the problem with the major experimentals is that they generally suck, especially when the AI uses them, and I have been reluctant to let the AI use resources building them instead of other things. Maybe if the AI uses major and minor experimentals differently from each other. I will certainly look into it more, so far I have been just working on getting the AI to function better in general

I should have a new release out soon. I haven't had much time and have been testing some different things out, like getting save games back in skirmish

Oh man, if you could get save to work, it would be awesome.

I was able to get the save menu to open during skirmish and attempt to save a game, but it would always crash. Something engine side is either blocking it, or was never finished in regards to save games outside of campaign. It could be something simple that GPG could enable easily, or not.

Much of the AI and User Interface code was moved engine side to increase performance, unfortunately now we can't mod it

Hi, I think Steveb has just posted a few days ago that the reason skirmish save is disabled is because it will mess up the pathfinding.

hey Machater, .... dude ... this mod rocks! I was just getting bored fighting the Cheating Ai that came with the game, and about to uninstall the game out of dissapointment. decided to try your mod.... holy crap that is fun. Coalition Command map, three Land Ai teamed up against me.... i got my but kicked a bunch of times... but just finally beat them... awesome!

First off: i love that they actually build expirementals now, and in the later game they send waves of 8 fatboys! Awesome!

Secondly: i Love that they actually build more than two factories! more for me to destroy when i actually reach their base.

tertiary: i love that you got the option of land only ai! i have wanted just that for so damn long.

seriously you rock!

my only wishes are 1: they would build a bigger base with more ground defenses. 2: sometimes the expirementals just pile up in their base and never leave, wish they would always move out to attack me.

with or without my wishes this makes the game worth playing! its modding like this that keeps a game alive, seriously gpg u should Fookin pay you for salvaging their ai!

i should have a new version out soon. Ive been working on getting all the AIs changed to how i want instead of just land/UEF. Just haven't had much time to work on it lately because of school. I think Ill have time to finish it and release it Tuesday(april 6th)

Its nearly finished and has a lot of improvement over the current version I have out. Much better base building and expansion. I've been holding back on working on it too much until I can see how the next AI patch from GPG affects things. I keep running into issues that I can't fix through a mod, I think many of them if not most are going to be fixed by the next AI patch(assuming most of what Sorian has done gets "approved" for patch) things like transports, engineers and factory upgrades

yay! I have been wondering whether you were gonna update or not since Sorian announced his AI fixes. I cant wait =D

No AI fix in the patch Hope It will be included in the next then.

Plan on releasing your updated AI this weekend? Looking forward to it.

Small update.
I am quite close to having a new version ready. Have had to make some minor changes from the recent patch, now that the 3 big land experimentals are pretty good.
It will be the "final" version of the mod until the big AI patch from GPG comes out, I might release a couple minor updates to fix things I didn't catch were broken. I keep running into problems that are fixed in the GPG AI patch, but causing much grief currently.

The main issue is the AI somehow being able to continue building units even when it shouldn't be able to. Like putting a limit on the total number of transports the AI can have at one point, and then turning around and the AI has built 10 times that number. I believe this is going to be fixed in the AI patch...sure hope so.

What you can expect
Initial build much better
AI expanding much much better
AI will send much larger armies(had the AI drop something like 230 units in my base with transports today)
Smarter research paths
Much better experimental use
Lots more defenses(though im still not happy with the AIs use of it)
AI will use a better mix(hopefully) of units, increasing the number of anti-air units as the enemies air increases.
Some increase in naval unit use by AI


Also been working on a "survival" type AI, but don't expect anything until after the GPG AI patch.

**Edit
Should have it up for download by Wednesday, didn't have as much time this weekend as I thought I would

Status on your update? :)

New version is released! Finally!

http://ai-machater.googlecode.com/files ... Iv1.11.rar

Was quite a bit of work updating it for the latest patch, but I got the majority of things accomplished. Now it just needs to be refined, a lot of new things in the latest patch to work with.

Feedback is appreciated, haven't had a huge amount of time to work with the new patch so certainly things will need to be tweaked.

So far it is mainly Land, Air and Turtle AI changes, but there are many changes that affect all the others. Also hard and cheat AI are both included, the cheat settings are lower than the GPG settings for hard/cheat, hopefully it isn't too easy!

Awesome job!

Will test out a few games this weekend.

Ok, just did a test run. Coalition Command. Normal Turtle

Cybran and UEF AIs.

Currently at 1 hour, 20 minutes in game.

Items of note.

Pros.
1. Great attack pressure.

2. nice use of T2 and T3 arti.

3. Great shield defense.

Cons
1. I can destroy a mass extractor and the AI will NOT rebuild them. I can easily cripple an AI with a handful of bombers or gunships. This also applies to any building i destroy, if i destroy it, it will pretend it has been built and will not replace it. Energy, Mass, factory, etc. Like it builds a template, but continues on with out filling in damaged gaps.

2. Very slow to build any end game experiementals. I have seen 1 exp at the 1:25 minute mark.

All the changes I made were intended to be used with either the Hard or Cheat AI, the normal and easy AI run into all sorts of resource troubles.

Not sure on the mass extractor thing, I had it fixed, then the new patch came out and broke my fix, working on something new.

I also would recommend you do not use build restrictions, I have not tested any of them and can't say if they work or not.

will run some more tests. Only restrictions i use is no nukes.

coming out with an update this weekend?

New version! 1.12

Seems like I got the AI to rebuild destroyed mass extractors much better, the tradeoff is that sometimes it decides to rebuild the enemies mass extractors?!?! suicide

A lot of smaller changes.

http://ai-machater.googlecode.com/files ... AIv112.zip

Machater your AI Mod is really great.

For all those who really seek some challange try Machaters AI mod with the balance mod together

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=44560

Those 2 together really kicked my rear...That really feels great...a good AI with some balance that makes you feel like you would play SC/FA..that's how the game should have been from the start

New version! 1.2
April 22, 2010

GPG(Sorian) fixed a huge bug in the latest GPG patch. Now transports, engineers, factory upgrades, and a ton of other stuff works as intended.

This really unleashed the changes I made in my mod, sometimes too much so. A few things still need to be retweaked from the latest patch, but its really awesome.

http://ai-machater.googlecode.com/files ... AIv1.2.zip

Yeah..bring it on

Have to try it when i get home Last version was allready great..let's see how this one is The more i get crushed the better

Lol after tested the mod I'm glad to say that there's finally CHALLENGE! Tnx Machater for this incredible work!

Have tested it and it runs just great. Only one minor Problem was that the AI hords units near his base rather than attacking. Cybran had 5 C-rex and 7 Soulripper II. He should be more on the offensive with this. I knew that with the balance mod he could have done major damage to me but with hording them near his base i just picked them apart after destroying his ability to create more of them.

If he sees a valid chance to make a crippling blow wiith his units even while under siege then he should attack.

Maybe he should send lower number of forces but mixed to the enemy while he has some secondary experimental group building up in the rear.

Base defences can't widstand such an amount of Experimentals..atleast not with the balance mod.

I know that he was under pressure by me an my allied normal AI. But sometimes spliting forces for offense is better then pure defence.

You have written something similar in your release notes and i suppose that's something that needs fixing by gpg...or might you be able to do it?

I'll retest it with a higher unit cap. Only used 500 on setons. Suppose the AI needs higher numbers.

I like to play UEF because i use massive artillery barrage against my opponents base. That's something the AI can't handle over time while i have massive AA defence and dozens of shields.

Even tho i have many PD's covering my base it's the weakest point if you have a big and well balanced force...That's a strategy that the AI seems to be missing to get rid of my artillery that causes him great losses over time.

This time it was easier because not only the hard ai has gotten better but the normal too. The normal AI did pretty well in defending against the hard AI while i had time to build up.

I'll give it more test runs..these time 2 human vs. 2 hard ai...pure human vs ai challange..i suppose it will be harder than with an allied ai.

Hope i can help you bit out with my infos I'll gather as much as i can to help you out

Yes I have also seen this, building lots of exp not leaving the base. But keep up the good work

The AI checks the threat level of the enemy base when deciding how big of a force to send. Air Units and Land Units are separate and can't be mixed.

The largest experimental squad has a minimum of 10 experimentals max of 20, so the AI may have just been building up rather than hording.
I can look into something that forces the AI to send whatever units it has built if the factories are destroyed, instead of waiting for the factories to be rebuilt.

While I haven't played the balance mod myself, one issue using it with the AI mod is that I can't set the AI mod up to take into account things the balance mod, or any mod, changes.

If experimentals are 4 times better with the balance mod vs regular, the AI doesn't know this so is using them as if they were normal. 10 soul rippers might be exactly what the AI needs to break your defenses using the original game balance. With balance mod maybe only 5 soul rippers would be enough, but the AI is still going to go with 10.
The problem can also be with other things. If point defense towers are buffed the AI will still treat them as normal. Which affects him attacking enemy base, as well as his own base.

The big reason I've said to use 1000 unit cap is the AIs anti-turtle measures. The AI has squads for up to 200 land units, depending on the opponents defenses. While this seems really high, I believe a human would do the same if facing someone with huge defenses.

I know a few of the AIs need some more tweaking. Mainly the Balance AI, in regards to managing resources. Building both land and air experimentals can make it hard to build enough of either one. Also need to make sure the Land AI isn't spending too much on air experimentals, and vice versa.


The next big goal is making some type of swarm AI to use as a "survival mode" type game.

That's a good point. And because in the balance mod the production of experimentals takes up more time, the AI will take longer to gather a greater amount of experimentals because it doesn't take into account that fewer would do well.

If the AI could compare Unit values against each other it should be able to be more efficent. It had to compare Hitpoints, attack strengh vs. units, speed...and so on. Something that could be done bevor a game is started. This would result in a more efficent AI that could fine tune itself to the mods that have been loaded. But that's something out of our reach i suppose.

And even better it would be if the AI would save battle strategies against opponets by steam id and fine tunes them with each play to "learn" the best way to fight someone. But that's also something we can't do.