Spire Shield Guardpost mechanics

[barryvm]

Hello,

I've been wondering for some time now about the mechanics behind the spire shield guardpost, hoping to use these to short-cut the usual all out bomber strike.
Somenone on this forum told me they would self-destruct when the last ship under their shield is destroyed so when I encountered about a dozen of these during my "burn-a-path-to-the-homeworld-with-my-huge-fleetball" campaign last night I tried a couple of things but I couldn't get consistent results.
As several of these guardposts are placed on planets with an Eye I resolved using raid starships to snipe the ships and (hopefully) destroy the post easily without wearing down the shields.
Apparently this works... sometimes, but other times the guardposts would still be left standing.
I tried scanning them with tachyon beams (scout starships) but there were no ships visible under the shield, although sometimes Mk III engies would teleport in and out again.

Does anyone else know the mechanics behind this ?

1) Is the "self-destruct" trigger checked only when a ship is killed underneath the guardpost or also when a ship leaves the shield?
2) Do buildings and engineers count ? (the AI seems fond to back up its spire shields with multiple Mk III force fields)
3) Is it possible to use tractor beams to pull ships from under the forcefield. (I would assume no, since etherjets aren't able to do this).

[TechSY730]

The "self destruct if I am not protecting anything and nothing is assigned to protect me" only works when the planet is no longer owned by the AI*

As for your questions.

1. It is supposed to check on death of a ship or a ship leaving the forcefield because it was freed.
2. Yes, buildings and engineers count, except for other forcefields IIRC (so if it has a alarm post under it, it will stay alive. If it has another forcefield under it and nothing else, and the AI does not own the planet, then both the post and the force field will self destruct)
3. No, forcefields provide protection against tractor beams.


*Or more accurately, its actually if there is no reinforce warpgates on the planet, but in most cases, that is the same as saying when the AI owns the planet, as the command station is a reinforce warpgate.

[barryvm]

Thanks!

This really cleared things up: the post which actually self destructed was indeed on a planet I'd just captured.
I also didn't know this mechanic also applied to regular forcefields but it makes sense.
So when you want to quickly capture a planet with a spire shield post on it you can just destroy the command station and then snipe the guards with raid starships.
When simply razing the guardposts to prevent build-up  I'll simply have to be patient about it (or find me an artillery golem to play with).

[Hearteater]

AI Eyes also self-destruct when you take a planet, even if there are guard posts left.  So as long as there aren't any guard posts protecting the AI Command Station, you can blow their CS up and quickly build your own CS to take out an AI Eye.

[PokerChen]

These little factoids are the ones that should be in the wiki strategy section.