So I decided I was a sadist and was going to play on a grid map versus two special forces captains. Yeah, it's not very smart. However, I found that as long as I sat holed up in my own system the patrols wouldn't cross my path. I guess it's cause special forces patrols go between closest systems? I dunno.
Anyways, there's two things I was unclear about.
1) When patrolling special forces ships spot an enemy ship, they instantly become freed and start attacking. I found out the hard way if a special forces patrol sees a scout, they instantly become threat. Oops, 400+ threat at 3 minutes in! I kind of expected that to be honest, but I'm unsure if scouts causing special force patrols to break is (similar to scouts causing tag teamer AI to free ships in a previous update). It strikes me as very possible that most people encountering very early game attacks have it occur for this reason.
2) Does the AI regenerate special forces patrols? I took care of a huge number of special forces ships patrolling my end of the galaxy after they decided to release due to my scouting, and everything became pretty quiet. I kind of expected the AI systems to be brimming with angry moving ships, but once I killed the angry moving ships, there wasn't much left. Will the AI replace special forces patrols after they're destroyed?
