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

v313 Update
21 changes, including:

• Ythothas should be more likely to move towards the enemy base instead of attack-moving
• Air slots should be more likely to assist mex upgrades over land factory HQ upgrades
• Upgraded ACUs should be less likely to run from enemy PD
• MAA should be more likely to be built for nearby experimentals, and should then shadow the experimental
• Asfs should be less likely to take a fight they expect to lose to try and save a friendly experimental

Acknowledgements

• Radde - Xander replay which prompted most of the changes this update

v312 Update
20 changes, including:

• Fixing several issues with how M28 plays in the steam version, such as a major bug with the lobby settings mod (that caused AIx to have weird and changing modifiers), and a bug that meant it wouldnt drop plateaus
• More battleships should be built if the enemy has heavy shielding within their range
• Combat units such as ilshies that outrange enemy units should be more likely to kite

Acknowledgements

• Zwaffel - Highlighting a replay where M28 broke due to the Unit Cap Removed mod being used. M28 will now warn at the start of the game that the mod breaks it.

v311 Update

16 changes for various misc issues spotted in a couple of AI vs AI games Unfortunately I lost most of these changes when clicking on an old M28 replay (as I'd forgotten to save them, and loading the old replay caused the M28 code to be wiped), so hopefully I didn't introduce any errors when re-adding them 'blind' (i.e. without being able to test on the replay in question to confirm they worked without errors). Changes include things like:

• Fixing a weird bug that could cause asfs to chase an enemy asf that it has no chance of catching (weird in that the code to stop this had no apparent errors, but would only run if moved to a standalone function)
• making some improvements to strats so they're more likely to ignore low level AA threat and ignore asfs that arent trying to chase them down
• Small improvements if a paragon is built (plateaus no longer have a chance of building a land experimental that cant reach the enemy; combat units are given to teammates to free up unit cap; more engineers should be built and used to build experimentals outside the main base)

Also added one change by request - fatboys (and other land experimentals) owned by M28Easy should, after a delay of a few second, move away from a ythotha lightning storm (so this remains much weaker than M28's normal logic, and also worse than what even a below average player should manage by way of micro)

@c0rtex Make sure you have "UI mod tools" enabled as well as "4z0t's ScoreBoard"

@Nuggets said:

@maudlin27 If a game ender (or even t3 arty, but mostly enders) isnt seen in a game because the game is too short, its kind of an irrelevant comment, no? No offense.

It's very relevant. If a game-ender doesn't feature in games that get to the T4 stage, then the T4 stage on such maps was self-evidently not "too short". It'd potentially also be an indication that the T4 phase could be too long on such maps. It makes no sense to focus solely on the tiny % of games where game-enders feature and decide only based on those games whether the T4 phase is too long. Game-enders serve a valuable role in preventing very long protracted games, and so account should be taken not just of the games they did end, but the games they didn't (that reached T4), and whether that range of time is considered desirable (while also factoring in that even if it was decided that games should be able to go on for many hours like in LOUD, nerfing them into the ground would also decrease the variety of units and strategies, which I'd see as a negative).

The strategy to "rush" enders will still be there, just take longer. Thats the entire point. Give invasions / pushes more of a chance.
Saying pushes / invasions are generally stronger is just objectively wrong. This is not my opinion this is a fact.

It's very much an opinion whether T4 pushes are stronger than game-enders. Something that is fact would be saying something like 'In 4v4 tournament games featuring a large cash prize and top rated FAF players, there were several games where one team focused on a game-ender, their opposing team focused on a T4 push, and the team focusing on the T4 push won' (while an opinion would then be if I said I think that shows that T4 pushes can be more effective than game-enders).

Not for the games I play in (mostly 3v3 mapgens)

• I can't remember the last 3v3 TMM game I had which featured a game-ender, possibly it never has. So no, I don't think it's too short due to them.

• T3 arti gets seen occasionally, but the game is usually over by then (as if one team can build a t3 arti without losing ground significantly then they were likely already well ahead), so I don't think it ends the game too early (and 1 T3 arti can be defended against anyway if the game is close)

v310 Update

• 4 changes from AI vs AI games, including completely reworking gunship retreat logic so they should better avoid enemy ground AA between them and where they want to retreat to
• 5 changes from Radde Xander and fields of isis replays, including fixing an issue that would see M28 send all of its engineers to build a shield instead of assisting an SMD vs an enemy nuke, and lowering requirements for a pre-emptive SMD to be built
• 3 changes from Radde mapgen replays, including fixing an issue that made M28 see too many water zones as its core base (leading to it retreating units to locations that the enemy controlled)

Acknowledgements

• Radde - Various replays on Xander, mapgen, and one on fields of Isis

Trophy award

• Radde and Yew - for beating 1.4 resource M28 on a naval mapgen (the same as the previous trophy)

If I’ve understood you right only shield bubbles overlapping the aoe of a shot take damage? Which sounds similar to steam/non-faf implementation which would make stacking shields much more powerful and hence make turtling more powerful.

v309 Update
24 changes, mostly relating to some AI vs AI games run as part of the 10km version of the 'Vs M28AI' AI tournament, including:

• More shield boats are built if enemy has a novax nearby
• Increased ACU aggression in assassination modes if it's behind on eco
• Improved M28's ability to rebuild power outside of the main base if almost all its core base power is killed
• T3 land should be obtained quicker if M28 has lots of t2 support factories
• M28 should be less likely to upgrade multiple T2 mexes to T3 if it lacks any T3 mexes
• Added a couple of basic chat responses

Acknowledgements

• Nomander - Helping with identifying a function for reading chat messages sent by players (which I’d mistakenly dismissed as only being relevant for resource sharing messages).
• Radde – 3 replays against M28
• Relent0r – 2 replays of team games vs M28

v308 Update
7 changes, mostly relating to forged alliance mission 6, including:

• Amphibious units that are underwater should prioritise moving to defend a nearby friendly land zone under threat over suiciding into a nearby enemy base
• Shorter ranged direct fire units should consolidate if they're closer to the enemy than longer ranged units they're meant to be supporting
• Units should no longer run from enemy gunships if they're in range of enemy land units

I've now finished updating the Supcom and FA campaign difficulty ratings based on what AIx modifier M28 needed to solo the campaign missions. It's now capable of beating every mission at 1.0 or less, with the exception of the remastered Cybran Mission 6 Freedom (which marks a significant improvement on before where M28 also needed higher modifiers to complete missions 1 and 6 of the forged alliance campaign).

v307 Update
15 changes, mostly from forged alliance campaign mission 5, including:

• Replaced previous asf hover-micro with stop-micro (I'm assuming at some point asf values changed which meant hover-micro isn't as good, as I was unable to hover-turn asfs and the logic was performing worse than just moving to the enemy/no micro when the enemy used stop-micro; e.g. in a 50 vs 50 asfs fight, M28's old logic resulted in 38 enemy asfs surviving to its 0, whereas with stop-micro and a couple of other minor changes M28 won the fight with 32 asfs surviving)
• MAA should avoid indirect fire units (not just direct fire units)
• Fixed a bug where M28's ACU could cancel an upgrade part way through if it had previously started reclaiming something and an engineer then finished reclaiming the wreck
• Pond values should be reassessed in campaign missions and factor in the playable area
• Asfs should be more likely to commit the entire air force against enemy asfs if taking an air fight
• M28Easy should do very basic kiting with a fatboy if enemies get close to it

@Nomander
Ythotha was the main unit I had in mind where it'd be beneficial as I'd have thought fatboy's firing nature means it deals much higher DPS against a bubble shield than it does normally (all its shots hit); but I was thinking not just as a standalone unit if it might be worthwhile but also compared to old bubble shield which was rarely seen and would also give aoe protection to percies.

Since megalith's firing nature is a bit easier to control in sandbox and you've suggested it as a use case, I figured I'd run some simple sandboxes to test my theory that I'd be better off just getting more percies vs getting percies+new bubble shield (as if that's an example of the bubble SACU use case, I'd expect it to come off reasonably well).

Granted this isn't perfect 'live-game' type scenario since you wouldn't expect a megalith to be unsupported, but it does still give useful information on how the new bubble shield compares.

I'd kite the megalith backwards after it started firing (until all percies were in range of it). Percies would start off grouping in a 2 line group before advancing as a group. Effects of crash damage were ignored (as that was reliant on at what point I got around to just having percies attack when switching army views).

• 25 percies vs 1 megalith: 4 percies survive
• 17 percies + 2 new balance shield SACUs vs 1 megalith: 3 percies survive
• 19 percies + 1 old balance shield SACU: If the shield SACU is grouped with percies and advanced such that the megalith fires at the unprotected percies first, mega wins; if instead the shield SACU is put slightly ahead of the percies so a kiting megalith targets it down first, then 8 percies survive.

Worth noting in most cases this setup would be expected to be favourable to the shield SACUs - 2 new balance shield SACUs with 17 percies mean the shield SACUs cover every percy, without the shields overlapping. I'm also ignoring energy costs, or the cost of building a gateway (essentially assuming they're free). One other thing that might give the shield SACU a better result is if say it was x3 the number of units so percies took more aoe damage from the megalith, but then there'd be shield overspill balance to counter it.

TLDR sandbox results

• Getting more percies results in a better position than mixing percies with new bubble shield SACUs
• Old bubble shield SACU gives a better result if the megalith can be baited into firing at the shield SACU first (and/or if the percies can all fit under it initially I expect, but that'd be harder to micromanage)

#27323961
#27324001

v306 Update
16 changes, mostly from having M28 complete forged alliance campaign missions 2-4, including:

• Units dodging shots that would move off-map should look for alternative angles, while ACUs that don't want to retreat but who lack a factory (e.g. start of M2) shouldn't dodge away from the enemy
• Expanded cases where M28 will treat its original base as lost and treat a new location as its new core base
• Air factory upgrades should be obtained sooner by sub-1.0 build modifier M28s
• T3 sub hunter and atlantis's anti-air threat is greatly reduced when submerged
• Fixed a bug with t3 arti and mavors that meant they were calculating the angle they were facing at a 90 degree offset (which on mission 4 caused the mavor to fire 1 shot north, and immediately rotate to fire 1 shot south, causing a massive decrease in dps)
• Fixed a bug where requesting an engineer from M28 could crash the game

Acknowledgements

• Tollan – Replay and highlighting the game crashed when requesting an engineer.

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.