@saver Anything like that I’d need a replay to assess as there will be competing logic:
-Retreat to avoid damage from subs
-Avoid a cycle of retreating and advancing all while taking damage without doing anything
-Avoid making landfall to die to a superior force
-Avoid overreacting to a small naval threat

The logic will likely have room for improvement in specific scenarios

@miki1900 It shouldn’t be what you personally think is best, but what the majority think. Given the Olympics and sporting events more generally, most people are familiar with Bronze < Silver < Gold, and even if they aren’t they would have a decent idea based on market values or other video games (which typically have gold being harder to get/more valuable than silver), far more so than the specific hierarchy of particular US military ranks.

As another example, personally I’d prefer 1 to be weaker than 4 but if a majority thinks that 1 is stronger than 4 then by similar logic it makes sense to have rankings based on the current way around.

v136 Update
18 changes and fixes including:

• Disabled some of M28's kiting logic if it has poor intel
• Improved experimental targeting when faced with an enemy under shields (so they should focus down the shields first)
• Fixed a bug that meant submarines wouldn't run from torpedo bombers
• 6 LOUD specific changes (Aeon land experimental preferences, and various gunship adjustments)

Acknowledgements

• Vortex - several replays
• Azraeel - Replay that highlighted the bug with subs not retreating
• Kemi - Replay showing overbuilding of protector bots in LOUD
• Waffelznoob - Replays of M28 being crushed, and crushing

v134 Update
Another 13 changes, including:

• Greater focus on ecoing, with mexes being more likely to upgrade if held for a long time, while making it more likely mexes are prioritised over factories if stalling mass
• ACU should be more likely to get high value reclaim near it if it's not in immediate danger, even if it would like to get a gun upgrade
• Slightly reduced the amount of engineers to be built in cases where the zone has run out of assignments to give them relatively recently
• 4 LOUD specific changes, including fixing a bug that would result in lots of land factories upgrading at once, and reducing MML production where the enemy has TMD.

Acknowledgements
Vortex - A number of LOUD replays

v135 Update
Re-uploaded as I forgot to turn off some debugging options.

v133 Hotfix - Summary
11 Changes and fixes, including:

• M28 should no longer try and protect a friendly teammate's core base afer the teammate has been killed and their base destroyed
• Changed how M28 prioitises which zones to request units/give them orders, to take into account enemy buildings (in theory making it slightly more likely to attack undefended enemy mexes over defending a friendly location)
• Fixed a bug introduced in the last version for managing gunships that could sometimes break their logic
• 7 LOUD specific changes, including supporting factory enhancements, and updating the ACU threat assessment to take into account the ACU health and to account for the massively higher mass cost given to it in the blueprint (10k, which is almost 200 t1 tanks)

Acknowledgements

• Vortex - several LOUD replays

Assisting costs mass and energy, if you have any. However, if you're stalling mass, unlike any other construction/assistance the rate at which you restore the shield health doesnt decrease. So for example if the only thing you are spending mass on is assisting the shield, and you spend 20 times your mass income assisting, then you are effectively assisting for 5% of the normal mass cost.

As to assistance costs, these vary by shield. Seraphim T3 are the most mass efficient for assisting, while Cybran are the worst. Assuming my figures (from 3+ years ago) aren't out of date, as examples, if considering in terms of how much damage you restore per mass assistance cost, you'd restore 5.79 health per mass for a seraphim T2 shield, or 6.40 for a seraphim T3 shield, or 3.19 from a Cybran T2 shield.

Usually assisting shields is good when defending against artillery since it's a low apm option. In theory the cheapest maintenance option would be shield cycling but that would require a lot of apm. The other option is building new shields so when an existing shield is about to fail you construct the new one.

v132 Update
21 changes, including:

• Gunships should group together better, and take into account how successful they've been in the game with engagements when deciding whether to attack
• Fixed some issues with transports that would e.g. prevent them dropping early when dying to inties
• Reduced tendancy to build more factories late-game
• 10 LOUD related changes, including reviewing/tweaking various LOUD focused PRs from Azraeel (covering building more T3 PD, bombers, ecoing more, and changes to unit prioritisations)

Acknowledgements:

• Azraeel - Various pull requests

v131 Update
28 changes and fixes, including:

• 8 adjustments for when M28 hits the unit cap, primarily focused on when ctrl-king its T2 units is not enough
• Reduced M28's tendancy to overbuild aircraft carriers
• Engineers should no longer suicide into enemies firing at them that it lacks radar coverage of
• 9 LOUD specific changes (including adding a workaround to allow prioritisation of fatboys) and 1 steam change (fixing a bug with T2 kennels not being upgradable)

Acknowledgements:

• MrPhalanx – Mentioning T2 kennels couldn’t be upgraded in steam
• RD – Bitterwind Crag, Elephant Rock and Mellow Shallows replays against v1.29
• Vortex – Replay vs 1.30

Due to the DDOS attacks FAF has suffered, some protections had to be added which had the unfortuate side effect of stopping Kazbek's site/tool from working.

I've not been able to reproduce the Czar issue you mention (even if I activate the total mayhem mod since you mentioned that in your reply), but from the description it sounds like it's broadly working as intended since it's meant to be used to attack ground units rather than air units. So while it might not be optimal (re there being some scenarios where its AA abilities would be good), the difficulty with reproducing it coupled with then the difficulty in having logic that figures out if it wants to have its air to ground attack active vs its AA attack active means it's unlikely to change.

I've fixed the bug with the kennel not upgrading though (will be in the next release).

M28 should build T1 experimental base defences, but I've no plans to have it build other T1 experimental units (e.g. tanks etc.) as M28 is setup on the assumption that engineers can only access experimentals at the T3/experimental stage (not T1-T2) so it'd be non-trivialto add and I'm not clear that it'd have a significant competitive benefit that would justify the extensive recoding required (compared with just getting T2 land or more T1 non-experimental units).

@mrphalanx I'll look into the kennel unit to see if I can reproduce and fix the issue for the next release. In respect of the Czar I'm not clear on what the issue is from your description - I'll run a sandbox test to see if there's anything obvious in how it attacks units, but I'd have expected it to be vulnerable to enemy air units (as it's primarily an anti-ground unit)

v30 Update

24 misc changes and fixes, including:

• Improved kiting for frigates/navy generally vs enemy hover and when bombarding shorelines
• Fixed several issues with shared armies where certain units (novax, fatboy) wouldn't benefit from the inherit status game option
• Mobile shields should be less likely to suicide into enemy units
• Asfs should be less likely to suicide into enemy air units at the enemy base
• Fixed a bug for SMD where M28 would always think the enemy had a nuke launcher (and so build a pre-emptive SMD too soon)
• 4 LOUD specific changes, including reducing one of the MML builders where the enemy has TMD

Acknowledgements

• C04spoon – Identifying and providing a fix for a case where T2 arti shots could miss M28 units in LOUD
• Vortex – LOUD replay
• PurpleMossClump – LOUD replay
• Azraeelian Angel – LOUD replay
• RD – various LOUD replays
• Sioloc – replay where M28 would destroy and rebuild the same shield
• Innomen – Highlighting that inherit army status wouldn’t work for novaxes and fatboys

@sioloc said in M28AI Devlog (v129):

AI will upgrade all mexes from T2 -> T3 at once, causing a massive and persistent mass crash. Could be reclaim related? Eg I collect a bunch of reclaim, the AI qu

I think this was your teammate the first time - M28's logs for upgrading a unit didn't trigger when 4 t2 mexes were started at your teammate's base.
For your mexes, the issue is as a whole your team had lots of T3 mexes, and lots of mass stored (as your teammate had about 3k mass while you had none) - so M28 started upgrading multiple T3 mexes on the basis the mass from your teammate could fund it.
I'll tweak it in the next version so in MOBA mode M28's team resource sharing logic is enabled (which should largely mitigate such issues). It'll still be a problem in non-MOBA teamgames with shared armies though (where a teammate with lots of mass and/or T3 mexes will result in too many of your mexes being upgraded if the teammate sits on the mass instead of sharing). I can't see an easy solution to that though, as in many cases people wouldn't want the 'share resources' team logic to trigger.

Re the T2 shields being destroyed this looks like a problem with its backup shielding logic where a shield that is 99% complete is being completed (when that should only happen when under enemy artillery fire), I'll see if I can fix for the next update.

@sioloc Thanks I'll have a look, although I'd need a replay re the scouts to see if it's working as intended or not (it likely is, since it relies heavily on intel so prioritises building lots of scouts in the early game; while for Aeon it can also build extra scouts to use as combat units)

v129 Update

22 changes and fixes, including:

• Increased options for the AIx overwhelm modifier to allow smaller AIx modifier adjustments (+/- 0.05, 0.02 and 0.01)
• Increased cruiser production in certain scenarios to protect from torp bombers
• Fixed a bug where M28Easy would ground-fire subs
• 11 LOUD specific adjustments (including support for bombardment ships, not treating engineering ships like frigates, a bug that prevented M28 recognising when its naval units shots were being blocked by terrain, and some logic that in some cases may have caused desyncs)

Acknowledgements

• GerJS - Replay with M28Easy ground-firing subs
• Vortex - LOUD replay
• Innomen – Highlighting a bug with unexplored mapgen maps
• Zhanghm – noting an issue where in modded games only the megalith would be built by Cybrans in some cases despite unit prioritisation being turned off
• c04spoon – tips on what naval units work best in a bombardment type role

@innomen Looking into it this is an issue with how MapGen defines the playable area on such maps (in that it starts with no playble area, which then causes an issue for FAF's navigational mesh logic). Jip's kindly offered to look into it further.

v128 Update
16 changes and fixes, including:

• Reducing the number of naval factories that get built
• Factored in mobile shields when assessing how strong an enemy naval force is
• Made the naval combat logic more detailed so it is more likely to take into account units that are relatively near it when deciding what to do
• 7 LOUD specific changes, including fixing an incompatibility resulting from the latest LOUD 7.10 release, and fixing an issue that meant M28's ACUs would be overly aggressive.

Acknowledgements

• Vortex - several LOUD replays, including one highlighting M28's ACU being too aggressive
• c04spoon - replay highlighting various torpedo bomber related issues
• GerJS - Noting that with particular game settings M28 would prevent one of the objectives loading on UEF M6

In what way did it not like the map, and do you have a replay id?

@innomen I’d expect it to build mexes and get reclaim if it has control of all engineers in the area (assuming it is low on mass and there aren’t nearby enemy units).

Mex upgrades are generally not sought after/prioritised in 1v1 as on 10km maps prioritising t1 tank spam is usually better.