AI-Swarm

This mod has been in development for about a Year, Now. My Goal was to create a well rounded AI, that would be able to do Navy, Land, and Air. I wanted it to be able to face any challenge from 1v1 to 1v8 Situation. My Goal was also to make an AI, that doesnt depend on Multipler to win the Game. I, Also wanted him to be good in all situations be that on a map with less mass or a map with more mass, and I wanted him to be able to adapt to any situation and be strong in T1 to T4 Stages.
Requires AI-Uveso For The AI Map Marker Generator in the Options

Installation - AI-Swarm is available on the FAF Vault. Search for 'AI-Swarm'.

Swarm plays very good on Open 10km Maps. It can play some 5km maps (Note: I havn't tested him very much on these maps). It, also can play a mean navy on 20km maps or 10km Maps. His land game isnt the best on 20km maps depending on the type of 20km map. He doesn't play very well on "Gap" Maps.

Special Thanks to
Sprouto, and Uveso: For Basically teaching me everything i know about AI, Especially Sprouto, who without him. I'd be not close to where I am today. Uveso, too for helping me fix many bugs, and proving the base for Swarm. Both of these kind fellas gave me motivation to never give up.

Relent0r: For Basically giving me the competitive motivation to improves Swarm 1v1 capability and Relent0r was a good sparring partner! He, also helped me with a few things

Evan and BullydozerNoob: For Being Some High Leveled Players, that 1v1'd Swarm many times and gave me VALUABLE Information and help!

Jammer, Mhad, DFViper, and Clarko: For being long time players and testers of Swarm

Everyone Else Who Made Swarm, what it is today 8-)

3 New Sub AI's:

-AI: Swarm Terror/AIx: Swarm Terror : This is your Standard Swarm AI.
-AIx: Swarm Eternal : This one cheats harder as the game goes on and Cheats harder when its losing. (mostly for Fun)
-AIx: Swarm Test : For Testing Purposes

Map Suggestions

10km:
Adaptive Wonder Open
Adaptive Hilly Platuea
Adaptive Diversity
Miracle
Crash Site
Crash Site - 1v1
Mavys Marsh
Abhor
Adaptive Pyramid
Adaptive Morning Prayer
Adaptive Hansen Gorge
Open Palms
Oracle
Cadmium Green
Hollow

20km:
Adaptive Metir
Adaptive Maridia (Only 1 AI)
Point of Reason
Adaptive Skadi
Seton's Clutch
Seraphim Glaciers
Chiron
Osiris

Updates will be Posted On This Forums and the AI Development Server!!

AI Development Discord Server
https://discord.gg/ChRfhB3

@FtXCommando said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:

They aren't "OP" in the sense of being a dominant strategy but they promote inherently toxic gameplay. The only thing that should combine mass + e + flexible BP is the ACU itself. When other units do it, you open up the ability to do things like protecting infinite eco in a single, condensed area. Lategame eco should be about factoring in the risk/reward of additional eco adjacency efficiency and additional risk of exploding mass fabs. Not make boys and forget.

They should just be nerfed into irrelevancy or even removed just for the sake of promoting a healthier game.

100% Agreed.

To key in on this performance and development large phase that faf is currently going through. I am working on really improving functionality and performance of ALL core AI code on faf so helpfully for you AI Players you'll get even more benefit once these patches come out.

Very exciting stuff that jip has allowed us to do

Ideas, that are dumb ofc

1. The Othuum is a siege tank correct? Why does this "Siege Tank" have less health than both bricks and pervicals? The classific of this unit makes no sense really. A siege tank is supposed to be extremely beefy, but currently, balance shows this as a glass cannon with lots of DPS and no health.

2. Does anyone use Harbinger Reclaim Ability? (Just a Question)

3. Purposed reduction of Engineering Stations Buildpower to encourage more mobile engineer usage?

4. This is a restated purposal but the Reduction of t3 extractor income to a lower value, maybe 12 with ringed income being 18?

5. T2 Scout Planes? Since I saw a pull request on the GitHub to give Aeon and Seraphim; engineering stations before. I will propose the introduction of T2 Scout Planes.

6. Removal of Veterancy from all units except SACUs, Commanders, and Experimentals If you want the stats; this will increase sim speed by 2 - 4 sim speed. We have tested this in AI Development, many times. I will give data if wanted.

This is a topic of ideas so bring them on, criticism is welcomed

Thomas has the right ideas so, i think clans should really be about getting new players into the game and right habits and such. Galactic War is pretty essential to that, and i think after TMM - GW was the plan? Atleast thats what i remember being said.

Making Reclain like 20% of the original unit cost or even lower will make gameplay 100x better honestly you'll get a lot more action, lot more risk, but overtime you can still lose from reclaim war. This also fights turtling and not only that you dont have to worry about losing the game so fast due to one battle, also slows the pace of the game especially late game where shit tons of reclaim that causes the game to slog.

@HoujouSatoko

@ftxcommando said in **Platinum question**:

Repair station for land units sounds like a pathfinding noobtrap

You can create an aura around such a station if you were to even consider adding that. The aura would essentially be a range in which it repairs and such like being attached to the actual staging fixes those clumping issues and such.

@TheWheelie

Late game should have options... Right now your kind of forced into this standoff late game where the middle of the map is a wasteland with tons of reclaim your just licking your lips at and I understand reclaim is very vital to the Game of course.

I'm not saying remove but it's so important to the game in some many aspects its hurting more then helping. Every T3 you lose is basically 1k mass on the enemy's doorstep which may look good but it's really not good, because you end up rewarding certain bad behaviors and punishing certain gameplay styles.

This is where stuff like turtling and being aggressive diverge Because reclaim will always lend in favor of the defender but late game it lends so hard into that said defenders favor your basically forced to play like him even if you have 80% of the map, you cant attack with your large useless army too risky too punishing especially if he has lots of pd and his own big base. You lose 20 pervicals there goes 20k mass to the enemy for example.

By late game theres so much reclaim you might as well not even have mexes. What I'm stressing is this is just one step towards creating a healthier playing environment. Where you can be proactive late game instead of it being almost a 100% chance of mass economical artillery/experimental spam.

If the game wasnt so stalematey you could play 20km more proactively, because you could actually attack, you could invest into these larger pushes without having to worrying if you lose this single reclaim field the game is just cooked. 20km is a prime example of economy being extremely out of hand. Most of the time theres simply too many mexes, too much early game reclaim which turns into a super quick stalemate because you reach t3 and t4 so quick that reclaim is pretty much out of control, everyone has these large bases full of ras coms, Sams, Pd, And Armie. That any push any proactive gameplay is immediately shut down because even if you gain ground it's done nothing to the enemy in fact you've probably done more dmg to yourself given the enemy more reclaim and demoralized yourself into this slog fest of a game.

@casternumerouno imo TMM should be only random gen B)

I would happily agree with FTX, and i dont believe we should be balancing the game for PvE though maybe a differently balanced gamemode because of a AI Developer, its honestly really hard to do real ai improvements and work and etc with the way balance is right now.

To simply describe balance issues, bascially the balance is forcing us as AI Developers to develop our AI in a very specific way that i keep in mind most of dont like in reality and simply put the AI cant keep up in the way the balance is right now. The game is just too fast especially mid game and late game and even early game. Eco in FAF scales too quickly, The Meta is too strong and the balance is restrictive on what you can actually do in the game. I mean like seriously you do it the meta way or the highway. Thats how FAF balance has always been.

I have played LOUD, and ill say it here and right now, that the balance on LOUD is a lot more fun because i have choice and that choice lets me play the game more happily and more creatively. Thats what should be important and fun. I feel like we stress that we are a pvp community so much that we forgot
Quoted From FTX "That half the faf games are launched with a single team" which means in reality we look over 50% of faf in favor of the pvp community when we should be balancing ourselves truly.

@ftxcommando said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

With that all being said, I wouldn't even mind a change for t3 arty to cost like 135k BT and 80-85k mass and game enders to be 30-50k mass more expensive in general.

why tho, i mean i agree but like that's a crazy uptick in already expensive units how are you going to fill that in. I'm asking what game differences are you looking for... ? More experimentals being thrown at each-other i mean yes that's exciting for casters and shit but like???

I agree with Blodir if you are going to nerf the shit out of late game then you have to make other things more interesting.

@casternumerouno imo TMM should be only random gen B)

@ftxcommando please stop being so confrontation to direct comments. Respect my statement and piss off

Just remove it if you cant cope and accept suggestions
Btw literally no one plays 80km on LOUD fyi

just remove it or make something that can shot them down and you have to rebuild them. Easy.

Reworking T3 Engineers to be more BP Efficient will be amazing!
I 100% disagree with a HARMs unless unless you fix ground firing which makes harms the worst naval unit in the game.

Reworking Bulwarks would be a god sent and SACU rework even if mini would be great too

I wholeheartedly agree with FtX's statement here, this adds a lot for UEF and doesn't really make any GIGA balance changes.

It's kind of weird how fast balance swings when you introduce SAMs vs Air or how fast the balance swings when the SAMs Disappear vs Air ( in a certain area). Air can sometimes feel very oppressive in Teamgames, it's extremely different in 1v1s tho where Air is just a great support role and can offer an upper hand, but in Teamgames where one players can invest fully in Air. It can get oppressive with how easy it is to all in snipes and how losing air is just an instant game lost which can sometimes be frustrating.

Soul Ripper is too slow to be effective biggest buff for Soul Ripper would be a Movement Buff & Alpha Damage, would make it a quick ambush experimental (flying monkeylord basically)

@tagada you have my attention when you said improve dynamism of phases of t3 and t4 sir. I'm content, the gods have spoken to me.

I do have a suggest for prolonging mid-t3 maybe late-t3 is probably very uhhh not agreeable idk, but making SACUs be the only ones that can build Experimentals maybe even nukes/smds/t3-t4-strategic-artillery but that'd be a giga balance change so I doubt it'd be considered but I decided I'd suggest it anyhow. (please show mercy xD)

@ftxcommando said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

Please don’t do big changes for no reason just to shake up meta, thank you.

True & Fair, that's not exactly what im saying I'm kinda of saying what you are saying. " My problem here is that (some) problematic units that fall into clown tier are identified" -> "the buffs are too marginal so the units go from FF-tier to D-tier"

I think that sums up the complaining.

I 100% agree with bi montly iterative patches as Blodir said. This "balance patch" literally will not change gameplay too much except for the nuke balance and air exps maybe.
Although I feel the biggest point is Blodir's comment of "U are allowed to change multiple stats at once to compensate"
I feel like these patches are just a little hesitate to change balance in any impactful way you know to make the game feel a little newer in someways. I don't like to bring it up but kinda how SC2 does it.
Don't get me wrong I'm no 2400 like Tagada & I havn't won any tournaments but like if you are going to make a balance patch why not shake up the balance more then just nerfing some late game units in which I believe wont even make too much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. The biggest one for me is changing Ahwassa Dmg Radius from 20 -> 19? Like what... that literally makes no difference. 1000$ no body will notice this in game and it won't affect anything. Ayslum is 40 -> 45, it's ok i don't mind it. Although yet another small change although probably will be kinda impactful depends I don't think you'll ever build a lot of them (I'm talking like building 10+ I feel like it's usually like 5-7 you build to cover an army + acu.

Sniper bot nerf is a god send. I don't know if its overnerf. That's not really my field of expertise lol, but a nerf was definitely needed.

Ripper unironically needed a buff not a nerf lol
T2 UEF Destroyer change is good.

"Could be tackling bigger design issues and actually making significant changes" what a dream... (Also im not trying to be toxic in this post so don't berate me) but seriously tho what a dream for tackling real design issues.