AI War:Guard Posts

Guard Posts are immobile AI units. They are AI equivalent for turrets and are the main challenge when neutering or capturing an AI planet. They block resource deposits and also serve as AI Reinforcement points, hence their name. While their firepower is high, paying close attention to hull types and bonuses is required when dealing with them. They all have a very slow regeneration and a Radar Dampening that makes them impossible to outrange.

There is several pools of guard posts; the planetary generation picks them depending on the type of planet.

• Special guard posts can be picked by everybody but are used on specific conditions and places.
• Regular planets can only pick regular guard posts.
• Subommander planets can pick regular and exotic guard posts.
• Homeworld planets (MkV) can pick core guard posts, plus a number of brutal guard posts that depends on the difficulty level.

Regular

	Anti-Starship Arachnid Guard Post Mid-range AI guard post that can't fire upon most small mobile targets. But its high-powered lasers can do grievous harm to starships, fortresses, forcefields, guard posts, guardians and turrets.
	Cloaker Guard Post Basic AI guard post with no gun, but a cloaking device that cloaks other AI ships near it. The post itself cannot be cloaked.
	Command Station Shield Guard Post Low-range AI guard post with mid-power guns. Must be destroyed before humans can damage the AI Command Station on this planet.
	Laser Guard Post Basic AI guard post armed with several heavy-laser batteries.
	Missile Guard Post Basic AI guard post armed with a single long-range, high-damage missile launcher.
	MLRS Guard Post Basic AI guard post armed with many MLRS batteries.
	Needler Guard Post Basic AI guard post armed with several heavy-needler batteries.
	Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post Alien technology with relatively few guns, but an impressive force field attachment.

Special

These are guard posts with special generation rules. (See their dedicated page for more information.)

	Special Forces Guard Post When an AI gets reinforcements, each guard posts also gets reinforcements, and the reinforcements generated for special forces guard posts are immediately assigned to special forces and form a group that rallies to defend against attacks on planets the AI cares about.
	Warp Counterattack Guard Post AI guard post with practically no guns, but the powerful ability to warp in a low-warning counterattack wave to most human planets without a warp jammer command station (regardless of warp gates). These counterattacks are launched when this guard post is destroyed. This guard post must be destroyed before humans can damage the AI Command Station on this planet.
	Wormhole Guard Post These massively-armored guard posts have practically no guns, but stand sentinel over wormholes that the AI controls. They are destroyed when the command station is destroyed -- attacking them head-on is usually a waste of time.

Exotic

These guard posts are only available to Planetary Subcommanders, which select them according to their personality. They tend to be more dangerous because of their special abilities and the way the subcommanders select and place them.

	Disassembler Guard Post In addition to its weaponry, also swallows enemy starships whole and disassembles them. If the post is destroyed any surviving starships inside will emerge.
	Enclave Guard Post In addition to its weaponry, contains internal fabrication and hangar facilities for a number of attack drones that it will launch when enemies are present.
	Gravity Guard Post In addition to its weaponry, mounts a powerful gravity generator that slows down nearby enemies.
	Implosion Guard Post Mounts a number of powerful implosion cannons which do a percent of the target's health in damage, making them extremely effective against large enemy units.
	Munition Boosting Guard Post In addition to its weaponry, boosts the attack power of nearby allies.
	Plasma Guard Post Is basically built around a powerful plasma siege cannon which does intense damage to a single target and reduced damage in an area around the target. If it damages a forcefield it also causes some damage to several targets underneath that forcefield.
	Sniper Guard Post Mounts powerful railcannons with effectively infinite range.
	Spider Guard Post Mounts a powerful "shotgun"-like weapon designed to cripple the engines of enemy units.
	Tachyon Guard Post In addition to its weaponry, mounts a powerful tachyon emitter for uncovering cloaked enemies.
	Tractor Guard Post In addition to its weaponry, mounts a powerful multiplex tractor beam.
	Widow Guard Post In addition to its weaponry, mounts a powerful multiplex tractor beam that also paralyzes its victims.

Core

Core Guard Posts are a stronger and more dangerous type of guard post that only spawns on an AI homeworld. They increase the AI Progress by 1 when destroyed and they must be destroyed before the AI Orbital Command Station in that system (homeworld or not) can be destroyed. Unless the "Lazy AI" option is activated, they also increase the AIP floor by 10 when destroyed. On the AI homeworlds, the Core Guard Posts cannot be destroyed while at least one Core Shield Generator remains in the galaxy.

	Core Arachnid Guard Post This Guard Post is armed with Massively powerful artillery cannon designed to cripple or destroy larger targets. It can't even shoot at smaller units.
	Booster Guard Post Middling weaponry, but significantly boosts both the munitions and the armor of all nearby AI ships.
	Electric Guard Post Emits fearsome large-scale electric area damage.
	Heavy Beam Guard Post A massive long-range beam cannon that can vaporize many smaller craft in one blast, or do extreme damage to a larger target. The beam fired by this guard post is the same type as fired by the Heavy Beam Turret.
	Core Implosion Drone Guard Post This guard post is armed with several high-power implosion cannons that are extremely dangerous to large targets, but are thankfully relatively shorter-ranged than most implosion weapons. Unfortunately, this post also launches "Implosion Drones" which (while much shorter-ranged still, and the drone self-destructs when it fires) charge at enemy ships to fire several lower-power implosion rounds.
	Leech Guard Post Reclaims enemy ships it kills (reclaimed ships have health = damage inflicted by reclamator).
	Core Missile Guard Post Emits fearsome long-range, armor-piercing, high-damage missiles.
	Neinzul Melee Guard Post This mobile alien guard post comes after human fleets with its guards in tow, chewing through any ships it touches with whirling blades.
	Neinzul Spawner Guard Post Alien technology spawns powerful-yet-short-lived Neinzul Youngling Cockroaches.
	Riot Control Guard Post This guard post fires many shells that aren't massively powerful but do significant engine damage. Also the post mounts many tractor beams which paralyze their victims.
	Sentinel Guard Post This mobile guard post comes after human fleets with its guards in tow, firing beam weapons.
	Core Spire Shield Sphere Guard Post Alien technology with relatively few guns, but an impressive force field attachment.
	Zenith Bombard Guard Post Alien technology emits extremely long-range mid-power energy bomb attacks.
	Zenith Fortress Guard Post Alien immobile fortress emits massive flame waves at short range.

Brutal

This pool is reserved to homeworld planets. Brutal guard posts are also considered Core guard posts and follow the same rule (AIP and command station protection). The number of brutal guard post a homeworld can have depends on the AI's difficulty level (each homeworld roll independently):

• 3 brutal on 9+;
• between 2 and 3 on 8+;
• between 1 and 2 on 7+;
• between 0 and 1 below.

The Brutal AI Type has one more on its homeworld, plus one on each of its MkIV planets.

	Cross Planet Attack Guard Post Launches brutal galaxy-wide cross planet attacks as soon as the human players bring military ships to this post's planet. These CPAs happen around every 13 minutes and are heavily influenced in their size by both the current AI Progress and the difficulty level of the AI controlling this post.
	Grav Reactor Guard Post An enormously powerful reactor based on some kind of gravitational energy manipulation. Generates a strong gravity well that prevents most enemy ships from leaving the system, and greatly slows enemy ships that stray too near the reactor itself.
	Hunter/Killer Factory Guard Post This Guard Post is armed with powerful Energy Wave cannons, but a far greater danger lies within: if an AI unit dies on its planet or any adjacent planet, or if any adjacent planet is not AI-held, this factory deploys the fearsome Hunter/Killer unit is has constructed. After deploying the H/K, the factory builds another in 30 minutes.
	Raid Engine Guard Post Launches brutal mark V waves against its own planet or any adjacent planets, if those planets are not controlled by AI players, or if the human players have a significant fleet there. If human players don't have warp sensors on these planets, the waves may well arrive unannounced. These waves arrive around every four minutes and contain a broad mix of AI ships.
	Shredder Drone Guard Post This guard post is armed with a powerful shotgun weapon, but its main danger lay in the fact that when damaged, it spawns "Shredder Drones" which then attack human units. If one of these shredders does enough damage it replicates itself. Further, after a shredder has existed for 30 seconds it will automatically scrap itself and restores a chunk of health to the Shredder Drone Guard Post (if the post is still alive).
	Teuthida Guard Post An AI/Neinzul hybrid experiment gone wrong. When hostiles are present, this post continuously generates nanoswarm-like drones. Instead of merely doing reclamation damage, however, the organisms released by these drones instantly transform the targets into "zombie" vessels. Ships immune to reclamation are spared this fate, but are not spared from the extremely powerful cluster of railcannons mounted on the post itself.
	Wrath Lance Guard Post As long as it detects hostile military ships on the planet, fires several massive long-range continuous beam weapon cannons in different directions.

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