What is M28AI
M28AI is an adaptive AI for Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, intended to provide a challenging experience for players, making extensive use of microing skills coupled with strong macro capabilities to defeat opponents.

Competent at both 1v1 and team based games, M28AI adopts an aggressive approach to the game, utilising a wide variety of tactics that will adapt based on what the player does.

A variant of M28AI, M28Easy, disables M28AI's micro capabilities, while other variants include land, air, and turtle options. There are also various configuration options (in game options, which contain the prefix "M28AI:") to allow players to further refine how it plays, including:

• Hybrid AI option - if enabled, you can enable M28AI logic on selected units you control (note that this option should only be enabled if you intend to use the feature, as it will result in all normal M28AI calculations being applied to your own units which may impact on the sim speed with high unit counts)
• AIx overwhelm option - allows you to increase or decrease the AIx modifier over time to make it harder/weaker
• Micro level - In addition to the option to disable all microing with the M28Easy option, a 'M28 time between orders' option allows you to adjust M28's general responsiveness level for most units. By default units consider new orders every second, but this allows you to increase the delay up to 10 seconds (which, for example, will make M28's kiting behaviour much weaker, as well as making M28 run faster)

M28AI is highly compatible with mods and unusual map settings, including (but not limited to) popular mods such as BrewLAN, BlackOPs and Nomads. It can also handle a wide array of unit restrictions in FAF (e.g. it is capable of completing the original supcom campaign which in early missions can involve restrictions such as only building t1 air units).

It also supports campaign missions, both as an AI teammate; or as a replacement for the campaign AI (whether for AI allies such as the rebels in the FA Mission 2 Dawn campaign or for the enemy AI); Further details on the configuration options available, including campaign specific ones, are summarised in the FAF wiki for co-op missions.

M28AI was originally developed for FAF, and this is recommended for the most competitive experience. However, it also supports LOUD, QUIET, steam and GOG (see the installation.txt file for details of how to setup M28AI for these; for FAF setup you can either refer to this same file or the FAF wiki which details how to play with custom AIs).

Why should you use M28AI

• AI that provides a challenge through use of advanced logic instead of cheating in bonus resources or units (although you can give it bonus resources for even more of a challenge if you want)
• Runs significantly faster than M27AI in larger teamgame scenarios (in addition to being harder than M28 both 1v1 and teamgames)
• Chance to see the AI improve and influence it's development via feedback
• Different playstyle to M27AI and other AIs
• Greater compatibility with mods and unusual game settings
• Compatible with campaign missions (FA, SC and custom campaigns) as an AI teammate (in co-op), and/or as a hostile campaign AI.
• Highly configurable, including unique modes (such as shared armies and MOBA mode), adjustible micro, and different AI personalities.

Background
M28AI was intended as a long term potential successor to M27AI, involving a complete rewriting of the AI framework to run significantly faster in large teamgame scenarios and provide greater tools for the AI to make use of. As of February 2024 it was able to outperform M27 on most maps and settings, and has improved further since then.

As with M27 it makes extensive use of microing and its focus is in trying to win games, with an estimated global rating of around 900-1200. An M28Easy option is available that disables most micro (along with a setting to effectively set the level of micro used for the normal M28AI), and an AIx overwhelm option is available for people wanting to customise the difficulty more (by increasing / decreasing it over time).

Find out more information
This forum thread contains summary information of M28AI updates. A detailed devlog is available where I've noted my progress with M28AI and include far more details on updates made (e.g. the devlog relating to the v1 release of M28AI is more than 100 pages!). Due to file size issues, this is split between:

• Devlog covering pre-release to v103
• Devlog covering v104 to v207
• Devlog for v208 onwards and a list of possible future changes.

Provide feedback

• Send me a message on discord (maudlin27), either via direct message, the AI development discord or alternatively there's a general AI feedback channel in FAF.
• You can also post in this thread

Where providing suggestions or highlighting bugs it'd be helpful if you would describe the issue, include the replay ID, and the time in the replay where the issue occurs.

Playing offline
If you want to play against M28 offline and can't access the FAF client (e.g. due to DDoS attacks), you can download the mod from Github and ensure the M28AI folder is saved to:
C:\ProgramData\FAForever\user\My Games\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander Forged Alliance\mods\M28AI

The mod files can be obtained from Github by downloading a ZIP of the code (and then extracting these):
https://github.com/maudlin27/M28AI

While the game can be run offline either by clicking the offline mode from the FAF client, or running the shortcut C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin\ForgedAlliance.exe /init init_faf.lua

Trophy holders
These are a virtual recognition of the last person to win against an M28 AI that gets a significant boost to resources:

• The Radde trophy - awarded for beating a 1.4+ resource (1.0 resource) M28 on a 15km+ mapgen
  
  Current holder - Radde, GhillieWolf and Mhad - beating 1.4 resource v186 on a 15km mapgen

• Sladow trophy - awarded for beating a 1.5+ AIx (i.e. resource and build rate) M28 on any 5km or larger map (i.e. 256 x 256 or larger)
  
  Current holder - Vindex (v227, 1.5 AIx on the 20km map the ditch, for which the previous best I'd seen was Sladow beating v144 1.4 AIx)

Note: Most of my focus is currently on M28AI, and M27 is expected to receive minimal updates in the future

Installation notes
To play with M27AI, go to the mods section in the FAF client and search for M27AI. Download the mod, then when hosting a game make sure you have enabled the M27AI mod. This should allow you to then select M27AI as one of the players in the game.

Further details including screenshots on how to setup custom AI are included on the FAF Wiki:
https://wiki.faforever.com/en/Custom-AIs

Summary of how M27 plays compared with default/sorian AI
M27 is intended for players in search of a greater challenge than the default/Sorian AI. Some of its features include:

• Adaptive playstyle, responding to player actions, and actively seeking out vulnerabilities in player forces and building units to exploit these
• Making use of player tactics/unit microing and certain 'try-hard' type approaches, for example kiting with units, hover-bombing, synchronising MMLs to overwhelm TMD, manual reclaiming, ctrl-King T2 mexes to build T3
• Being built with FAF balance/meta in mind

To give a couple of examples of the challenge it provides compared to the default and Sorian, 1 (normal) M27 AI has managed to beat an Adaptive and/or Sorian adaptive AiX with a 2.0 modifier, and also beaten 7 Sorian adaptive (on the same team) on Setons, and is consistently the winner of AI vs AI tournaments (although RNGAI is a close second and worth checking out as well since it offers an alternative play style).

M27AI background and status
Following the 2021 Supreme Computer Cup I was inspired to have a go at developing a basic AI for FAF. As I had zero experience of coding in Lua, I thought at the same time I would write down things as I learnt them to have both a guide for other people interested in getting started in developing an AI, and a dev log for the creation of my AI.

See below for a link to the current AI development guide and devlog (2022-12 update - as people were having issues viewing the original file I've split it out and have separated the main 'devlog' part of M27 development from the more general notes on getting things setup to develop the AI and useful functions)
Devlog extracts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uQlEoN-kti7G2MnhwD60uaaHwVevPNYH/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100973959280546778272&rtpof=true&sd=true
Development guide extracts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1puzW5hKcOBNE7wu7bXj6qXfTJ60r2f93/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100973959280546778272&rtpof=true&sd=true

You can also access the mod on Github:
https://github.com/maudlin27/M27AI
While in theory it should be possible to install the mod by copying the M27AI folder (from Github) into the FAF mods directory, some people have reported issues with that. It's recommended that the mod is installed through the FAF client (via the mod vault).

I've copied the current overview from the guide below:

This document is intended to do 3 things at once (meaning it does none of them very well!):

• Act as a guide to people new to FAF AI development, including collating any other useful resources out there on AI development
• Be a sort of dev log of my thought process and development steps for creating my first FAF AI, with extracts of code thrown in
• Form my main ‘todo’ list for further developments of my AI
  If you see any errors, or have any comments or suggestions (in particular any AI developers who read this since you’ll probably know better/easier ways of doing things than the methods I’ve chosen) let me know and I can update the guide where relevant.

If you’re here for useful resources and/or details of how to write AI and don’t care about the dev log aspect then just skip to section 2) Setup and background and section 5) Index of useful functions, and/or browse the index for points that may be of interest.

Latest changes (v70-74 summary)

V70 summary of changes:
Update based primarily on issues spotted from the first weekend of the Rainbow Cup tournament:

• Fixed a bug that caused MAA to stay way too far back from the ACU when there were nearby enemy tanks (i.e. the MAA would run away from the tanks even if they were needed to protect the ACU from gunships/bombers)
• Significantly improved the speed at which the AI will try and get T2 PD if the enemy gets a guncom and attacks its base
• Added new capture logic to capture certain civilian units on the map (e.g. titans on big bang dry)
• 6 other bugfixes, and 12 misc changes, mostly relating to building ground based anti-air, and being a bit more cautious with bombers (including not overbuilding them once a very large bomber force has been assembled).
  v71 - 8 Minor bugfixes and tweaks
  V72 - 4 fixes, including AIX fix
  v73 - M28 compatibiltiy fix and energy storage adjust for FAF balance change
  v74 - Minor bug fixes, primarily relating to the mobile factory and Aeon gun upgrade FAF changes

Areas of focus by version (history):
v1-3: Release
v4 - Intel and threat detection
v5 - Use of ACU and hotfix
v7 - Engineers and building upgrades
v9 - Air
v10 - Anti-Turtle
v11-v12 - Pathfinding and misc changes
v13 - Anti-navy
v14 - ACU and mobile shields
v15-v18 - CPU optimisation and hotfixes
v19 - Rally points and air domination strategy
v20 - Late game
v21-23 - Eco management
v24 - Bombers
v25 - Misc
v26 - Nukes
v27 - T3 Arti
v28 - Game options/compatibility
v29 - Optimisation and TMD
v30 - Czar, Soulripper and Defences
v31 - Bombers (again) and TML
v32-33 - Plateaus
v34-35 - Turtling
v36 - Skirmishers
v37-38 - Game enders
v39 - Quantum optics
v40 - Deceiver
v41 - Hives and shield disruptor
v42 - Misc and multi-TML defence
v43 - Misc and UEF experimentals
v44-46 - Teamwork
v47 - Optimisation
v48 - Personality
v49 - Hotfix
v50-51 - Navy
v52 - Desync hotfix
v53 - Shield boats
v54 - Temporary eco strategy
v55 - Experimental defence
v56 - Stealth boat
v57 - Pathfinding (again!)
v58 - Misc (RC tweaks)
v59 - Gunships
v60 - Naval enhancements
v61 - Stats
v62 - Land spam
v63 - T3 arti prioritisation
v64 - Mass fabs
v65-v66 - Skirmisher and T3 arti tweaks
v67 - Misc
V68-tml enhancements
v69 - Misc
v70 - Guncom defence and capture
v71 - 74 Mini updates - bugfixes
v75-78 - small bugfixes and rating support
v79-81 - FAF navigational mesh

M28AI's release day has arrived!

The main changes made from before were focused on compatibilty, (cpu) optimisation, and increasing its difficulty.

Compatibility
Tested M28AI with the following mods and map settings (usually this just consisted of a single game, so please let me know if you come across any issues):

• Maps with water starts (including all-water maps such as Dreadnought Chasm)
• Survival maps
• AI Wave survival mod
• Flying engineers mod
• Norush game setting
• Low unit caps
• Crazy rush
• Nomads
• BlackOps
• BrewLAN
• Max AiX modifier (IIRC 5.9)

Optimisation
Big thanks to @Jip who helped me achieve a significant reduction in the time taken by M28AI to analyse the map at the start of the game. Previously M28AI was taking more than 2 minutes on 10km maps such as polar depression, with one of the functions being run taking c.102 seconds. With Jip's help this function's time was reduced to roughly 0.2 seconds, with M28AI completing its analysis in most cases in 30s or less (slower CPUs will take longer). The devlog contains more information and profiling for this.

This also allowed me to make use of more accurate water zone generation (without increasing the analysis time).

Jip also helpfully provided code to allow M28AI to get the navmesh label (broadly, whether a particular part of the map is pathable by particular units) for a particular point on the map (which was needed for the optimised code mentioned above to work properly).

Competitveness
Various tweaks and improvements were made to make M28AI provide a harder challenge. As part of this I made sure that M28 was capable of beating RNGAI and/or DilliDalli AI on a number of maps (including those maps I'm aware of where they're capable of beating M27AI some of the time).

Rather than try and achieve >50% win rate on all these maps, I instead just aimed for a single win, and did the AI version of 'save scumming' with replays until M28AI either won the replay, or creating a new game on the map resulted in it winning. Outside of Astro Crater (where M28AI is able to beat M27AI a majority of the time) I didn't test M28AI against M27AI. This is because I realised early in the development of M28AI it was too demotivating to watch it get crushed by M27AI (wheras against RNGAI and DilliDalli AI even if it loses often it's a close fought game, providing me with motivation to try and improve M28AI as opposed to giving up).

As a rough count this process involved 109 tweaks and improvements to M28AI (examples of more impactful changes within this include T2 artillery construction, destroying obsolete radar, and basic logic for building and managing bombers).

Since I've played a grand total of 1 game against M28AI (just to make sure M28 didnt take control of my units when it was my ally against 2 enemy M28AI), I expect it will need a lot more changes to improve its performance against players and become 'cheese resistant'. Almost all games were 1v1s (since they're faster to test) so although the code was all written with the aim of working in team game scenarios, I expect these aspects of it logic will be a bit rougher around the edges.

Please let me know if you have any feedback, suggestions, or encounter bugs.

Progress update: The end of the beginning? or the beginning of the end?

A lot has happened with M28 in just 2 weeks, such that I'm hopeful that it's release date could be in a matter of weeks rather than months. To summarise what's been implemented:

• Naval logic, including building and upgrading naval factories, building naval units, and using naval units
• Novax
• Nukes
• TML
• T2 PD (although in a very limited/niche way comapred to M27)
• Ahwassa
• T3 arti
• Various small changes to improve its performance slightly (e.g. less likely to overflow mass, doing better on maps where it can only reach the enemy with air, logic for engineer order reprioritisation)

M28 now has all the core features that I'd set out to implement ahead of the release (some original points such as T3 bombers were pushed to be post-release but others like T3 arti and T2 PD that were planned for post-release have already been implemented). The main areas it needs work on are compatibility (making sure various niche scenarios work), and a new set of 'competitiveness' related goals I recently added - in short, making sure that while it may not be as good as M27 it should perform similar or better to the other custom AI when released.

The most exciting point for me personally though is the performance gains M28 is still suggesting it will provide compared with M27. When I'd previously ran it on the scenario I used for M27 for benchmarking (4v4 UEF on Africa) it was significantly faster, but that was before air and naval logic were added, and there was always the danger that I could spend half a year building an AI hoping it would run faster, only to find out it was slower. Now though it has almost all core features, and is still much faster (more than double the speed).

• For example, taking M27's 'benchmark' map of a 4v4 UEF mirror on Africa, M27 v67 took 167s to run the first 10m, and encountered stuttering for 20.8 seconds cumulatively.
• By contrast, M28 took 67s, and the cumulative time of freezes was just 0.4 seconds. The only main caveat to this is it freezes the game for a while (probably at least 1 minute) at the start of the game which is much longer than M27, but overall it should still be faster for games running 10+ minutes even after factoring this into account.
• Although not tested (as it's hard to produce an easily comparable scenario), I'm also confident that logic for T3 arti should be far lighter on the CPU than M27's approach which should help late game (as I suspect this was a likely culprit of some of the slowdown, along with M27's preference for swarms of T1 bombers).

Having only started following the FAF forums and news the start of this year I'd not come across the PC election before, but one thing that's surprised me is just how long the process has gone on for. To summarise the timings for the PC election that's almost now finished:

• 6 May 21 - election announced, candidates requested
• 30 May - Signups closed (includes 1 week extension to accommodate further debate following disqualification of certain candidates/clarification of conditions to apply)
• 6 June - voting begins
• 6 July - voting ends

So essentially, 3 months taken up with the PC election.

Regardless of whoever wins the current election, I'd suggest shortening this period significantly, as 1/4 of the PC's time will potentially be in 'election mode'.

I'd therefore suggest allowing 3 weeks for candidates, and then 3 weeks for voting, to halve the time involved overall, for next year's election, while still giving enough of a period to allow most people who might be on holiday at some point in that time to be able to stand and/or vote, without having the election go on for so long.

I'd also be curious if anyone has stats on the timeframe of when votes were cast, as I suspect they will be weighted significantly towards the start of the voting period (which would give further support for there not being a need for a whole month to vote). If this isn't the case and votes tend to be evenly spread over the time period (or even weighted more towards the end of the voting period) then it may still be worth retaining 4 weeks for voting.

Another thought (sorry for the double post) - could you record your ‘client briefing’, a bit like what Jip did a while ago with some of his tutorials for doing work on the mainFAF code base? That way anyone interested in contributing who misses what you talk through would still have a basic starting point to refer to

UEF
Order: The United Earth Federation is the successor to the empire that once controlled the galaxy. The UEF imposes its authority with durable armies designed to control territory.
Cybran
Freedom: The Cybran Nation began as a cyborg conspiracy to liberate workers enslaved by the Earth Empire. Because it began as a resistance movement using hit-and-run tactics, its armies are fast, stealthy, and versatile.
Aeon
Purity: The Aeon Illuminate is a religious order based on devotion and sacrifice. Followers of "The Way" are zealous and single-minded missionaries. Aeon units tend to excel at only one single purpose.
Seraphim
Revenge: The Seraphim are alien invaders from another dimension. Seeking revenge for a bio-weapon attack by the Earth Empire, and fearing humanity's genocidal intentions, Seraphim weapons create overwhelming destruction.

Progress update:
Most of my work (when I wasn't updating M27 for the rainbow cup) has been focused on having M28 function on maps with water - for now, without building a single naval or air unit. This took far longer than I expected despite using a very similar approach to how M28 handles land units, and I expect there will still be a number of issues to work through once I have M28 able to build naval units (although most of the hard work should be done now).

• Shields should be built to defend against enemy T3 arti/novax
• SAMs should be built across the map if lacking in air control (which M28 will since it doesnt built any air units!)
• Added logic to consider locations on an island by island basis, so engineers can move from one island to another, and establish a beachhead on an island to try and take control of it
• Put in place framework for 'water zones', which divide the map up into areas similar to what M28 does for land zones, so that naval forces can be handled on a localised manner. These zones are much larger than land zones in size, and for now use simplistic pathing which I expect I'll need to revisit at some point if I can speed up the logic for this.
• Combat units in water are now managed, and will consider fighting other water based threats or to move onshore (if amphibious) to fight for an island
• Engineers can now reclaim and build underwater mexes

I'm also going to start using branches for future updates (so if anyone's running the AI off github, the main release version is likely to be more stable as sometimes when I'm in the middle of a major update Ill post the changes to backup them, which could lead to the logic breaking if trying out the latest branch)

@thomashiatt said in Game Councilor:

Your only abuses of privilege, in my opinion, are radically altering the balance of the GC, and making numerous UI changes that are all enabled by default. If you make changes to the UI, either release them as UI mods, like everyone else does, or just do not enable them by default. Respect me enough to let me opt-in to your changes, or else I will complain about it.

I'm failing to see how providing a UI option that can be opted out of is an abuse of privilege. If a UI change will make things easier for newer players, then it makes sense for it to be enabled by default. Also worth noting how you comment you'd be pleased if Jip focused on fixing bugs as they are found, yet the GC change you complain about I think was a bugfix. From what I've seen Jip also keeps in contact with the balance team about changes that will have a balance impact and fixing that bug is hardly an abuse of his position (it'd be a different matter if the balance team told Jip not to fix the GC issue and Jip ignored them and put through the change anyway and refused to revert it, but that would be a matter for the balance team to raise anyway. Tagada's also already flagged that the GC is being rebalanced so I expect it'll be in the next balance patch).

While I'm no fan of the factory changes, Jip's worked wonders with FAF over the past 1.5 years. You may not be interested in graphics or performance but other players are (making up a 99.9% figure to support your argument also does you no credit). Even if you're not interested in them, changes that in the long term significantly improve FAF's performance and/or graphics are a good thing since they make the game more attractive to new players as well as increasing the potential pool of players (you dont need as good a CPU to play on most FAF maps). Jip's also clearly listened to the feedback on factory changes (per the various forum threads inviting suggestions), so while in the short term the factory change may not be an improvement, hopefully in the long term it is.

Jip's also significantly improved documentation on FAF and made it significantly easier for current and future contributors to improve FAF (another of the stated aims in the original posts in this thread).

It's one thing to give Jip feedback that you don't like a change, quite another to accuse Jip of an abuse, while the changes that prompted your accusation related to attempts to improve the graphics of the game (which as Jip rightly pointed out was one of the key areas of focus flagged in his post above). Overall the changes Jip's brought have significantly improved FAF, and I hope Jip doesn't get disheartened reading comments such as yours accusing him of an abuse of privilege.

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

v230 Update
11 changes, including:

• Cybran destroyers shouldn't try and kite enemies on land
• Changed M28's 'forced navy personality' approach for adaptive M28 on island start points so it only has a chance of applying (with a chance of an air personality, and a chance of the normal advaptive personality)
• Adjustments to how fatboy kites (including better detection of approaching enemies and changing when it runs from the enemy vs runs to the nearest rally point)
• Increased the number of engineers to be sent to dangerous zones to reclaim

Acknowledgements

• Vortex and Azraeel - 2 QUIET naval replays and comments

v229 Update
Smaller update with 6 changes, primarily fixing some naval issues:

• Text markers that M28 places for teammates should be removed after 90 seconds
• M28 should be less likely to think it has air control with small numbers of inties, and shouldn't try and attack air targets near the enemy base if it lacks air control
• Fixed several issues with how M28 calculates the nearest enemy naval unit in a zone (which would lead it to ignoring units in the same zone as it for parts of the logic)

Acknowledgements

• Vortex - QUIET naval replay against v227

Agreed would be nice for a range boost (so they have at least the same range as the best destroyer range but cruisers and battleships would outrange them), - could always buff the Aeon cruiser range slightly since its a weak attack anyway to compensate/provide Aeon with a T2 counter. That way there'd both be more unit variety and unit counterplay.

Land combat has T2 PD that outranges T2 tanks, but is outranged by another T2 unit (MMLs), which in turn can be defended against with TMD, and the game feels more interesting with that as an option than if say T2 PD were outranged by T2 tanks. Even with fixed shields being buildable on land to cover T2 PD, and T2 arti being available (that outrange any land unit) firebases aren't oppressive (while for naval maps outside of protecting your naval factory and the occasional pond with a chokepoint, there'd be less value from a 'naval firebase' than on land, so less risk of it being too powerful).

Another nice sideeffect is it'd provide a potential (defensive) counter option to sera subhunters (who currently outrange torpedo launchers other than HARMs)

v228 Update aka the 'Vindex beat 1.5 M28 AIx update'
17 changes, 15 of which were based on a replay where Vindex beat 1.5 AIx on the Ditch, including:

• 8 improvements and bugfixes to M28's 'telesnipe defence' logic, including making it no longer think the laser can be dodged as though it was a t1 arti; the ACU should no longer stop running after a short while of being chased by a tele-laser com; it should recognise the enemy has a laser ACU sooner (if it has visual of it); PD should be built preemptively to defend (instead of waiting for the teleport to start); and other changes
• Fixed an issue where M28 would try and drop plateaus but choose a tiny land zone to drop, causing it to drop early (not on the plateau)
• Reduced the core base T2 builder so it no longer send all engineers to build T2 PD in response to a single heavily outnumbered enemy tank
• Air facs should be more likely to be built on larger maps once M28 has 4 land facs in its main base
• (unrelated change to the replay) T1-T2 skirmishers shouldn't be built if the enemy has T3 land.

Acknowledgements

• Vindex - 4 replays against M28 AIx on the ditch

Trophy Award
A rare update to the trophy holder - @Vindex is now the holder of the Sladow trophy for beating M28 at 1.5 AIx on the ditch - the first time I've seen anyone manage the feat!

I'm not sure, as the method used by players will be via the UI, I've made a note to potentially look at in a future release

"UEF has worst land scouts."
They have some advantages to the others. While you dismiss their extra DPS, it means they can kill enemy land scouts and radar much faster. Personally I prefer them to selens because they have better radar range (which is why I build land scouts) and are much cheaper. Spirit's by far my favourite scout though.
"T1 bots...the only scenario where comparably good DPS and speed matter is when raiding poorly defended structures or attacking units that have no ability to defend themselves against land attacks"
The main use case for T1 bots (with the potential exception of the flare) is to attack units that cant defend themselves (engineers), so speed is very useful

"T2 heavy tanks: UEF Pillar...Why does it have the lowest amount of HP...Does it really tie well into UEF doctrine?"
Compared to the other factions' tanks the pillar has more health per mass cost so you can still argue it fits with the UEF doctrine (i.e. a UEF T2 tank army will have more health than a mass equivalent tank army from another faction).

"UEF Parashield is straight up worse than Aeon Asylum" If UEF's slight faction identity is units that are generally 'tankier', Aeons is its focus on shields (shield instead of nano for its ACU, shielded T2+T3 tanks, T2+T3 shield generators that focus on health over size), so it's reasonable to me that the 'shield' faction has a stronger shield.

(Titan+Percy - others have already covered)

"UEF Fatboy is a very weird and too much of a situational experimental compared to something like Cybran Monkeylord"
It's relevant for longer in the game than a monkeylord which is usually good as an early experimental and/or to try and surprise the enemy. If you can protect it from air and TML snipes then it ends up being quite a good value over time unit, and can force the enemy to either retreat to T2 arti, or push in (so provided you have enough percies supporting your fatboy that can be good for you). It's not that strong, but it still has a use.

"Tier 3 stationary shield generator" - Seraphim costs the most but yeah generally Seraphim has the best shield, and then the other factions have different focus (UEF on size, Aeon on strength, Cybran has the worst shields but at least have a very cheap t2 shield which also has use)

As to whether units follow the suggestions of a UEF doctronine/faction focus, agreed there are some exceptions.

@thinker I don't see the benefit of slowing the game down significantly as a blanket change - there are already many maps where the game is decided at the tech1 stage (e.g. 5km 1v1) where someone who eco's early is likely to be punished.
Where slowing down gameplay might have a beneficial impact is on larger maps (40km+) since the FAF gameplay on those strongly encourages focusing on a game-ender or experimentals (due to how long it takes for units you build at your base to reach the enemy/do damage - so there's far less point to T1). I could see the use case of a mod that adjusts FAF balance to work better on such maps by making the T1-T3 stages more important, although I'm not sure what the precise changes would need to be (as a 'finger in the air' I'd guess doubling costs and build times for all HQs and eco buildings might help). However from the description of your changes I dont think it'd help much - you're increasing only the build time, meaning you have a slightly larger cost to build some engineers to assist those buildings with upgrading (e.g. 8 T1 engineers mean a t1 mex upgrades at the same rate to t2 as before; you only have to build those 8 T1 engineers once though, and it shouldnt take that long to get; meanwhile t1 mexes build fast enough that even with 5x you could probably just have 2 engineers build t1 mexes in pairs and quickly get your initial mexes in your base area to fund more engineers). I.e. since the mass cost isn't different I feel like it'd only slow down things slightly, and still lead to 'rush experimentals/game-ender' on an 80km map.

Unless the enemy ACU is stationary there's no guarantee you'll hit - it's challenging to time it right for a moving target that's moving predictably, let alone unpredictably, especially if the ACU is operating close to gun range (as opposed to much closer than that). By going TML you'll be forgoing defensive upgrades that make the ACU much stronger in combat. A mobile shield can also potentially block the TML missile (unless the ACU is operating close to the edge of the shield bubble). It also will only snipe them if they're sub-6k health limiting its use to either firing when it wont snipe them to try and put some damage on the ACU and force it to retreat, or waiting until they're low enough that they either die or are so low your ACU/units can kill them before they retreat. Finally, the enemy should already have a good idea you have a TML ACU since chances are you'll have used it to attack mexes (in part as it's not good enough given the above limitations that you'd get TML over shield/nano to just use in combat); so they should know to be careful getting too close to you, and to not keep their ACU stationery if 6k unexpected damage on it would lose them the game.

I'd hate to see this eliminated, since it's great to see when it's attempted (whether it's a success or not) in casts, and for the ACU TML user provides an interesting risk-reward option - the closer you get to them the greater your chance of hitting, but the greater the risk you die if you miss, while to a lesser extent the person considering attacking the ACU also has to weigh up the risks of say getting closer to their ACU when they think they can get a kill (to make it harder for them to retreat/get out of range) vs the increased risk of a TML hitting.

That said, I'm not saying the TML upgrade as a whole isn't powerful, just that this particular potential usage of it IMO makes the gameplay more varied and interesting (so if TML upgrade was considered too powerful as a whole taking the more niche ACU snipe potential into account, I'd rather the upgrade was made a bit weaker more generally by say increasing the cost; also because the proposed changes like speed and damage would make it inconsistent with a normal TML which wouldn't be intuitive)

v227 Update
13 changes, including:

• Various adjustments to air anti-air (i.e. asf) logic, increasing the number M28 wants to think it has air control (including a bugfix) and having them be more likely to follow strat bombers to protect them
• If M28 wants to build an experimental, but first wants more T3 units, and lacks power, it should be more likely to build a pgen instead of a land factory
• Fewer pre-emptive SAMs should be built if the enemy lacks a nearby air threat and M28 could be spending the mass ecoing.

Acknowledgements

• Vortex – QUIET v225 and v226 replays

v226 Update
12 Updates, including:

• Refinements to Inties/ASFs to make them more cautious if the enemy has an air threat in an adjacent zone to the one it plans on defending, or if lots of airAA units have been sent for refueling
• Several tweaks to the first bomber for some rare cases where they'd get stuck not attacking a unit, and to consider hover-bombing before firing their first bomb
• ACUs should be more likely to run from approaching land experimentals
• 4 mod specific changes, including removing AA threat from ACUs in QUIET, recognising if bombers in QUIET/LOUD fire salvos, and increasing the AirAA M28 wants to defend friendly targets

Acknowledgements

• Vortex - QUIET replay on big wonder
• Little Tank – Replay and highlighting a strange M28 message (where it just said “1” in chat, when it should’ve been saying it had gifted a mex)
• Zhanghm – Log with some error messages relating to a unit mod