I think that AI War needs more "naturally occurring" transient phenomena that affect the nature of battle, and might give you openings. (Space weather)
Currently, the only thing like this is the Devourer Golem, but the Mining Golem and the Trader Golem have some similarities.
These would probably want to have an alert if you have warp sensors on a planet. Ideally, the AI would try to exploit these when it has sensors present.
Ideas:
- Rogue Nebula: Puts a normal system under nebula conditions (1/2 speed, 1/2 range) for a little while (15 minutes? half an hour?)
- Meteor Showers: Several waves of meteors will move across the gravity well at high speed in a direction, hitting things they pass through (if they do and/or take enough damage, they'll be destroyed). Advanced warp sensor will tell you the direction they'll come from.
- Solar Flare: A burst hits the system, doing something to everything in the system. (EMP? Paralysis? Ion? Tachyon? Damage?)
- Rare Asteroid: An asteroid with a lot of resource gather points will appear in the system. (may or may not move) You can build harvesters on it for a large temporary income boost, and the AI can put a structure on it (in supply) to get scarier reinforcement waves in nearby systems. These end when the asteroid leaves the system. Advanced warp sensor shows you where it will appear.
- Wormhole Flux: Two non-nebula wormhole pairs will temporarily switch connections. Advanced warp sensor shows you where the connections are going to change to.
- Drifting Zenith Cache: A Zenith Ship Cache will move through a system. Whoever blows it up gets the ships! Advanced warp sensor tells you where it will show up. (no AIP, just a one-time bunch of ships for whatever faction pops it -- Player, Friendly, Neutral, Anti-all, or AI)
- Gravity Slingshot: Mobile ships that pass through a system while this phenomena is present have their speed temporarily increased to some minimum level (e.g., 150)
- The Darkness: A system temporarily loses all supply and disables guard posts and reinforcement waves, making it more vulnerable to attack.
