Special Forces

[mithrandi]

So, uh. I'll just leave this here:

[Mánagarmr]

Wonderful, aren't they?

[Hearteater]

You have 39 planets and 832 AIP, how did you expect the AI to respond?

[mithrandi]

Well, it was nice of them to all rally to one planet so I could nuke them maybe I can continue with my assault on the AI homeworlds now...

[orzelek]

This actually shows their weakness - there needs to be more than one gather point if possible so you can't nuke all of them at once

[keith.lamothe]

I think trading 50 AIP (probably 70 due to command station and warp gate too) for a wipe of special forces is a fair trade

[TechSY730]

I think trading 50 AIP (probably 70 due to command station and warp gate too) for a wipe of special forces is a fair trade

I think trading 50 AIP (probably 70 due to command station and warp gate too) for a wipe of special forces is a fair trade

Even still, having more than one gather point would lead to more unpredictability, and decrease the average response time for any special forces to show up.
I would support it. Of course, then the issue becomes given the state of the game (particularly, how many special forces ships there are), how many gather points should there be, and how should the special forces "split up" across those gather points? If you split up too much, then you basically make each group not threatening.

[Mánagarmr]

I think trading 50 AIP (probably 70 due to command station and warp gate too) for a wipe of special forces is a fair trade

Don't forget permanent alert of neighboring worlds.

[Trandrin]

Per chance could you do something to cause the AI to take large amounts of special forces and convert them into bigger/higher mark targets? Think having so many ships just floating is causing a bit of a lag issue in commands or something because the Special forces ships act funny and like to freeze.

[mithrandi]

As it happens, I did manage to win this one, barely. After nuking the special forces fleet, I quickly moved through to take out the one AI homeworld, then refleeted and group-moved to the other AI homeworld while the random threat unleashed by my previous actions started to rampage through the rest of my planets. The homeworld guard posts make for surprisingly soft targets, the only things that posed a significant obstacle to my blob was the twin mkV forcefields covering the second AI command station itself. Even with Ion cannons and a powered Ion Eye firing on my fleet, I didn't take significant losses until I moved on to the command station itself; at that point, a ton of ships had come pouring in from all over and I probably wouldn't have survived without the use of Projected Shadow forcefields.

This was my first non-Fallen Spire game in quite a while, can you tell?

[LordSloth]

Oh yes, speaking of patrol weakpoints, my ongoing game has revealed a couple. Elsewhere, I've already mentioned baiting them out of position with stealth ships. The other one:

The other is quite basic - their engines. Given their reactive nature, you've often cleared a system (sometimes including engineers) and they won't follow you back to your territory, so you can pull back.. I quite unintentionally reduced a few hundred to 1 engine speed, and it's cute to see them struggling to get anywhere. Actually intentionally going after their engines, perhaps with a spider turret/raid engine beachhead or a Champion shield/Riot Starship combo in AI controlled territory has a lot of potential. It's not something that needs directed tweaks, however. Even with a full fledged Spec Op Commander (on AI 7, not touching 10/10, I'm not close to that level), it's something I can definitely seeing setting up to take advantage of - perhaps even using hostile gravity drills to my advantage.

A champion shield spamming can also set them up as a low risk target for lightning warheads or EMP warheads.

[Vitka]

I think trading 50 AIP (probably 70 due to command station and warp gate too) for a wipe of special forces is a fair trade

Don't forget permanent alert of neighboring worlds.

This can be solved with Mk II nuke.

[Mánagarmr]

I think trading 50 AIP (probably 70 due to command station and warp gate too) for a wipe of special forces is a fair trade

Don't forget permanent alert of neighboring worlds.

This can be solved with Mk II nuke.

Umm...I'm failing to see how.

[Vitka]

I think trading 50 AIP (probably 70 due to command station and warp gate too) for a wipe of special forces is a fair trade

Don't forget permanent alert of neighboring worlds.

This can be solved with Mk II nuke.

Umm...I'm failing to see how.

Won't they be destroyed too?

[relmz32]

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.