Back again with Conquering planets & satellites |
I'm back again with some questions, I'm sorry if some of these seem very basic. I just recently got the game and started playing, I haven't played this since the first space empires years ago, so there's a lot of still getting up to speed on.
When attacking another empires planet, is there a way to take over the planet instead of destroying it? One of the other empires has a planet in a solar system I'm currently in that has some nice mining facilities, I'd love to run them out and take control of the planet, rather than just destroy everything and move on.
Also, with satellites, are you only allowed to launch them around planets you own or something? I've built a few that I wanted to lauch into space near some warp holes, but it won't let me launch them like I can mines. I'm wanting to set up some satellites around some of my more spread out systems, especially around warp holes, to extend the part of the system I can see, and watch for possible enemy incursions. I figured sattelites would be the least expensive route to do this (rather than simply parking a ship somewhere, but it never seems to let me launch a sattelite.
If anyone can give me any pointers on either of these two item I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
Re: Back again with Conquering planets & satellites
You need to have the fighters or troops on a ship that has its strategy set to "capture enemy planet" -- or you could do tactical combat, select that ship and hit "T" to tell it to land troops on the planet.
Re: Back again with Conquering planets & satellites
...Remember to order your ships and fighter manually to target enemy ships, bases, satellites, and leave the planet alive. Or else they attack everything the come across and then you need to bring a colony ship.
My planetinvasion tactic is as follows:
Destroy enemy ships, sattelites and if there are planetary defences they need to be reduced, and then call off the attack when all that can shoot is destroyed.
THEN i send in the troopship, which is transporting the troops, which i manually order to drop on the planet.
Re: Back again with Conquering planets & satellites
There's usually not much left on the planet if you do that. I've been considering just sending in so many transports that most of them get through. I usually end up going around anything with weapons platforms and looking for planets that are defended by fighters.
Re: Back again with Conquering planets & satellites
I found that often it's useful to soften up a planet defended by weapon platforms before trying to drop troops on them. In the early game, with more than 4 WP on the planet you will most certainly suffer heavy losses.
Re: Back again with Conquering planets & satellites
Is it possible to "soften up" a planet in strategic combat? Seems like most of the strategies for pulling back don't work.
Re: Back again with Conquering planets & satellites
I used to send a carefully selected number of anti-planet fighters, so that they would all die or run out of ammo but destroy most of the weapon platforms.
Then then next turn I send in troop transports.
Re: Back again with Conquering planets & satellites
Brill -- will try it!
Re: Back again with Conquering planets & satellites
You need troops/fighters to capture a planet, if using fighters for that purpose make sure they DON'T launch in the battle, as for satellites, did you put a satellite bay on the ship? Because unless you did that they won't be able to launch.