I have been toying with the idea for spec forces to have special forces posts and spec forces sub-commander posts. In this system, spec forces posts do not provide AIP on death, but sub-commander posts do. For reference, there would be about the same number of spec posts in the galaxy(could someone provide numbers for this?), but there would be a set of sub-commander posts seeded additionally, where they cannot be seeded next to each other and prefer Core worlds.
Both Sub-commander posts and Spec force posts would spawn units when their system was triggered.
Units spawned as spec forces would rally to the nearest sub-commander post.
When an "important" world is under attack, the forces at the sub-commander post would trigger an alert for the human players and send all rallied forces to the world with a spawned guardian to "lead" the attack (also to keep the strike grouped and from stringing into the system).
Sub-commander would 'protect' systems only within a couple(2-3 jumps) of their location, but Always their AI Homeworld.
This would give the game a feeling of fighting the AI Overlords as well as their Lieutenants which could have a cool feel.
I would be happy to flesh this idea out with whoever, i think it could be a cool minor faction or some such. If you have any ideas or criticism, they would be greatly appreciated.