v326 Hotfix
Fixed a bug introduced in the last version relating to naval factories

@chris12 Do you get the issue with just M28 (and no other mods) enabled (e.g. it looks like a couple of other sim mods are enabled as well from that log)? And if so, does it load fine without M28 enabled at all?
Also enable the FAF debugger as it may give more information in the log to help figure out the cause and/or be of help if you post to the technical support forum in discord

v325 Update
7 changes, including:

• M28 should try and build its first/main naval factory with more clearance around it so it's less likely to have T3 units get stuck
• Fixed a bug with the land combat logic that was double-counting enemy threats in some cases leading to M28 being over-cautious (when not able to kite the enemy)
• Land factories should build more engineers if M28 has a T3 mex in the zone without mass storage
• ACUs should consider if they have TMD coverage before cancelling an upgrade when spotting an incoming TML missile

Acknowledgements

• Fearghal - Highlighting M28's naval factory issues on Adaptive Bloob
• Malitarh - Replay with M28 cancelling upgrades repeatedly due to TML missiles that it wasn't threatened by

@Malitarh Thanks, checking the replay the enemy AI kept trying to TML M28's ACU when it was upgrading, so it'd cancel the upgrade and move the ACU when it could see the TML missile approaching. However I can refine slightly so it considers if it has TMD that will block the missile.

Mass storage not being built would've been that M28 didnt have many engineers in its core base as it was focusing on building units since its base was under near-constant attack (and those engineers it did build had more urgent issues to deal with), but I'll look at having T2 land factories build a few engineers even where it has a T3 HQ if it's lacking storages for a t3 mex.

@Malitarh I don't have access to the replay file (I requested access to it at the time)

Now updated with results for the SCTA mod (i.e. M28 using CORE or ARM, vs the SCTA AI)

v324 Update
8 changes, mostly relating to SCTA, including:

• Adjusted SCTA build order to build wind turbines, and prevented mine layers being built
• SCTA T2 tactical nukes can be fired by M28
• Added a limit on how long transports should wait to load more engineers before moving out
• Low mex map logic shouldn't be applied to sub-5km maps that have more than 2 mexes per player

Acknowledgements

• Malitarh - replay on sub-5km map where M28 played poorly (note I need access to the other replay where the ACU was locked in an upgrading-cancel upgrade cycle to look into that issue)

Thanks, I'll make a note to have a look. Generally though AIs are much easier to beat on smaller maps compared to larger maps, one reason being players will usually be better with microing their ACU and have fewer parts of the map to focus on at once
e.g. I'm around 1k rated 1v1 and can comfortably beat M28 on 5km maps, but on 10km maps can only occasionally win.

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

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

Acknowledgements

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

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

10km twin rivers ai vs ai tournament results now up:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/9755/ai-vs-ai-tournament-series

AI tourney: 10km Twin Rivers
Since the vote on the next map for the tournament was tied between twin rivers and white fire, I decided to go with Twin Rivers.

Each AI faces off against M28AI in a 1v1 on Twin Rivers to see what AIx build and resource cheat multiplier it needs to win half of its games.

Setup
M28AI will fight against the enemy AIx using mirrored factions. Based on how heavy the win/loss the AI modifier gets adjusted to try and quickly arrive at the AIx modifier that means half of games get lost and half get won; in some cases where significant factional differences are suspected or I have the patience to run more games, games will be run with each faction to identify the lowest modifier required with that faction for the AI to win. Results will then be displayed for the estimated modifier (e.g. if an AI wins with a 1.2 modifier with 3 factions, but a 1.1 modifier with 1, then it is assumed the 3 factions would draw with a 1.15 modifier, and the other faction would draw with a 1.05 modifier, meaning it's shown with a modifier of 1.125, i.e. (1.15*3+1.05)/4.

Changes to AI
Since the last tournament there have been minor updates to M28AI and RNGAI, and more interestingly a new AI mod is on the FAF vault, currently on v102, called Vanguard AI.
See the 5km tournament for details on other changes made in the previous 3 years
The results
Summary
AI Name | AIx modifier needed to win half of games |

Detailed results
The full results including the data used for the above graphs can be seen in the Data worksheet of the following file:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/101PqVFKozMaWcHbaceIbabLGDsfdnoY-/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100973959280546778272&rtpof=true&sd=true

Other Observations

• M28 was generally hurt by going for navy on one of the ponds, with a significant mass investment for minimal benefit
• AIs with high modifiers would typically win with nukes or an early experimental
• M28 was able to win and hold both plateaus in almost every game it won
• Land played a significant role with air generally not having much impact unless an early air experimental from a high AIx modifier, or M28 using gunships defensively
• Swarm's poor performance (most AI would be expected to require a lower AIx modifier the larger the map) appeared due to not building/using anti-air units effectively until late in the game allowing M28's gunships to attack its tanks with impunity
• Games on LOUD would generally go on far longer than on FAF (despite it being a 10km map which I thought might be enough to mean shorter games - I was curious whether LOUD's typically long game times are due primarily to its preference for 20-40km map sizes). My guess is a significant part of the reason for the long game times is the effectiveness of shielding (e.g. no shield damage overflow and rapid recharge times meant M28 in one game built more than 8 T3 artillery before it could break through T3 shields, in another game a mavor and 3 T3 arti were not sufficient for it to break through)
• I've updated the 5km tournament results to include the new Vanguard AI, and also to re-run all the steam results in case they were affected by a subsequent bug discovered that could cause AIx overwhelm settings to be enabled and adjust resource multipliers (however the steam results only changed marginally so the bug didn't appear to have had a significant impact)
• The average AIx modifier on twin rivers was 1.57, compared with 1.9 for Theta Passage. Such a decrease is expected since as the map size increases ACUs have less impact, it takes longer for land units to reach the enemy (so greater risk of being defended and/or out-teched by the units they meet), a greater proportion of mexes tend to be outside the core base (meaning greater benefit from the initial expansion boost provided by a build rate modifier), the economy (and hence resource modifier) generally plays a bigger role due to this, and high impact units that can end the game without significant investment to defend against them (like a land experimental or a nuke built with a build rate modifier) become much easier to build (more resources, and more time).

v322 Update
32 changes, including:

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

Acknowledgements

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

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

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

Acknowledgements

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

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

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

Acknowledgements

• Radde - mapgen replay beating 1.6 M28 AIx

Trophy award

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

Some maps and games are more likely to flame than others.
My advice - stay clear of setons and dual gap, people get very angry over small things and/or not playing the way they expect.

3v3 matchmaker is usually fairly chill (but there are exceptions), partly because there's less of a pre-set meta
Astro craters maps used to be relatively chill as well but it's been a few years since I've played them

there are occasionally team games vs AI which are fairly rare to have flaming

inevitably you'll come across some people who are toxic, but it's definitely a relatively small minority of games I play (I usually play 3v3 TMM). There's also 1v1 where it's less likely since there's no teammate to complain about how you play.

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

Thanks to Radde for highlighting the error

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

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

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

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

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

Acknowledgements

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

v315-316 Update

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

Acknowledgements

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