Minor AI flaws on planets

[KDR_11k]

Just a way to spice planet diversity up: Small, random modifiers that apply to single planets while held by the AI. Mostly weakening the AI in a small way to potentially increase the attractiveness of a planet for taking. They represent a state of disrepair in the AI's less important systems. A planet shouldn't have multiple flaws and core/home worlds shouldn't be eligible for them either.

I'm deliberately not trying to add things that would allow luring a mobile force into the system and using the flaw to fight them more easily.

Potential Flaws:
Faulty replicators: The AI's replicators are inaccurate and below spec in this area. Reinforcements spawn at 80% health.
Troublesome fuel: The reactants supplied to ships in this sector are impure. Reinforcements spawn at 80% engine health.
Weak logistics: Sending reinforcements to this planet is more difficult due to irregularities in the warp space. The reinforcement rate is slightly lowered.
Unstable supply: Maintaining a fleet on this planet is difficult. The reinforcement caps are slightly lowered.
Lemon dump: Sometimes ships aren't built to the specs of their mark, these lemons go here. Reinforcements have a chance to be one mark below the planet level.
Underpowered warp gate: The wormhole generated by the warp gate is weaker than normal. Waves sent from this planet take a bit longer to arrive.
Unencrypted data storage: Scientists can gleam some information from the local data streams of the AI. The planet's knowledge capacity is slightly increased (250?)
Unfocused sensors: The AI has difficulty telling what's going on in this system. AIP generated by killing AI property here is reduced by 20%.

On moderate difficulty the AI could attempt to rectify these flaws. A flawed system can have one of multiple triggers for disabling the flaw to provide additional challenges to the player:
Timer: When the planet is either set on alert or a human military force first enters the planet's space the flaw will disappear within a certain time limit unless the planet is conquered by then.
Ship cap: If the number of active player ships on the planet passes a threshold the flaw is lost.
Entrance limit: If the number of times that player ships have entered the planet's space (every use of the wormhole towards the planet counts, no matter whether it was one ship going many times or many ships going once) passes a threshold the flaw is lost.
Kill limit: If the number of player ships that died on the planet passes a threshold the flaw is lost.
Star ships may need separate limits.

At high difficulty the AI could even get positive modifiers on planets, of course the AI will not attempt to fix these:
High spec replicators: The production facilities of the AI are so high quality the results may exceed expectations. Reinforcements have a chance to be one mark higher than the planet's level.
Supreme sensor coverage: The AI sees your actions with an abnormal clarity. AIP increases brought by killing AI property in this system are INCREASED by 20%.
Uninteresting planet: The planet simply does not offer much of note to your scientists. The knowledge capacity is slightly decreased.
Smooth warp space: Traveling through warpspace is significantly easier here. Waves launched from this planet arrive slightly faster.

Some planets could potentially have dormant advantages that come with a challenge similar to the flaws, if the player trips the condition the advantage activates.

Some thoughts before I mantis this?

[Kahuna]

I like this idea and I think it could work. Like everything.. it just needs to be balanced correctly. The bonuses and disadvantages must not be too significant or game breaking.

[Draco18s]

Ships spawning with 80% health or 80% engines is actually a null flaw.  The AI spawns engineers all the time and those would just flit around and "fix" the problem within minutes.

[Hearteater]

Similar mantis issue for Unencrypted data storage/Uninteresting Planet.

[doctorfrog]

Lemon dump: Sometimes ships aren't built to the specs of their mark, these lemons go here.

I find this one in particular to be intriguing, as it sounds like a smaller part of an overall ecosystem. If you think of each AI already having a personality that you must "decode," that's already part of you figuring out the flavor of the game. Looking at a planet, and realizing that it's basically a cardboard bin for rejects, you get the feeling that it's a place that's actively being used, or has been used.

Another way to see this is to look at each AI homeworld as a brain, the leagues of planets are their bodies intertwined. How might the other planets that make up each AI's body have a specific function, rather than just a randomly generated place with stuff in it? What features might a planet have that make it look like a 'heart,' a set of 'lungs,' a set of 'sensory organs?'

Put another way, how could we gameify themed planets? Without also having the player go, "oh yeah, this is a trash planet, let me do that standard action I have to do every time I see a trash planet?"

This sort of thing could be tied into other features of the planet, rather than just being random. Maybe it's a C1/M1 planet, and that would make it more likely to spawn a junkyard like this. I think there is already some of that logic present in map generation, with high-value planets more likely being heavily protected.

[_K_]

At first i thought it was a great idea, but then i changed my mind.

I think the planets on their own should all be the same. Or, at most have some special traits unrelated to AI.
It would be more logical to add different structures for those modifiers. For negative thats simple, and the structures can be either invincible, or cost AIP on kill like BHMs.
For positive its not as easy, but i guess you could make some hackable structures, so the player has to actually hack some structure to activate the bonus, or they could affect all surrounding planets so you have to capture them.

I find this one in particular to be intriguing, as it sounds like a smaller part of an overall ecosystem.

Story-wise, the systems serve no useful function for the AI whatsoever. They dont yield any resources, and all the production is done somewhere "outside".
And since the only purpose of those systems is securing defense against humans, different aspcets of defence are the the limit there.

Not like thats not enough though, the whole concept of some different key planets containing important things that have galaxy-wide effect would be cool. Right now the closest thing we have are CSGs, and the benefit they provide is really extremely simple.
I'm talking about different stuff like special structures that grant AI things like "power for AI home fotresses", "2x damage and armor on all core X posts", "Power on all MK X ion cannons", and so on. There are so many things to disable/cripple!