Why would you kill Special Guard Posts now?

[Wingflier]

Ever since the change to Special Guard Posts (non-auto-targeted and don't reinforce when on a human planet), I don't see a reason why you would ever need to destroy them.

At worst they are a minor annoyance which forces you to keep manually rebuilding your harvesters.  Am I missing something?

[keith.lamothe]

This is probably true.  At the moment

[Wingflier]

*Looks at Keith dubiously*

[Mánagarmr]

Possibly up for a "buff" vote?

[rabican]

yeah, this is why it was suggested that they would destruct with ai commandstation

[Kahuna]

yeah, this is why it was suggested that they would destruct with ai commandstation

This would be good.

[Martyn van Buren]

I'd favor an option that gave special forces teeth, but it sounds like Keith is out ahead of us on that one.

[TechSY730]

One, I think allowing planets with them to be a "waypoint" for special forces ships regardless of if they are on a friendly planet or not would make me care a bit about them. (Though, making the special forces ships a bit smarter in regards with going into planets they can't possibly make an impact on until they get enough backup would be needed for "full effect")
Also, I would once again like to peddle my idea of to allow freed and special forces ships to aid defense on nearby planets, though that can be "pruned" into only special forces ships if need be.

Basically, while buffs on the posts themselves may be needed, I think for us to truly want to take them out, special forces ships will need to be smarter and/or get new behavior for us to start caring about them.

(Yea, there are stories about people starting their games right in a "special forces chokepoint" where special forces ships are very likely to route through, thus making their early game quite tough, but those are the exceptions, rather than the rule)

[Mánagarmr]

Tbh, I've NEVER ever experiences these so called "special forces". What are they supposed to do anyway?

[Eternaly_Lost]

Tbh, I've NEVER ever experiences these so called "special forces". What are they supposed to do anyway?

To make it simple, special forces gather at special forces guard posts then head to another special forces guard post attacking things they find on the way. If you have special forces guard posts on either side of your worlds or inside on them, you find waves of ships from reinforcements attacking, rather then just the normal waves and exo waves, so you don't get that much of a warning about them.

[TechSY730]

Tbh, I've NEVER ever experiences these so called "special forces". What are they supposed to do anyway?

Ships that spawn to reinforce a special forces guard post are instead sent on the "special forces" logic. Basically, ships on special forces will randomlly wander around, randomly choosing planets to head to with other special forces posts on them (or thing that are eligible for being a special forces waypoint, like special forces guardians). Once they reach their destination, they'll just choose another eligible point to go to. If they encounter a hostile military ship, they will become freed and just become normal threat. It is very similar to the logic astro trains use.

However, they are not quite as prominent as astro trains because:
1. On lower difficulties, they will avoid routing through human planets if possible. On mid-high difficulties, they will route through human planets if other ways around are much longer (or non-existent). Only on the very high difficulties will they be willing to enter human planets without hesitation. (NOTE: Based on observation, devs will have to confirm to be sure)
2. Special forces frequently don't wait for firepower accumulation when they are about to enter a hostile planet, meaning they will often just "trickle" in and basically get a bunch of nothing done.
3. They choose their planets randomly. Barring other circumstances (like odd map layouts), they are just as likely to choose to route to a planet that is away from human presence, AI homeworlds, AI worlds under threat, or is near a route between either of the these as they are to choose a planet under alert or an AI planet that is dangerously close to human presence (though this is true of Astro trains as well)

However, they can become a big factor in the right circumstances. Next time you reach the mid-game or later, try getting vision at an AI planet that is fairly well surrounded by other planets and is a moderate distance away from human planets. You should see a pretty surprisingly large number of ships just going through the planet and going to other planets. Those are the special forces ships.

[Mánagarmr]

Oh right, they're likely being nommed by defenses then and me never really noticing much.

[Hearteater]

Probably the only time you notice them is on 10/10 if you are on a SF highway, you can get Mark IV ships attacking you minutes into the game.

[Wanderer]

Probably the only time you notice them is on 10/10 if you are on a SF highway, you can get Mark IV ships attacking you minutes into the game.

Yeah, I've really only significantly noticed them in early game at 9.3+ diffs.  Mostly they're just random +1 AIP posts I kill along the way.

The only time you really run into them is if you've let a far-away highway build for a while or early game when you first hit the mass SF spawn that is generated at the beginning.  Once you've wrecked that, they're basically ignorable.

[KDR_11k]

They used to be fairly massive threats but with the damage inflation passing them by they're just jokes now.