Capturing ships and planets?

Use troops in cargo ships to capture planets.

Use boarding parties (come from combat tech i think) or Intel projects like capture enemy ships (sabotage ships and fleets). Or use the racial trait Psychic that gives you alleigance subverters and changing weapons.

javaslinger it's important that you have your ship design strategies correct too when attempting a capture. A transport full of troops should have the orders "Capture Planet", a boarding ship should have "Capture Ship" etc.

But thoses tend to be useless in late game as weapons kills ships so fast you can't disable or capture them, and planet are gone in the blink of an eye...

Inter-Related Tactical Conversion v 0.53

http://www.rogepost.com/n/3594323592

For capturing planets I design specific fleets to do this, I use a LC or Crusier hull (max speed with solar sail) and as much sheilding, and stealth as I can get on it, a few PB Cannons (the fast firing ones) and a couple of cargo holds (will carry all the troops you are ever likely to need). Then I give it some support ships with tons of shields and PD. I don't take any weapons near the planet that can hurt it, but enough PD to make sure my assault ship can usually get its cargo on the surface before its destroyed.

A slightly cheesy tip here is to take advantage of the combat end, make sure you have destroyed or chased off all enemy ships and satalites before sending in your assault ship, this way as soon as the troops are on the ground the combat ends and your assault ship doesn't have to escape WP range.

If you want a bit of fluff to make sense of this.... As soon as your troops are on the ground the WPs have other things to worry about than shooting at ships in orbit, like their own survival.

It’s quite possible to slow tactical combat down to 1/8 and to pause it and give orders. Using force proportionate to the task in hand also helps for example you don’t need a dozen of your planet eating Battle ships to capture an AI destroyer as you will quite rightly vaporise it instantly. Losing the chance to capture it

Hmmm slow down combat.... where is the fun in that. I usually speed combat upto 3 or 4 times to make it more exciting *GRIN*, it also gives the AI some advantages because at those speeds it can react far better than I can. You might as well put time halts on every couple of seconds.