How kill platforms without killing planet ?

could research weapon destroying tech.

SEV, more than a feeling.

Depends on the mod - there may be anti-weapon platform weapons available. It's certainly possible to mod one. However, if that's not an option, then you need to use a tight formation (likely a custom one) with some 'Meat shields' in front of your drop ship all in one task force.

Helps if you add more to that. Depending on the mod, you may only need a single frigate's worth of troops to take on a planet.

Also, I'm not sure if it's true or not, but I did hear a story of ramming fighters into a planet transferring them to ground combat. Fighters can't conquer a planet but they can certainly clean it of weapon platforms and troops while they're down there.

Edit: But wait, are you playing Stock? I know in BM the population are a lot more resilient. Even if you blow away all facilities from a colony while taking out the weapon platforms, killing the population is much more difficult.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

I would recommend going with weapons that can target weapon platforms, but I can't think of any... and I don't think there are any...

I don't see a basic gun being able to waste a planet's population with any ease...
search Settings.txt for this line

Damage Points To Kill One Population

Default value is 10.
That measn every 10 damage will kill 1 million people.

10 damage to kill one million population... yeah, right...
A fighter with cluster bombs could wipe out 3 million people in one shot... nonsense if you ask me.

Simply make it a bigger number (like maybe 100 or bigger), so bombing a planet into a burned out depopulated rock actually requires the time and effort it should require, instead of accidently razing a huge planet to a crisp trying to wipe out a single well armored/shielded large weapon platform...

To bad there isn't tech (or facilities) that could reduce damage done to populations... (space flight, nuke missiles, planetary napalm... but no fallout shelters?!)

Yes, this is kind of rediculous. You should have to bomb a planet all day long before you kill all it's people.

SEV, more than a feeling.

yes nonesense indeed. Fighters should not be able to wipe out whole cities with one bomb (3mil pop. to a city?) The damage population can absorb should be increased dramatically. but also bombardement weapons that target PLANET ONLY as well as population targeting weapons should be beefed up to compensate. Fighters should NOT be able to take out a city but a 'nuclear' bomb surely should

Agreed. But it'd be pretty cool to be able to outfit your ftr loadout on a need to basis... Currently, I guess what's needed is to develop a ftr that has a nuke-neutron bomb component to target only population and then the rest of your ftrs are permanently outfitted another way? Or is there some other more creative method?

Oh aye the idea's good and it's code-able too. Real problem is: will this Mod be for multiplayer-only or not? If not, you're going to have to figure out how to code the AI to adapt to this which is the hard part of any mod. Otherwise, nearly anyone with a bit of time and effort can create such a mod for PvP fun.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

i wouldn't say bombardment weapons are totally useless. they are DIRECT fire which means they can't be shot down. in later levels they out-range most other weapons and with a mount they do terrible terrible damage to a planet. it would be sweet to see them tweaked though, and maybe more options available instead of just napalm and smart bombs.
I like the idea of 'Unit' targetting bombardment weapons (to pound troops and WPs to dust before landing on the planet) though i suppose its not realistic to be able to target individual troops with WMDs from space

i think just beefing up the damage population can absorb would help out alot. that way you have to pound on the planet for a while to totally destroy it. it would use a significant amount of supply (as destroying a planet should) and you won't destroy all the population before the "units" on the planet are damaged/destroyed.

Do weapon overloading weapons work against platforms? Perhaps temporarily disabling their weapons would give you enough time to land your troops.

The biggest headache with extremely high numbers of weapon platforms defending one planet is that they spread the damage they receive. This is typically why you'll have to have put down so much payload as to practically glass a planet before its guns are silenced.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

I hate to point out the obvious...but couldn't you drop troops to take out the weapon platforms?

You might need a few ships to run interferance and take shots for your troop transports, but frigates are cheap and can come in large numbers.

Of course, you run the risk of capturing a planet instead of reducing it to rubble, and that seems to be an unattractive option for many of the players here.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
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ya... why are you trying to destroy WP's without glassing the planet??
just land troops and take it if thats your ultimate goal. as far as i know WP's don't fight in GC.

The argument spawned because the original poster was in early game and didn't have the resources to do that. Naturally, sending numerous frigates (+ armour decoys ahead) each with some troops on board is the best way to conquer a planet regardless of weapon platforms ^^

Also, can someone check what happens when you ram a fighter into a planet?

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Note that you can make population harder to kill by changing 1 line in Settings.txt - it's worth browsing through the file just to know what you can change on your own.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Theoretically they do, but in practice none of the weapons they can mount can fire in ground combat. You still have to kill them to capture the planet, though.

In BM (i don;t play stock) i use heavily armored frigate or destroyer with some cargo for such missions. It can carry LOT more troops than is needed to take colony (homeworld needs more) and it can survive long enough.

Doesn't just setting the fleet strategy to invade planet work? or are the populations so small the weapons' collateral damage still kills everyone right off... like a population 1 city in a Civilization game.

The 10 damage to kill a million people is indeed nonsense, that's why I have it at 1000
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I'm using weapon with damage type "Burn Armor" (Alloy Burner Missile, big range), it can't damage population (DamageTypes.txt).
And then "Only Weapons" type, as armor and shields are destroed, you will kill less population.

P.S. not efective, if weapon platforms have to many point defences. I should have more missiles then enemy point defences.

I still like bombarding the planet at 1/8 speed then stopping the attack the moment the WPs are gone. Have to keep scanning the planet evey few seconds. Don't use overkill though, you may glass the planet by accident.

Couldn't you use strategies to not attack planet but to attack WP? not tried it yet myself but that should work

Sorry rahlubenru, WPs are only valid targets on the ground, stratwise. From space they're just part of the planet.

Can't tell you how often I tried to get it to work like you suggest, but no dice. We can now choose "All Weapons Gone" vs. planets and it's supposed to stop shooting altogether when they're gone. But by the time they stop, the pop can also be gone, hence the problem.

Could have a new kind of bomb like the ones that target only space ports or shipyards or resupply depots. I believe these were in SE4 but I didn't check to see if they were in SE5.

Spaceport and Resupply Smart Bombs exist in stock SE5.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Can they be tweaked to target other facilities or WPs (or other planetary cargo) or are they hard coded in?

Are you sure? The point of fighters is they don t carry huge warp engines or stabilisers or whaht not to trans-dimensionally transit space-time (drop thro or a warp point).
If a modern[i] fighter bomber can wipe out a city with air launched tactical nuclear missiles I don t know why a future one shouldn t.
I remember that in one of the versions the Missiles were described as nuclear, tho I could be wrong.

Turns are also 0.1 years long. I'm sure a handful of angry 25th century fighters can do alot of damage in that time.

What concerns me about this discussion is from the other side of the coin. In my current game I started next to another empire and there has already been a number of ship battles. It is only a matter of a few turns before planets on both sides are also targeted. If my weapons platforms don't protect the colony then what is the point in having them in game in the first place? If a(my) planet can get glassed before the WP are destroyed then the system is broke/bugged. I hope this gets fixed.

Ground troops and buildings I can understand being put in the same target category, with general population being targeted last. Combat options VS planets should include "stop after WPs are destroyed", "stop after WPs, facilities and troops are destroyed", and "OH baby, don't stop now!".

The current set-up seriously taints the game play experience in a negative manner from both aggressive and defensive perspectives, imho.

Yeah WP need to die before everything else.

I'd like to see even more powerful WP and have troop killing weapons, invading should be a costly and challenging undertaking.

I haven't used WPs (or bases, mines, and satellites even) in a long time. They may be good at stopping that single ship or small fleet wondering around but so can a few fighters and they are more flexible. Faced by a determined effort by anything larger defenses will make little difference.

I forget which ones, but at least a couple of mods are drastically reducing the pop casualties caused by weapons. That's probably the simplest solution. Could make life harder on habitual glassers, but other than that I don't see a downside.

Even though I can be a rabid glasser I fully support the idea of making pop much much harder to kill. I've tried making changes to the settings.txt to that effect but it seems to make little difference. Is there any other way?

Apparently the numbers in settings.txt makes no difference at all, only the numbers in damagetypes.txt have any effect on pop damage.
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My efforts so far have been in vain, but