@johnnycat
The above is mainly about the TripleA 2.7 engine released as a stable.
TripleA operates on just a few hundred dollars for server use, each year.

Depending on your time available, testing this version
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/releases/tag/2.7.15364
would be worthwhile as serious time/effort by the Devs has gone into fixing the issues above.

There are about a dozen people, who regularly support/test/develop and we always need more.

The real meat of what happens to the TripleA engine happens on GitHub
see here
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues?q=is%3Aissue state%3Aopen label%3A2.7 label%3A"Major"

and new Devs could pick from here
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues?q=is%3Aissue state%3Aopen label%3A2.7 label%3A"Good First Issue"

These two lists are a small snapshot of what the Devs are/could be working on.

As the Devs are volunteers, that is skilled coders who do it for free, every time they post on this forum is less time they are developing, so please bear that in mind when they post.

@kindwind It would seem that training against random games would be every inefficient compared to training against the AI that TripleA comes with.TripleA is not Go, random play should be very bad.

@kindwind If you want to try a neural net AI for TripleA, you would need to modify TripleA to support repeated self-play. For example of programs that support repeated self-play checkout Ludii & Chess Arena.

Supporting repeated self-play would be project of moderate difficulty in Java. (TripleA already supports self-play). You would need to learn Java (Vibe coding doesn't cut it).. Repeated self-play would also be useful for balancing mods.

I don't know how well a neural net would play TripleA. The number of possible moves in Go is a most 361, far fewer than the number of possible moves in a TripleA game. An effort to get a neural net to play a 2-player Risk variant did not go well.

One advantage is that TripleA already has heuristic AI's that could be used to train a neural net.

@Darmok72
here is a new starter request, it was half done but not completed, it will affect about 1/4 maps, so please attempt this.

https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/2999/2-6-release-getting-close-need-volunteers-to-help-beta-test-2-6/73?_=1762176127175

EDIT:
Also copied links from above link
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/2752/maxbuiltperplayer-error-resets-purchase-ui-was-how-to-limit-the-number-of-units-purchased/11

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/9231

TheDog-GH created this issue in triplea-game/triplea open 2.7 Feature Request: to help players on the purchase screen with maxBuiltPerPlayer errors #9231

@kindwind Efforts You seem to have in mind using a neural net style AI to play TripleA. I suspect that this we actually be quite difficult given the huge number of possible board positions.You might be better off using a very small mod like Minimap even without a large record of games to train it. TripleA's own AI can be used for training.

@ubernaut yeah, redoing MARTI would potentially save us $10/month on costs as well. I think redoing the bots with 'network relay' might be higher up on the list. That will save a ton of code, create an effective infinite number of bots, and save us maybe like $25/month. The 'network relay' will be an update where the bots will just be responsible for only forwarding network packets. Today, a bot is basically an entire player but is made somewhat invisible. We are bounded by the amount of RAM on a host for how many bots we can host. If bots are just sending network packets, they'll take up very little RAM. We'll only be bounded by network traffic. We could theoretically run dozens of bots per host instead just 3 to 5. This should cut our bot host count down from the current 6 or 8 today to maybe 2.

I think there might be some quick wins with the server's as well. AT least for me, I might be inclined to do a quick ELO system before redoing MARTI.

@rogercooper Not yet. I'm thinking to bump the version number to '2.8' when all of these updates are ready. The '2.8' release announcement will be when it is ready. These backend changes are most of what we are waiting for.

@ubernaut

What I have learned - in almost two decades of assisting people with TripleA - is that problems in many cases are not related to TripleA itself but to a general (not ) understanding of PC, Operating Systems and computer / software procedures.

@beelee In Stalingrad it is only a priority. On all other ways it is a normal combat roll and the targeted unit fires back normally.

@lafayette

oh yea a bit out of our price range 🙂

I've opened an issue for this problem.

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/13244

Cernelius created this issue in triplea-game/triplea closed Neutral Territories Can Be Flown Over in Multiple Steps (2.7.14934) #13244

Yes I considered it, but with 30+ Techs and growing its messy, times 8 factions. I tolerate its current way of bolting on units.

@frigoref
@LaFayette
@Myrd
Maybe a Dev could take a look?

@lafayette woot!

@ubernaut I'm all for such a meeting, even if regularly doesn't mean fix dates, but rather certain intervals for a get together to align directly.
We'd need the active developers (@Myrd and @LaFayette?) and I would like to join. For topic discussions everyone else is welcome.
Could you assist to find a slot (doodle or something)?

PS: My time zone is CET and I would prefer Sa/Su.

@beelee Kinda heavy news that you slid in there. Let's not dwell, but thank you.

Some delay is still kinda welcome. I need some time to get the server stuff in a better state and documentation updated. With luck, the documentation will be relatively complete & self explanatory, but nothing like having another person go through it to really see where the gaps are.

Given that you already use linux, you're going to be fine! Some quick googling here to read up on places where you're unsure (and welcome to what is my day-job! Knowing a small bit of stuff, being unsure if you can do something, and researching it and then getting it done - you got it!)

On the plus side, the servers usually "just run", the stability of the apps is pretty good. I think the most urgent thing will be something like a server is out of disk space maybe.

I'll send you a message and we can keep the dialog open.

@thedog Found it - there was a "link project" option. Should look good now

It looks like Github has changed projects a good bit from a couple years ago. Projects in github used to be repository level items (repositories are owned by organizations). Now projects look to be true organization level items with "links" to possibly zero or many repositories. The links create the previous behavior and adds some additional flexibility.