M28AI Devlog (v159)

maudlin27

v7 Release
Various small changes from replays and points people have highlighted in the past week (4 bugfixes and 9 misc changes), including:

ACU should be less suicidal around PD @savinguptobebrok this should hopefully fix the issue you highlighted)
Fixed an issue with large numbers of M28 on the same team where too few factories would get built (in turn leading to overflowing mass at the T2-T3 transition stage)
Monkeylord should be more aggressive (instead of trying to kite with its bolters)
ASFs should no longer suicide to defend a friendly novax satellite!

Acknowledgements

QAI300 – Replay highlighting bug with land units not moving (caused by the logic that triggers when engineers are to build a game ender).
Radde – 4 human v 4 M28AI replay highlighting mass overflow issues at the T2-T3 stage
Azraeelian Angel – More human vs AI replays

maudlin27

V8 Release
32 Changes made, largely based on replays and testing on M5 and M6 of the FA campaign. The more significant of these changes are:

Improved how M28 handles missions 5 and 6 of the campaign (mission 5 - it should no longer try and target invulnerable civilian buildings; mission 6 - it should build things despite not having an ACU and is less likely to have a bunch of GCs sitting underwater taking damage from enemy subs)
Early game improvement in teamgame scenarios - previously M28's ACUs and engineers would consider moving to a nearby zone with unclaimed mexes even if that zone had another M28 ACU/base in it (now they will prioritise other nearby locations first)
Increased the likelihood of T2 arti being built in response to certain enemy threats (such as an enemy firebase)
Units should move instead of attack-move when they think they should easily crush the enemy (to avoid e.g. a GC inching forwards on attack move due to t1 engineers or land scouts)
Reduction in the land zone size of start positions as on some mapgen maps they ended up reaching to the midpoint of the map
Fixed a resource sharing bug that could lead M28 to think it was mass stalling when it wasnt
Improved late-game so it's less likely that multiple game enders will be started at once
Improved mass storage logic (it now gets more accurately factored into income, and is more likely to be built around T3 mexes in priority to T2)

Acknowledgements
Radde and Azraeelian Angel for each providing a number of human vs AI teamgame replays (that formed the basis of most of the changes made this update)

Saver

@maudlin27 - Hello maudlin27, first of all I have the greatest respect for your work. The AI is incredible and makes AI games super exciting. Since I like playing against an AI, I appreciate your AI. As the level of difficulty increases, it does not exceed it, like an AXI AI. I have two unit mods in the vault (SAVERS FATBOY & SAVERS RAMROD) in both cases your AI is telling me to contact you so they can be used in the game. I just notice that the AI still uses them. Does your AI still need a note or does the AI act better with these mods then? Greeting Saver

maudlin27

@saver Hi, the note's just meant to flag the greater risk of errors if mods are used as depending on what the mod does there could be unexpected scenarios. I.e. in theory it should be compatible with mods, but if you come across any really strange/obviously bugged behaviour (or, if you have the Log window [F9] displaying, if you see loads of lua error messages) then send me a DM on discord with the details and replay and I can check.

maudlin27

v9 Release
Main changes were reworking how Ahwassas target units (including a bugfix that stopped them targeting buildings) and replay based changes (12 tweaks and bugfixes in addition to the Ahwassa changes), including:

Ahwassas should be more aggressive, particularly in larger numbers, while also being slightly better at avoiding ground AA fire
MMLs should be slightly more likely to try and overwhelm a TMD defended positon
ACU should be more aggressive (by factoring in the threat of allied units approaching its current position)
Fixed some bugs with gunship targeting logic
Adjusted experimental behaviour slightly so they're less likely to attack-move if an enemy experimental is attacking them just outside their range.

Also implemented logic provided by Jip to make M28 compatible with the upcoming FAF develop release.

Acknowledgements:

Jip - Providing voice chat and code for the upcoming FAF develop changes (that introduce a new brain class for each AI)
Azraeelian Angel - Human vs AI replay
Radde - Human vs AI replays

Russtymango

Hello @maudlin27 , my brother and I have been heavily playing your M28 mod and we love it. Just wanted to put it out there that if there is any specific feedback you wanted from us we would be willing to help test and provide feedback for you.

Cheers,

Russtymango

maudlin27

@russtymango Thanks for the offer! At the moment I've no shortage of things to look at, but in the medium term one area that would be useful to get more information on is human vs AI naval gameplay.

Navy is an area that AI struggles with generally, while most replays I get sent will be for maps where navy plays no role, and as a player it's also the weakest part of my game/playstyle, so I expect it to be the weakest part of M28.

In particular, replays of human vs M28AI games on both naval maps, and maps which have a naval component (but also work with land/air) would be useful. If you're able to do it beating an AiX version (e.g. 1.2 modifier or better) even better as that makes it easier to highlight major mistakes the AI is making that cost it the game.

J_W_W

Many thanks for another great AI!

Just tried a match with M28 on the map concord lake, but it seems M28 doesn't like the map and decides not to play it
The ACU spawns but doesnt initiate any activity.
Noticed that there was a bug like this earlier on maps with water, so perhaps this is another variant of it?

FYI It's an original map, so it's not in the map vault

maudlin27

@j_w_w Could you send me a DM on discord with a copy of the map? I’ve recently had a similar issue flagged on another map so it’s likely the same problem but I’d need to be able to test on the map to confirm.

Alternatively you could retest it after the next update which may have fixed the issue.

J_W_W

@maudlin27
Think you already have it; should probably have said that it's a vanilla map of the base game.
If needed i can send it.

maudlin27

Thanks, yes I misunderstood your post, will have a look at it ahead of the next release.

J_W_W

Great, really looking forward on how M28 plays this map!

Russtymango

@maudlin27 Yeah will do that! We actually played a navy game last night with 5 humans vs 2x m28 and 1x m27.

m27 manages to actually play the game, but around tech 2/3, the m28 just kinda stalls and does nothing for the remainder of the game.

I will attach the reply here in my next reply when I get home.

Going further, we will try and play against an AiX version of m28 as well sometime this week.

Russtymango

See replay mentioned above here: https://replay.faforever.com/20168373

tyne141

Frequent lack of anti-nukes?... I've noticed that quite often in games M28 doesn't seem to be building anti-nukes. When I've had M28 allies, the game has often very easily ended by either my M28 allies or M28 opponents getting nuked my an opposing M28 AI and having zero anti-nuke defenses; because it is the opposing M28 sending the nukes it is not the case of the nukes being too fast for the AI to build defenses, it just seems like the AI isn't building defenses. Here's an example of a replay: https://replay.faforever.com/20218155

maudlin27

@tyne141 Thanks, yes it's a known bug that'll be fixed in the next release

maudlin27

v10 Release

Special active shielding logic - in theory it allows M28 to survive a mavor. In practice, the few times it works it will probably just give it 6 more seconds before it dies
Adjustments to zone creation so on maps like adaptive dark card the central island isn't treated as part of the start zone
Optimisation of the experimental bomber logic including spreading it over different ticks where there are large numbers, along with a bugfix so it doesnt target land scouts
Support for SC UEF Mission 1 of the campaign (M28 is now able to beat it on hard with no assistance)
Improved support for FA Mission 6 - M28 is now capable of capturing the control centre, and should no longer reclaim it if the enemy captures it
MML shot synchronisation to help overwhelm TMD
Various ecoing adjustments to try and make M28 spend more mass upgrading mexes
6 other changes and fixes, including stopping ACUs suiciding near PD that is near the start (e.g. civilian PD on adaptive dark card, or campaign missions which start with nearby enemy PD), fixing a bug that meant it didnt work on a couple of maps (e.g. Abhor and Concord Lake), and fixing a bug that prevented SMD being built

Acknowledgements

Fearghal (highlighting issue with SMDs not being built; also later confirmed by tyne141)
Radde – several replays against a 1.5 resource mod M28
J_W_W and Relent0r – errors where M28 wouldn’t work on a couple of maps
Pedro_Lima – highlighting FA Mission 6 issues with capturing the control centre
Unknown – I made a note that someone had highlighted one of the custom campaigns where M28 attacks PD at the start, but can’t find the comment now (I recall it was an issue either with golden crystals or raid. Since golden crystals has PD near the start I’m assuming it was that map, and a bugfix made more generally looks like it’s solved that issue).
Russtymango Naval replay
(sorry if I missed anyone out – I had some rl issues so wasn’t able to look at a number of points for a while)

maudlin27

v11 Release
These changes were mostly based on the UEF M2 of the SC campaign, along with optimising the map pathing at the start of the game.

Significant reduction in the time taken to generate pathing on certain maps. One improvement was for maps with islands, where for example on Selkie Isle the time taken reduced from 172s to 21s. Another improvement was for maps with lots of mexes. For example on Strip mine this reduced the time taken from 80s to 42s.
M28 can now use transports to drop engineers at far away locations on the same island. For example, it may try a transport drop on maps usch as strip mine.
Added 'first land second air' transport rush build order for certain maps
Added partial support for M2 of the UEF SC campaign. In particular, M28 will now try and drop an engineer at the objective, repair it, and build up a base to defend it from the attacks (although it will get overrun on hard difficulty).
More than 30 adjustments to try and improve M28's combat performance on M2, including better handling of the unit cap when higher tech units aren't available, greater use of MMLs (which should also be used more aggressively), an increased limit on the number of gunships to be built, and a few other refinements to air targeting and production logic. Following these, M28 is able to complete M2 on easy provided the human player handles the 'send x tanks, AA and gunships to this location and then send civilians away' objective.
Reduced the amount of mexes M28 should try and upgrade at once

maudlin27

v12-v13 Release
Almost all these changes were for UEF M3 and M4 of the SC campaign (with 15 changes made for M3 and 26 for M4). Examples of some of the changes:

M28 should now support campaign objectives involving reclaiming a unit (such as arnold's black box)
Improved logic with high numbers of air units, including a cap on gunship and intie/asf numbers and an increase in air staging (to avoid e.g. inties permanently being low on fuel)
Fixed a bug with torp bombers that could prevent units being targeted.
Added a workaround for a bug with SC M3 that can make it impossible for the game to end
Improved support for unit restrictions that allow a higher tech factory to be built but not engineers of that tech level (e.g. M4 of the campaign)
M28 should be more likely to try and attack the enemy base with land experimentals when it's on another island
Increased the types of units TML should try and target (and TMD should try and cover)

v13 - Hotfix to disable some testing code that would apply with AiX

maudlin27

v14 Release
More campaign mission support - I've summarised the missions below along with some examples of changes that will be of wider relevance:

UEF M5 - 5 Changes (including shrinking starting land zones, and providing a niche strategy to overwhelm the enemy with nukes)
UEF M6 - 12 Changes, mostly focused on naval/torpedo bomber usage, including a number of bugfixes
Cybran M1 - 6 Changes, focused around use of bombers (only likely to be relevant if playing with unit restrictions or in niche scenarios)
Cybran M2 - 28 (!!) changes. This mission was a real pain to get to work, and many of the changes were just campaign specific points, although more general points included improving the accuracy of logic for identifying nearby water zones, and reducing the likelihood of island expansions overbuilding units if on a large island.
8 Misc changes and bugfixes for various niche scenarios (e.g. expansion areas being better at judging whether to build indirect fire units; units in expansion areas being more aggressive if the enemy is almost in range of the last zone to retreat to)

Acknowledgements

Sprouto - providing some code to try and mitigate issues where orders weren’t being processed – it didn’t fix the issue I had at the time (a strange one where an engineer would be given a move order nearby yet fail to move), but I’ve left the code in incase it’s of help for a potential future issue.
Pedro_Lima – Mentioning that M28’s ACU was being a bit too aggressive and dying on one of the Seraphim campaign maps.