M28AI Devlog (v323)

maudlin27

v314 Update

ACUs should be more likely to start a second upgrade of a similar energy cost to a recently completed upgrade despite not overflowing energy
Fixed a bug causing ACUs to stay stuck in their base idling
Fixed a bug that meant air support factories weren't being paused when M28 was stalling energy
Various fixes to Fort Clarke Assault to resolve some error messages and mean that the ahwassas at the start dont bomb the enemy if M28Allies is enabled

Acknowledgements

Radde - 2 Xander replays
Hypoxic - mentioning there was an issue with M28 allied logic on Fort Clarke Assault

maudlin27

v315-316 Update

SCTA compatibility added - M28 SCTA ARM and M28 SCTA CORE can now be selected as an option with the SCTA mod. If M28 is enabled then M28 will then play with the relevant SCTA faction. It's strongly recommended you also enable the SCTA balance mod if using M28 with SCTA.
Naval units such as frigates should be slightly better at kiting auroras
Fixed a bug with building MAA to support a land experimental
Several other bugfixes, including removing debugging options that were accidentality left in v315

Acknowledgements

Dragun101 - Helping with implementing M28 SCTA compatibility, in particular by allowing M28 to be selected as an AI option via the SCTA mod
Radde - 2 mapgen replays
Fearghal - mentioning v315 release was adjusting game speed (where it was set to adjustable)

maudlin27

v317 Update
28 changes, almost entirely relating to naval maps, including:

Fixed an issue that led to enemy Seraphim destroyers being double-counted for threat calculations (once as a sub, once as a destroyer)
Improved logic for when naval units decide to attack an enemy, and then some of the attacking force moves into a water zone closer to the enemy (previously this would lead e.g. M28 having 2 destroys vs 1, but retreating both destroyers)
Seraphim destroyers should no longer try and dodge enemy shots while firing (as this led to them cancelling their attack, and so caused a major DPS reduction if the enemy had a cruiser)
Adjusted how subs handle torpedo launchers (to e.g. make it less likely they attack-move an enemy naval factory while taking fire from a torpedo launcher)
Various adjustments to decisions on whether M28 should attack the enemy with its navy when it doesn't outrange them
If M28 has a naval factory and is low on mass its land factories should be less likely to build hover units and amphibious units in response to a nearby enemy naval threat, so that more mass can go into navy
M28's naval units early on should hunt for a potential enemy naval factory (previously they'd assume there was none, due to lack of intel, meaning M28 could establish an early naval advantage and then waste it by leaving its units idle)
Made a (blind) change to Novax targeting logic so M28 assumes it takes at least 1s to kill a unit, given the recent nerf to novax (which I'm assuming means that the novax can no longer switch targets instantly)

Acknowledgements

Radde - Setons-like mapgen replay that formed the basis for majority of changes made

maudlin27

v318 Update
Various changes focused on further optimisations to achieve some marginal performance gains, in particular rewriting how M28 calculates the threat of units to use a quicker system of referencing (at the cost of being a bit less readable and with a greater risk of an invalid threat reference being used when I'm drafting future code), along with some more minor changes to several other functions.

Basic tests suggest the changes might have improved game speed by a few percent (but the method of estimating this is very imprecise).

I also experimented with switching how M28 works out if it can build somewhere, to move most of the complicated logic to only run when selecting the best location available (instead of calculating in advance), but initial results suggested either no improvement or a negative improvement, so I abandoned this approach.

maudlin27

v319 Hotfix
Mini update fixing a bug that meant M28's engineer logic wouldn't work on a mapgen that featured a tiny corner pond

Thanks to Radde for highlighting the error

maudlin27

v320 Update
16 changes, mostly relating to small naval maps, including:

ACU should help build the first naval factory and initial naval units (on small naval maps)
Inties should be built if the reason M28 isn't attacking with torpedo bombers is the enemy having too many nearby air units
Fixed a bug relating to MAA introduced in v318
M28 should be less likely to pause it's main T1 naval factory when stalling energy

Acknowledgements

Radde - mapgen replay beating 1.6 M28 AIx

Trophy award

Radde - Sladow trophy - beating 1.6 resource and build rate M28 (on a 5km mapgen)

maudlin27

v321 Update
16 changes based on a Radde 5km land replay, including:

ACU should be more aggressive when injured if it has a personal shield
Land scouts should stay closer to ACUs so theyre less likely to fight an enemy ACU they cant see
Once M28 reaches T2 land it should be even less likely to build T1 land units (or more t1 land factories)
When looking for nearby enemies to run from, zones adjacent to the current zone should be considered in some cases (let me know if games are significantly slower following this change)

Acknowledgements

Radde - 5km land mapgen replay beating 1.5/1.0 M28

maudlin27

v322 Update
32 changes, including:

Asfs should do a better job at protecting game-enders from enemy strat snipe attempts
ACUs should be more likely to run if they represent only a small amount of the total allied or enemy threat (due to the risks of being easily focused down)
Reduced naval factory assistance in low value ponds
Various late-game changes, including optimising an issue that could cause the game to pause for half a minute when M28 started building a game-ender
Various LOUD specific changes

Acknowledgements

Relent0r - replay vs M28Easy (following which I made M28Easy less likely to build sniperbots since it doesnt kite with them)

Malitarh

Hello! I apologize for my poor English. I would like to express my admiration and gratitude for your work. I recently completed SC, and when I started playing SC FA, I began looking for a stronger bot. At first, by a strange coincidence, I found Sorian. But I soon realized that he was only slightly stronger than the incredibly outdated standard SC FA bot. Then I downloaded FAF and started comparing different bots against each other. It took me about 2 days before I found M28. I needed to organize a series of AI encounters to learn as much as possible about their quality and behavior. And I was completely captivated by the fact that M28 works even on a standard SC FA Steam, let alone its strength.

Please, congratulate me, I defeated M28 Easy once. On about the 8th attempt. Only team vs team, also filled with M28 Easy...

But I’m not writing primarily to tell a story. While I was testing the bots, I did the M28 Adaptive against 3 Adaptive bots from the standard FAF set on the Ambush Pass map. He won, and that’s amazing, but he made 3 mistakes:

He repeatedly launched the Gun (Damage&Range) upgrade for the ACU and then cancelled it. The first time, it seemed to me that he decided to take the ACU into battle, and losing 5% of progress wasn’t important. But he did this about 10 more times, once undoing an upgrade that gave 40% progress.
He built the first matter storage facilities in this game very late, even though there was a long period of shortages of matter (due to the destruction of some extractors). And he built them far from his base, where the T2 extractor was located. Although the base had 3 T3 extractors that were quite well protected.
The enemy fired at the T2 generator for a long time, and next to it, out of range of the fire, the first of the T3 builders was building something. As a result, when the generator exploded, he was destroyed, although he could easily have moved away a little.

Unfortunately, the replay has not been preserved. The match ID is #27813045, but it cannot be viewed.
However, I will answer all questions if something described cannot be reproduced.

maudlin27

@Malitarh Thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately I'd need a working replay to debug the scenarios you described (as I don't think it's likely I could easily reproduce them from the description).

maudlin27

v323 Update
28 changes, mostly from a dual gap replay and some typos highlighted by Azrael and c04spoon, including:

Dual gap eco slot should be more likely to build a game-ender instead of T3 arti (since T3 arti if built in the rear of the base can't hit much)
Asfs should be better at protecting T3 arti from strat snipe attempts
Land combat units should, if outranged, be less likely to suicide into the enemy
18 reference/typo fixes to various parts of M28. Since these didn't result in errors previously I expect most will relate to niche parts of the code that rarely trigger.

Acknowledgements

Azrael and c04spoon - linking to separate changes made which amongst other things contained fixes for reference/typo errors

Malitarh

Something was wrong with the FAF, but here’s the replay file — it’s working.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pFA9iAgP0QiZyQMGo8L0rIm4pHrFsPk0/view?usp=drive_link