AI War:AI Eyes

Eyes are AI's defensive devices. They each have a specific effect to defend their planets or threaten Humans when attacked. That effect is often very powerful but the AI won't use it unless Human military ships numerically overwhelm local AI forces, which makes dealing with eyes interesting challenges.

Triggering

While Human military units on the eye's planet are more than twice the number of the AI's, the eye is triggered. Some have a continuous effect that is activated while that condition is met. Others have a one-time effect with a charging time. The charging time begins when the condition is met and stops (and resets) when it's no more. When the charge is complete, the effect is applied and, if the condition is still met, the eye immediately begins to charge again.

Destroying

Eyes can be directly targeted. However, their immense health pool (as much as a Wormhole Guard Post) makes that strategy less likely to be interesting. However, an eye will self-destruct if there is no more Guard Post on their planet (not counting wormhole and special force guard posts). Guerrilla-style raids and heavy usage of Starships are recommended.

Alternatively, a sabotage Hack can get rid of an eye without destroying the guard posts. While handling the hacking response during the hack under the eye's surveillance is still a problem, with a sufficiently large Hacking Points buffer the AI might not be allowed to use a tachyon blast, which would allow the hacker to complete the sabotage on its own. The hacking response would be dealt with later, once the menace of the eye is gone.

List

• Sentry Eyes are a direct feed back to the AI core network: when player ships gang up on the AI overwhelmingly, alarms are tripped and higher-level AI ships come pouring out of the Eye. Spawned ships are zombie bots, which are overly aggressive as well as being immune to reclamation.
• Ion Eyes are enormously powerful ion cannons that must be powered directly from the AI's warp grid. The AI will only devote that much power when player ships gang up on the AI overwhelmingly.
• Parasite Eyes are enormously powerful multi-barrel railcannons that deliver reclamator payloads. They require so much power to fire that a direct tap into the AI's warp grid is necessary.
• Raid Eyes are are specialized Raid Engines that must be powered directly from the AI's warp grid. When fully charged, the Raid Eye will trigger an attack wave. This eye takes 15 seconds to charge.
• A Nuclear Eye is an enormously powerful nuclear device which can only be detonated by overload directly from the AI's warp grid. When fully charged, the Nuclear Eye will detonate and destroy everything (that isn't immune to nukes) on the planet, including the command station, and incur the usual +50 AIP for detonation of a Nuclear Warhead. Nothing of value will remain. This eye takes 30 seconds to charge.
• A Threatening Eye is a specialized reaction-force-dispatcher that must be powered directly from the AI's warp grid.
• Translocator Eyes are enormously powerful railclusters that deliver specialized rounds causing translocation, engine damage, and paralysis. The weapon is so big that must be powered directly from the AI's warp grid.
• Plasma Eyes are enormously powerful batteries of plasma-siege cannons that must be powered directly from the AI's warp grid.

Core

Sentry, Raid, Threatening, Translocating, and Plasma eyes have a Core version that replaces their normal versions on AI Homeworlds. They are immune to nukes and a few other things normal eyes aren't. Ion and Parasite eyes are only seeded on non-homeworld planets.