as it’ll be a bug

A Former User

@maudlin27 https://replay.faforever.com/21856317

44:54. Bottom left. T3 engies start reclaiming my T2 fabs to build a T3 shield. Then they go on doing this until I notice they eat my T3 pgen.

I had only 2 SIM mods: this and No build restrictions in campaign

maudlin27

Thanks, unfortunately for some reason the replay crashes for me just after loading; also it looks like you're using an out of date version of M28 (v67). That said, from your description I'm fairly confident I've found the reason so the next version should instead of reclaiming your units just send a message complaining that your units are in its way.

arma473

@maudlin27 said in M28AI Devlog (v75):

the next version should instead of reclaiming your units just send a message complaining that your units are in its way

GET OUT OF THE WAY MELANOL

M28AI did nothing wrong

Fert

@melanol said in M28AI Devlog (v75):

к

Well, everything is clear here. AI saw that there was too weak protection and decided to improve it)))

maudlin27

v76 Update
Very small update, essentially because I don't think I've got time for more substantial changes ahead of the Rainbow Cup and want this released a few days ahead just in case I've accidently broken something.

M28 should no longer reclaim teammates that are blocking where it wants to build it's late game arti-shield template (and instead just complain to them via a message)
Fixed a bug where units with shields could have them paused due to stalling E but not unpause them later
Added niche logic for units to be more aggressive if the enemy has nearby mexes and the unit's retreat is cut off

Acknowledgements

Melanol - Noting M28 can reclaim friendly units
Dr Dronken - posting a number of replays against M28Easy (one of which highlighted the paused shield bug)
!MarLo - suggestion about increasing aggressiveness when retreat is cut off

Saver

Hi maudlin, I have a question about the campaign function. Is it also possible to activate your easy version for the opponent? Also, a little info, I have created a mod for submarines that increases the diving depth, so that they can only be hit by projectiles with a damage range of over 2. This was more of a player's wish. Thank you for your work, M28 is great.

sparky222b

Hi Maudlin; we have another issue with a total simulation freeze while playing against the most recent M28AI. Here is a replay that reproduces the issue: https://replay.faforever.com/21934024

maudlin27

@sparky222b Thanks for the replay, it looks like the game ran out of memory based on the crash report - for future reference you can enable this in the settings (and then check the results in the log created by the game in C:\Users[username]\AppData\Roaming\Forged Alliance Forever\logs):

This can happen when the game goes over 2GB (which can be viewed via taskmanager). Some of the solutions I'd normally suggest (lower unit cap, only 1 AI to reduce unit variety) were already done so the only other suggestions would be to limit the unit mods used, pick a non-naval map, and/or pick a smaller map. Jip's also been looking at memory usage and IIRC may have uncovered an issue with how the game handles guard orders that has a higher memory footprint, so my hope is that in time (i.e. a number of months) the situation might improve slightly.

maudlin27

v77 Update (RC update)
Update based on the first weekend of the Rainbow Cup, featuring 43 fixes tweaks and new features. A full list of changes is included in the devlog, and I've summarised the potentially more impactful ones below.

A caveat for people taking part in the Rainbow cup - although I would hope that M28 reflects the below changes in-game, as with any update there's the risk of bugs and no guarantee M28's behaviour will work as expected.

Summary of changes

Fixed a bug that was preventing M28 building multiple T3 arti or game-enders on the Noro map; made it more likely to get a game-ender where an enemy base is outside the range of T3 arti
9 adjustments to nuke targeting, including taking into account reclaim damage, fixing an issue that meant it would often cancel nuke launch orders, and increasing the damage required to launch a missile (so it should no longer target a single T3 mex with a nuke)
Introduced logic for the Aeon missile ship, and made some adjustments on how much navy is built on very small ponds (like Tabula Rasa)
Slight improvement in how MAA are prioritised for production if M28 has a land experimental without MAA support
Transports should drop early if under air attack
If a player loses mexes near their base (but still has production facilities intact) and M28 builds on them, M28 should gift the mexes back to the player
Added new logic for M28 engineers to assist a teammate's nearby T3 arti or gameender or battleship
M28 will occasionally consider gifting its asfs to a teammate (if that teammate has a significantly stronger air force)

Acknowledgements

Fearghal – Organising and funding the Rainbow cup (which provided the source for most of this version’s changes)
Farms – screenshot of replay where M28 wasn’t starting a T3 land fac upgrade despite having more than 200 mass income; Noting how M28 rebuilt Farms' mexes (presumably when they got destroyed) preventing Farms from making use of them.
FTX – suggestions on when to go gameender instead of T3 arti, and how much value to try and get from a nuke missile
sparky222b – Replay crash report

Tryth

@maudlin27 good changes

sparky222b

@maudlin27 Wow - I had no idea there was a hard 2GB memory limit. Is that a hard limit baked in to the FA executable? We'll try to reduce the scale of the fray to stay shy of it. Thanks for the info.

maudlin27

@sparky222b I think it used to be a hard limit, after changes made by Jip in theory it can support higher amounts (e.g. 4gb), but with AI it seems like as soon as it goes above 2gb the chance of a memory related error/crash is high even after that change.

maudlin27

v78 Hotfix
Hotfix for a couple of bugs I noticed (given the upcoming RC finals), the main one of impact relates to fixing an issue with UEF late-game:

UEF should now be able to build more late-game units (novax, T3 arti, Mavor) after they have built their first novax
Added a 'go slow' mode for when M28 has control of thousands of units, to try and improve cpu performance slightly (at the cost of 'competitive' performance) - normally M28 considers new orders for land and air units every second, when the slow mode is activated it will do this over a longer period of time (based on how many units it has).
When M28 is controlling large amounts of hover units it should only give them a new order every 6s (to mitigate issues where hover units such as blazes could get stuck for long periods of time).
4 other minor adjustments/fixes, including adjusting whether M28 gets a second novax/T3 arti/mavor, and issues preventing M28 building in its designated 'late-game template' area.

Cyberdyne_Skynet

@maudlin27

We still love your M28 more than any other MODS out there
The last two updates are very good, CPU performance was the last big issue for larger maps

Just want to thank you for your hard work

maudlin27

v79 Update

Another Rainbow Cup focused update, with 25 fixes and other tweaks. More significant points include:

Improved plateau defence logic so e.g. a base on a plateau is better at trying to attack enemy mobile arti on an adjacent plateau (previously it would only focus on enemy buildings, and would move mobile arti meaning they wouldn't deploy to fire)
Various adjustments to the game-ender template logic, fixing a few bugs (some of which likely had a major negative cpu performance impact). Hoping this time it works as intended...
Added anti-stuck logic for when M28's units keep changing their minds about what zone to advance to due to an obstacle such as a cliff (e.g. see M28's experimentals in Zwaffel's game on Noro) - after a few attempts of alternating between the same 2 zones units should become more 'committed' to their last destination choice (meaning most of the time they advance)
Expanded naval assistance to cover experimental units and T3 subs
GCs should be more likely to suicide into enemy fatboys when they get relatively close
Non-M28 Teammate nuke targets should be taken into account when M28 chooses its own target (so it's unlikely to nuke the same place)
If engineers from a plateau drop die but the transport lives, it should no longer keep retrying the same plateau
Improved fatboy kiting to handle dangerous units just inside its range but 2+ zones away (previously it would only see units 1 zone away so often e.g. a megalith could get a head start before the fatboy would start retreating), while the fatboy should consider moving backwards when its shield is low (previously it'd only consider it when its shield was still high)

Acknowledgements

Zwaffel - mentioning that M28's experimentals didnt do much on the Noro Rainbow Cup replay

Saver

@maudlin27 2ae3607c-6477-43fc-9201-9ebfc3086193-game_22033773.7z Hi, today I was playing relaxed with a friend using your easy version. Unfortunately, at the end of the game your AI flooded the logs with data. Maybe. the log file helps

maudlin27

@saver Thanks, yes I'll be able to have that fixed for the next release

goblinsly2

@maudlin27 A quick question. I tried playing 20x20km Voodoo castle with 5x M28's with all units enabled. For some reason the game was pausing every few seconds from like minute 2 onwards, F11 revealed i am behind in data. With air/nuke/t3 arty disabled the game will play normaly, though reduced sim speed from min 30 onwards (expected). Do you think the game should be able to handle this settings normaly or is the map to big ?

I kept playing 1 such game and after like 15 minutes, it crashes, with error message "warning: Error running lua script: out of memory". I attached the .log for you.

Thanks for your work, me and my friend play with M28 all the time and have great fun !

game_22066307.log