Thanks for the ideas. I agree with them all. I have never really spent much time on the naval ai. Since the 3603 patch I'm finding that naval units are actually worth building for some reason.

If anyone else has any naval suggestions let me know.

I have found typically its best to build units a tech level below what the shipyard's level is at the time(IE I typically won't build destroyers until my yard is up to T3).

Why? Is this for the build speed?
Factory upgrades are time consuming and costly. It's generally much better to just assist a T2 factory with a few T1 engineers than to upgrade it to T3 (unless you want to build T3 ships, of course).

I don't know how effective the AI is at assisting though..

Just to let you know ... I AM still working on Naval AI improvements. I finally got a few hours this weekend to look at it. I think I have made a whole raft of improvements, but I still need to polish. Hopefully later this week I will release an updated version.

Woot.
I will happily test it as soon as it's released. (btw, are you making it for 3599 or 3603?)

I haven't tried the current version with 3603, but I suppose it might do a bit better (since it favors T1 and T3 spam.. and both of those are cheaper in 3603).

I am testing it with 3603, but really the improvements should work with 3599 too. They are basically fixing issues that are in both versions.

Positively thrilled to hear this news!

Thanks for the extra effort you are putting in to improve the Naval AI. I am really looking forward to trying it out. Navy always seems to get the short end of the stick in SupCom. With the modifications in 3603, it should become even more important.

By the way... can you ensure it continues to re-build a factory/naval shipyard somewhere if they get destroyed?

Cheers

One complaint I have with the Naval AI is that on some maps, or atleast one, the one I play usually(The Dark Heart) it builds so many naval bases in a small area that its ships get trapped between them and they end up just sitting there all game.

And I too still play on 3599.

I've seen the best results with the Rush AIx on 10x10 water maps. They do a great job in the water with T1/T2. When its time to build T3 battleships then they just stack them on their own shoreline.

By the way, if air is disabled on a 20x20 or higher, the AI acts like AI:Null once he builds 6 T1 power (just stops)

Version 2.6.0 released

I finally got some time to play FA again

This update includes a whole bunch of Naval AI improvements. Better teching. Better choice of Naval units (no more fleets of just shield ships). Better choice of attack etc.

A few things still need to be fixed, but generally you should see a big improvement in the Naval AI.

There is still two big bugs. Firstly sometimes the AI will build its first Naval base but not build any ships. I know Sorian has fixed this because if you play with his AI pack installed it doesnt happen. I just need to work out what the fix is and include it in this release as well. The second bug is more minor - the AI navy units are still making some poor choices. For example I have seen cruises targetting T1 land units when they are in range of hitting the enemy ACU.

I still plan on fixing these, but I thought I would release what I have as it may be another week or two before I get more game time due to RL commitments and my addiction to iphone games

Great! I'm really excited to see how this update changes their performance. I'll probably play a game or two with the naval AI tonight if I can.. I'll edit/reply here to let you know how it goes.

Thanks again for your efforts Duncan.

[edit: I have a lot of feedback for you. As always, please ignore it or accept/use it as you see fit.

I didn't have time for a real game tonight, but I tested two new naval AIx vs two Sorian water AIx on Roanoke Abyss while I was cooking/eating dinner. Unfortunately, the 2.0 Sorian water AI's appear to be incompatible with that map (they didn't build shipyards). It's not a conflict with your AI though (I tested Sorian's water AI a 2nd time with your .scd files removed and it still didn't work on Roanoke. It did work on other naval maps for some reason though..)

Anyway, it wasn't a great test since the Sorian AI didn't build ships, but I did see some great improvements with the Naval AI. It seemed to produce T2 cruisers earlier, and more importantly, they did a good job of escorting them with T1 frigates and T1 subs. That part was great, and the cruisers managed to do some good damage to one of the two enemy AIs. They also did an ok job of picking targets imo.. (except that they sometimes waste a lot of shots when they get stuck on a moving target, like an engineer crossing the sea. It's a problem because the ship's TMLs can never hit a moving target).

Unfortunately, the ships still have a tendency to sail right up to the beach of the enemy island. In the case of the cruisers, this needlessly exposes them to short ranged counter attacks. I suspect this can't be fixed, but I've noticed that the AI is pretty good.. sometimes.. at using small groups of T3 mobile arty to bombard at long range instead of charging them in like it does with its regular formations of bots/tanks/etc. Is there a way this behavior can be applied to longer-ranged ships?

Perhaps more important: Neither of the two AIs (one UEF, one Sera) built any other types of T2 ships.
For the whole game it was just T1 subs (far too many imo, if only because T2 subhunters and Destroyers are so deadly vs T1 subs), T1 Frigates (it's ok to spam these imo because they're a very cost effective ship and they make good meat shields/raiders even in the late game), a few T2 cruisers, and then T3 battleships. Since the AI likes to put their ships right on the shore, some Destroyers would be far better than the cruisers on a map like Roanoke (though obviously not as good on a map with cliffs like Seraphim Glaciers).

One other critical weakness is with the air/anti-air strategy. The naval AI did a great job at spamming early T1 ints, but they never land their planes and they never built any air staging facilities, so they had huge swarms of very vulnerable interceptors circling around without fuel. They were also a bit slow to build T3 anti-air defenses and, as has always been the case with the regular AI, they almost never build ASFs. This was all glaring because one of the Sorian AIs built an Ahwassa which (very) slowly and methodically wore down both naval AIs. At the time the Ahwassa had been completed neither Naval AI had even a single T3 anti-air structure.

I did like their use of gunships though. I don't know if you added that with this release, but it was interesting.

The naval AI could build the shipyard a fair bit sooner. As it is now, the AI take too long in the building of the shipyard. I win the sea battle when playing the AI, and I am not even a good player. Sorians AI make the shipyard sooner, and 45 mins into the game, control both shorelines, and have shipyards on both shorelines.

They also build too many engies, and don't build many defensive units. By the time they build them, there were already one or more land attacks.

This screenshot says it all!



Dragon Fly

Thanks for the feedback guys. Im going to spend more time tweaking the Naval AI so I will use you comments to look for improvements.

I had the chance to test it again today (on Roanoke vs Sorian's 1.9dd Water AI, which seems to work better than the 2.0), and I wanted to amend/take back some of what I said above.

1)
The Cybran naval AIx tended to use its Cruisers without escorts, and this seemed to help them attack from maximum range. This was a key difference from the Seraphim/UEF cruisers, which tend to link up with a small group of frigates/subs, and then follow the standard T1 frigate/sub attack plan of sailing straight into the enemy shipyard/shore. Maybe it's better not to group the T2 ships if grouping encourages blind charges?

2)
I also saw the naval AIx building a few destroyers this time. It seems like they aimed for a ratio of ~4-6 Cruisers per Destroyer. That's obviously not ideal, but I'm glad to see that they at least build them. Still no T2/T3 subs though. And I still haven't seen more than one T2 ship in a fleet (it's always a T2 ship plus frigates/subs).

3)
The naval AIx AA strategy is better than I thought. It still lost air superiority (and basically gave up on building T1 ints after cranking out an early swarm in the first 5-15 mins). But the T2 mobile flak are a pretty good defense for most things and this time I saw them building a few T3 AA a bit earlier. I'd still say that more T3 AA/ASFs would help, but it was much better than my first test.

4)
I also noticed that in general the Naval AIx wasn't building defense points (like Sorian's AI tends to do). It puts a few static AA/TMD/PD scattered through its base, but it seems to be ignoring the defense point markers next to its base.. That's not a critical thing, but combined with the fact that they only build mobile AA and scouts from their land facs (as Dragonfly mentioned), it leaves them pretty vulnerable to drops and hover/amphib unit attacks.


I know it's never been your goal to recreate all of the complex stuff Sorian's AI uses, but I'm really wishing there was a way to combine your Naval AIx's aggressiveness with Sorian's teching. They're really at the two extremes.. the current Naval AIx devotes too much effort to T1 spam, and Sorian's AI tends to be weak in the early/mid game because it focuses on early T4s and higher tier ships. (Note that I tend to give generous cheating fractions, 1.5-1.8, so it's not like I'm starving either AI for resources).

That are good news that you have updated your AI. Though I have not played much naval maps until now with an improved Naval AI this may change.

Was this just on the map you posted? I thought the AIx built its shipyards early enough on Roanoke's Abyss and other typical island maps, but I've noticed that the AI tend to delay building shipyards when the marker isn't right next to their ACU spawn point.

The naval AI could build it sooner, but waste time in one way or another. Sorians AI were in front at he beginning of the game, and also stole what Duncanes AI had built. Some where after or near mid game, Duncanes AI were in front, but that did not help them at all. Sorians AI had the 2 Islands with six more mass points, and ships shooting what ever came flying or on land.

Sorians AI sends an engie, to build the shipyard within the first 5 or so minutes of game time. By the time Duncanes AI built a shipyard, Sorians AI had 3 or so built, and subs and ships close to Duncanes AI shoreline.

After that game I played against Duncanes AI (naval), built a shipyard and start producing subs, the AI had no defenses against subs, but were building anti air turrets next to the shipyard, first one then two of my subs attacked destroyed the engie and the shipyards already built, by which time I had six or so subs at the shoreline, and was upgrading the shipyard to T2.

Dragon Fly

Version 2.6.1 released

- Fixed the bug were naval bases sometimes dont start building naval units
- Improved naval unit target selection
- Improved naval fac upgrade rate
- Reduced sub ratio to 40%

Please give it a try and let know how it goes.

Best to use the AIx Naval version in tests.


Download:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~dionysus/misc/AIFix.zip

This is a vast improvement. Thanks Duncan.

I played two games last night on Roanoke using your 2.6.1 Naval AIx (1.6 Resource modifier, 1.0 build speed).

Each game was a 2v2: me and my g/f vs one Naval AIx and one Sorian water AIx (1.99d).

I almost always pair the Naval AIx with a Sorian Air/Water AIx. The Naval AIx keeps the pressure on in the early/mid game, and the Sorian AIs add their nice little offensive firebases/TML snipes. The Sorian AIx are generally faster at rushing for T3 arty/nukes and T4 too.

The first game we played was easily among the best games I've played vs an AI. The Naval AIx was Cybran and it did an excellent job spamming T1 frigates while rushing to T2. I saw a decent number of T2 sub hunters this time, and a good mix of Destroyers and Cruisers. Even a few stealth boats were used with some of the mini-fleets. Of course, most of this stuff still had a bad habit of cruising straight into my torp defense/PD, but I think your targetting priorities helped because they were constantly destroying my g/fs engineers and generally doing a vicous job with their raiding. (As mentioned before, it also did a great job with T2 gunships.. this time it even gathered 5-10 together for a seemingly coordinated strike on a major expansion base). And with the AIx bonus the naval AIx was able to slowly wear us down via attrition.

By the time the Sorian water AI sent in its first Ahwassa, we were already in bad shape. (It's hard to maintain air superiority when the Naval AIx has cruisers everywhere). By the end of that game (we lost), the Naval AIx had produced ~10x the number of ships that the Sorian Water had produced, including a very large number of T2 ships and 3-4 T3 Battleships. It had also produced 2-3 Soul Rippers.

The Naval AIx had also produced a decent number of ASFs which it used to escort the Soul Rippers, and it had some pretty impressive AA defenses at its base (e.g. 10 Sam Sites around its major shipyard).


I love losing badly when it's a good challenge, but my g/f can't stand to lose so we played a second game. We won that time, but the Cybran (again) Naval AIx still did great. (The Sorian water AIx was UEF, which always seems to be weaker on naval maps)

All in all I was very impressed.

I only have one more suggestion, if you have any plans to continue working on it I'd suggest looking at the T4 production.
The Sorian Water AI tends to build Megaliths first when it reaches T4 as a Cybran, but so far it seems like the Naval AIx exclusively builds air T4s (I've seen lots of SRs and CZARs). The air T4 is certainly a good first choice, but the Megalith is also pretty awesome in the water (and obviously it's pretty scary if it shows up on the beach), and GCs/Ythothas are obviously pretty good on island maps too, if they manage to reach the shore.

The UEF always has the hardest time as an AI because its experimentals lack raw power.. And I don't know if you can set different priorities for each faction, but I think the UEF is probably better building T3 arty, Nukes, and T3 Percivals/Gunships/Strat bombers. The Fatboy tends to be too weak to attack defended beaches (much less make it past the anti-sub defenses).

Thanks again for all the feedback...

I had a quick look at the Naval AI and it seems I dont have it set to build land experimentals or arty/nukes so I will add that for the next release.

Actually the reason I exclude nukes and arty for the Naval AI is because of nuke subs and battle ships... So I need to think about this more.

Good work on the AI. I use it all the time. One of the things I have been trying is to set up some challenging naval games and I am getting close. I am currently using your latest version (2.6.1). I have some observations -

1) Those T3 battleships have a tough time going out and doing something. A screenshot:


They will continue to fan out like that and never move out to attack. The T2 stuff that gets built seems to be moving out just fine though. I also notice they never build the T3 seraphim sub, maybe its not in the build template?


2) I like when the AI sends out a hover/amphib land platoon - especially when you are expecting naval units and it surprises you. They do this sometimes, but if they get a non-amphib/hover unit in their platoon, they will get stuck. Below is an example of a platoon that formed up and started moving out, but the T3 mobile arty could not cross the water. After the T3 arty stopped at the waterline, this platoon got stuck for the rest of the game and sat in this position with this move/attack command.




3) Lastly, is there any simple way you can think of for the target system to make sure amphib land units are not stuck in the water trying to fire at their land target? For instance, on a map like Roanoke abyss an experimental assault bot or other longer range amphib (esp. fatboy) will attempt to attack something in the enemy base, be in range, but still in the water. Thus it just sits there thinking it can fire at the target. Perhaps a move command instead of an attack command would work better while the (non-naval) unit is in water.

Again, thanks for this AI, many good games have come from it!

EDIT: yup, the T3 sera sub is missing - I added it here:


EDIT2:
I added the T3 sera sub to the buildmanager and they create it now. I also disabled the T3 battleships in the latest naval game and saw much much better results. Along with no battleships, I did some tweaks on the unit counts for platoons and added a SeaLarge platoon much like the land ones. In order to counter the issue of too much time and mass to create a naval army, I also made all naval units 1/2 mass and 1/2 build time. The result was one hell of a naval battle and the AI kicked butt: Pic of AI kickin my arse


-

Thanks for the info about the sera T3 sub.

Also the reason why the sera battleships dont move it because they have nukes and the sea based nukes arent working currently. Its one of the things Im looking at.

Version 2.6.2 released

- Nuke subs should now correctly build and fire nukes. I thought I had fixed this ages ago, but I had probably not tested it as I rarely play Naval battles. It now works. This is also why I dont have the Naval AI build land based nukes.

- The sera battleship, which has nukes, was also broken for the same reason. This is now fixed and these should move and also use thier nukes.

- Sera T3 sub killers will now be built (Thanks to blac0177 for pointing this out).

- Misc tweaks to Naval platoon targeting and ranging.

Same download link as always:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~dionysus/misc/AIFix.zip

*

I meant to comment on this earlier.. I'm not so sure nuke subs are a good idea for the AI.

I'll have to try it out to see how it plays, but because of the way the AI tends to throw away its naval units, I can't imagine them making good use of the nuke sub's one real advantage (its ability to hide undetected). Nukes built on subs are slower and more expensive, so unless the AI is clever enough to hide them after construction, it's probably just shooting itself in the foot when it builds them.

Unless you've given them some special behaviors, I have a feeling that I'll see nuke subs (with half built nukes) sailing straight into my torpedo defense or various other obvious hazards. Or they'll just take forever to build the sub (and then to build the nuke).

I will try to let a few games go long to see how it works, but my guess is that the AI could do a lot more with a static SML.

Anyway, thanks for the updates as always Duncan. Nukes aside, it should be fun (especially if the Seraphim use Yathsous).

PS: Both the Sorian and the Duncan AI have the problem with amphibious units with torpedos getting stuck under water. It's really tragic with the Sorian AI because it produces great amphib platoons of T2 cybran wagners or T3 Bricks, but when they attack they always just sit under the enemy shipyard, launching an endless stream of mostly useless 10 damage torpedos.