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 which it adapts 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). You can also limit the number of units that M28 can hover-bomb or try dodging shots at once.

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 1000-1200. 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 (or team) 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 build rate) M28 on a 15km+ mapgen
  
  Current holder - Radde, Yew (v285)

• 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 - Zwaffel (v284)

The trophy is awarded to the first person or team who beats an equal number of opposing M28 AIx players with the specified settings or harder, against a more recent version of M28 than the current trophy holder.

Previous trophy winners
Radde trophy

• Radde (Pre-v53)
• Radde (v54)
• Radde (v55)
• Radde and KuhwaKlimakleber (v56)
• Radde and Mhad (v58 1.5 resource)
• Triangleleaf (v57)
• Radde, Mhad and GhillieWolf (v59 1.5 resource)
• Radde and KuhwaKlimakleber (v86)
• Radde (v98)
• DillyDally (v101)
• Radde and Mhad (v168)
• Radde, GhillieWolf and Mhad (v186)
• Radde and Microplastic (v239)
• Zwaffel (aka WaffelzNoob) (v246)
• Radde and Microplastic (v249 1.5 resource)
• Radde and KuhwaKlimakleber (v269)
• Radde, Vortex7547, Mhad and kuritew (v282)
• Zwaffel (v284, 1.5 resource)
• Radde, Yew (v285)

Sladow trophy:

• Sladow (v39 1.7 Arcane)
• Radde (v54 Winter duel)
• Radde (v55 1.7 Winter duel
• Triangleleaf (v56 1.8 Winter duel)
• Triangleleaf (v57 2.2 Winter duel)
• Radde (v59 1.7 Winter duel (trophy requirements subsequently amended to exclude maps smaller than 5km))
• Radde (v80 Xander adaptive)
• Radde (v81 Xander adaptive)
• Vindex (v227 The Ditch)
• Emerald (aka HydraPokeForever) (v253 Theta Passage)
• Radde (v282, 1.7 AIx)
• Zwaffel (v284, 1.7 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 (v70-81 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
  v75-78 - small bugfixes and rating support
  v79-81 - FAF navigational mesh incorporated

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

Had a bit of time inbetween M28 updates - have done a first pass at a mod that allows you to set build and resource modifiers for each player individually via the AI options part of game options (as I was too lazy to figure out the table reference for the game options section!)

I've only done very basic testing to see that it applies it to the ACU as I have limited time, so let me know if there are any bugs/issues with it.

Mod is called Player Modifier PCx - is on FAF vault and also github:
https://github.com/maudlin27/Player-Modifier-PCx

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.

Re Q2, sucks to see the bubble shield nerfed so hard for what already was a unit I'd rarely see. Using mass costs for simplicity, before it was 7600 mass (2100+2000+3500) for a 55k shield [i.e. 7.2 shield per mass] that would (when discharged or down) regenerate at 256 health/s (150 when up).
Now it's 5200 mass (1700+3500) for a 22k shield [i.e. 4.2 shield per mass] that would (when discharged or down) regenerate at 200 health/s (160 when up).

As a comparison, Sera T3 mobile shield although significantly smaller, benefits from far better speed of 4 (2.2 for the SACU), and costs 720 mass for a 10k shield [i.e. 13.9 shield per mass] that when down regenerates at 250 health/s (133 when up).

In terms of potential value from a UEF perspective, a percy gets 5.6 health per mass investment; granted this shield protects from aoe damage, but at the same time it also takes damage faster because it's easier to hit with indirect projectiles (far more so given its size compared to other mobile shields).

Before the shield was so high in health that it could both be used as an alternative for base defences in some scenarios (e.g. I found it made a good tele defence for smd/arti/game enders compared to static shields where a SACU could teleport in and its death explosion could kill the static shields), and was an option for covering slower attacking units with the defensive buff justifying delaying the army a bit. The shield would recharge painfully slowly and coupled with the slow SACU speed it was difficult to get continued value from them (compared to mobile shields).

Now it feels like that's been made even harder - it still has the really slow speed compared to other mobile shields, but no longer has the high health to compensate. It's also (vs single target damage) more efficient to just get percies vs getting a mix of percies and shield SACUs. I presume the intention is therefore for it to no longer be used primarily as a shield unit, but instead as a hybrid combat-shield unit, but also one where the increase in damage spill means it's worse in numbers (with its large shield size harming building it in larger numbers disproportionately compared to the other mobile shields, since it's more likely to overlap with other shields; the bulwark would be a useful counterpoint for where a high shield size can still work, but the bulwark is significantly faster and the shield size so large it doesnt need to be on the frontline). But if it's only intended to be built as a single unit to support an army, it then works out even more inefficient unless the gateway was being built for other SACUs (maybe the wider SACU changes mean it would be). So I expect I can still use it for teledefence (cheaper vs SACU tele, weaker vs tele-laser), but other mobile shield uses for it feel much weaker.

Appreciate you primarily wanted in game testing, whereas I usually approach things from a more theoretical 'if I had the apm to use this unit however I wanted, what use cases can I see for it', since I can then both have my AI apply those use cases, and use them myself as a player occasionally. However I'm really struggling to see how I'd be better off building percies, a gateway, and 1 or more of the bubble shield units vs just building percies (given the shield gives less health than the percy),

Also just checking how things compare at the t2 mobile shield stage re shield health vs combat unit health, t2 mobile shield gives 3k health for 220 mass (while being fast moving and recharging much faster). A pillar gives 1500 health for 198 mass. It's a similar story for othuums - i.e. T2 and T3 mobile shields give significantly more health per mass invested than an equivalent combat unit, compared to the new bubble shield SACU which gives less (so maybe its combat potential makes up for this, but then it's less of a mobile shield than before, when the rationale for the change was that it was being rebalanced with mobile shields in mind?)

v305 Update
29 changes, mostly from getting M28 to solo FA mission 1 with a 1.0 modifier (down from 1.3 before), including:

• Gunships should consider attacking nearby enemy units that have moved too far away from nearby enemy AA cover (even if the enemy overall has too much AA in the area)
• If a player's base is destroyed, M28 should consider assigning their 'base' to a further away factory (most relevant in campaign missions with timed expansions as otherwise M28 would try to avoid rallying units near the enemy base that it had wiped out some time ago, and it'd previously only reassess the enemy base location when the map expanded)
• Engineers shouldn't dodge a bomber if they're under a shield
• Factories to be paused when stalling energy should only not be paused if they're building engineers (and more are needed), vs before (where they wouldn't be paused if more engineers were needed regardless of what they were building)
• Fixed a bug that wasn't increasing stealthed ACU aggression, and increased ACU aggression more generally when high health if the nearest enemy units are a bit too far away from the main enemy army.
• Shoulder drones should be treated as engineers now (and no longer paused in sim city mode)
• In sim city mode players now have control of transports instead of M28

Acknowledgements

• @nomennominandum Highlighting bug with shoulder drones being paused in sim city mode (and suggestion re transports being included in player control)

v304 Update
25 changes from having M28 complete missions 4-6 of the Aeon campaign, including:

• T3 arti should consider other zones for targets if its first two fail to yield any targets (most likely where the units are outside the playable area), and should avoid firing near objectives that are to be captured (like the black sun control centre)
• TML missiles should be dodged once M28 has intel of the missile
• Increased pathing checks for land units to recognise when they can't path to a target location due to the playable area being smaller
• Naval HQs should be upgraded sooner if the old HQ is destroyed and M28 has support factories of a higher tech level

Thanks for the feedback, I'll make a note to include transports in the units that can be controlled (hopefully for v305)

In the case of SACUs though the problem is you can switch their upgrades around at will so there's nothing stopping turning a RAS SACU into a combat SACU (other than it being inefficient) so I'll probably leave them out for now.

Another significant advantage not mentioned is build time - you can build a soulripper in the time it takes for roughly 8 wailers - so it's great if you have lots of energy, mass, t3 engis, and want to quickly take advantage of an air win by your team.

I see it as a weak to average unit - not as good as czar, and nowhere near as good as ahwassa, but I find myself using it occasionally (usually where I've not managed my air grid scaling that well and find I have mass to spend).

Would be nice if it could have a bit higher health regen I suppose to lean more into the raiding role that iirc was the justification behind the previous changes that made it cheaper and weaker, but I'd be wary of buffing too heavily

v303 Update

• 2 Updates for Aeon M1 (redundancies for an issue where naval factories could get blocked by engineers they'd just built)
• 3 Changes for Aeon M2 (Getting T1 PD at the start of the game, self-destructing friendly units on an island with nowhere to attack when near the unit cap)
• 14 changes for Aeon M3 (including various adjustments to make the ACU both retreat into water when dying, and then pop out of the water to attack nearby land units, and adding a redundancy to cover cases where M28 loses its power and doesn't realise, so doesnt build more)
• 12 Changes based on an AI vs AI replay, including engineers not trying to capture part-built T1 mexes, ACUs being more aggressive, and plateau factories being less likely to build units if there are no enemies on the plateau and they're stalling mass.

v302 Update

• New sim city mode - M28 handles giving combat units orders while you focus on ordering around engineers and deciding what factories will build. Available as part of the "M28: Combined AI-Human armies?" game settings (along with the MOBA mode)
• 3 changes based on AI survival replay, including making units less likely to suicide into an enemy firebase, and prompting if the players haven't allowed M28 full control of attack waves
• 17 changes for Cybran Mission 6, including making aircraft carriers run sooner from enemy naval threats, mobile sonar no longer receiving orders as though it is an amphibious unit, and gunships and torpedo bombers being more likely to attack a nearby enemy if it is too far forward from AA defences in the area (even if the AA defences are too much for a more general assault)

Acknowledgements

• Rama - Highlighting M28 replay involving the AI survival mod

v301 Update

• 20 changes based on Cybran Mission 5, including M28 having a chance to treat another location as its core base if its core base is destroyed (so it's not completely out of the game); Land units that outrange the enemy navy should proceed with attacking other land threats if the navy is out of range; ACUs should engage non-combat enemies in their range instead of ignoring them when building; Cybran destroyers owned by players can toggle amphibious mode when built if M28 has control of them; Land units should be more aggressive against short ranged direct fire units that they can't see (and hope they get visual of them) rather than retreating and waiting for radar.
• 4 fixes for games in LOUD, relating to some error messages, Seraphim unit callbacks not triggering, and recognising the range of units with a depth charge attack.
• 5 changes to reclaim, including fixing an issue where engineers were meant to be prioritising high value reclaim in a nearby area but were instead getting the closest reclaim.
• Various changes to eliminate several error messages periodically appearing (relating to 'invalid args to yield' and 'call expected but got number') which mostly related to where I was trying to exit a function early by doing 'return nil'.

Acknowledgements

• Nomander – Providing a solution for toggling amphibious mode on player controlled Cybran destroyers
• Heaven1508 – Providing a log containing some error messages in a LOUD game relating to M28

Realised I forgot to post the v299 changelog

v299 Update

• 9 changes specific to Cybran mission 4's logic for not attacking the mainframe (due to it causing mission failure) to make units a bit less cautious around outlying areas and hence less likely for M28 to be stuck in a stalemate
• 11 other changes from Cybran mission 4, including fortifying the mainframe nodes, allowing M28 to get slightly closer to the unit cap before self destructing units, and having ACUs be aggressive if they are pushed to the edge of the map (so they dont just keep trying to run while being fired on)
• 2 Changes from other replays tweaking some changes made in recent updates

v300 Update
Since it's version 300, this was a very special update!

I forgot to disable debugging options when uploading v299, realised an hour later, and so v300 is just removing those debugging options...

You can do the same with gunships - group them up with distribute orders, and you can stack 80 gunships in one spot! If the group now attacks an enemy they only see a few gunships, so 80 vs 80 specter gunships the grouped will always lose. Generally it will be the ungrouped may lose 10 units.