A few questions about Troops and Invasion

If you want to have your fighters take part in ground combat, you have to drop them on to a planet like troops. Therefore some of them have to be in a cargo bay on a ship with the order to invade the planet. They therefore should not be started in space combat. (don't have a fighter bay on your transports, or disable the auto start option)

1) You should bring warships in. You will need them as targets for the planet and additional point defence sources. Yur troop ships will not survive long enough, if the planet is defended.

2) This may be difficult. There was some talking about weapons should destroy weapon platforms first, but I'm not sure, if it works this way now. You could try not to bring too much fire power in...
If you are playing BM, weapon platforms will be a problem, for their PD weapons can fire in ground combat, too. If they survive the space combat they will be a big problem. In stock, they can not fire in GC, so you can ignore surviving ones.

3) There is, but it is useless. There is no tactic in it, you more or less take all your troops and try to clear everything, but the buildings, from the map.

This is my tactics; I tend also to glass minor worlds.

1) Generally Homeworlds have Weapon Platforms on them, meaning getting your troop transports near without being obliterated can be a problem unless you take them out first.
I tend to 'soften up' the planet first by taking a few of my best ships in and firing at maximum range till they stop firing back

You can see the progress of your damage by right clicking on the planet. Unfortunately your ships won't target just the WP's, so they'll be a lot of collateral damage.

2) I tend to wipe out all, or the vast majority, of enemy troops so that when my troops do land they have to deal with very few enemies, or militia. Sometimes if lucky you can bombard a plant so much that you can take it over straight away without a fight in the same turn, avoiding ground combat phase.

Chances are most buildings will be damaged, and some destroyed.

3) Yes there is tactical combat. It’s awful, and highly frustrating. It’s nothing like space combat, which I think is handled fairly well in SEV.

Like Blubel I highly recommend landing fast fighters with your invasion force. Damaged enemy troops tend to retreat and your troops frustratingly do not follow and engage unless you keep a constant eye on them. Fast fighters can be used to mop up the enemies who flee.

If you have even just one enemy troop still alive by the end of the phase then you’re in trouble. Next turn will spawn countless militia, and your remaining troops will more than likely be wiped out.

Given the time taken to build a good invasion force, the time you take making sure your force doesn’t accidentally glass a planet whilst trying to take out WP’s, and the frustration of tactical combat (there is no strategic option!) that’s why I find it easier to glass, or almost glass a planet.

Also you don’t gain any technology boosts should you conquer a planet with facilities that are a higher tech (which IMO would be an incentive NOT to glass). For example I was hoping I could discover the secrets of Temporal Tech by invading a race with that ability. I wasted countless turns trying to conquer and capture one that had temporal tech, and when I did realised it was pointless.

IMO, best to lay waste, land troops, and rebuild colony in ~20 turns. Or glass, and colonise with your own people. There are no repercussions for being evil and laying waste to 20 Billion people in the game.

I found that if you research planet bombardment 20, you get a neutron bomb which only harms planet population. Using those, you kill off all their population, land your troops and in the combat that results they will only have 1 troop by default. March all over them.

Also in the stock game, the AI only builds missile based weap platforms. These wp's are useless in ground combat because they can't target troop.

I like to make 1 all purpose ship for capturing planet.
-Battleship
-6-10 point defense (Defend against missile wp's)
-3k-8k points in shields
-8-10 neutron bombs
-ordinance to supply the neutrons

If the planet doesn't have wp's, you just pull up, neutron bomb the population to extinction and then land 5 troops to win.

If there are wp's you have to hope that your ship can either A) Shoot down all the incoming missiles or B) tank the damage with the shields while you wipe out the population

Besides the advantage of capturing a planet intact, there's also the benefit of taking on 5000M or so population from a homeworld, which can be quite handy if they breathe a different atmosphere than your race.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Actually yes, forgot about Kwoks point. I usually play games against races that all breathe oxygen and are rock dwellers (humans). For games against races with different atmospheres then conquest is very useful, as you can suddenly make those fairly near-worthless domed colonies suddenly have maximum building capacity!

Shame you can’t analyse facility technology though. It’d be very useful if they had for example Tech Level 10 Mineral Facilities, and you had level 2. Again, it would be another incentive to not glass planets, and for other races to be very extra protective of their territory.

If I've read this thread correctly, it sounds like incorporating fighters into the ground combat force is actually really easy.

The bare bones of it is:
- Design a planet capture ship loaded up with cargo space (Call it a Troop Transport). Do not include a Fighter Bay.
- Fill it up with Troops and Fighters
- Give it Capture Planet orders
- Order it to attack a planet

Do not put a Fighter Bay on the ship, and the Fighters will stay on board until they are offloaded for ground work.

Bring an escort fleet designed to soak up hits and soften up defenses while the Troop Transport ships offload the ground invasion.

Of course, for real combat situations, I would tend to build my Troop Transports out of combat hulls (rather than freighters), give them full speed engines, and load them up with armor and point defense to make them more survivable at the expense of how many Troops and Fighters they could carry. Maybe slack on the engines a little for a little more carrying capacity.... With this sort of build, I might send in 3 to 10 in a single attack to get "enough" ground combat attackers landed.

Hi does the AI use fighters to capture planet in ground battle.

He ponders the dangers inherent in the advantages, and advantages inherent in the dangers. - Ts'ao Ts'ao

Crimson

Ai seldom tries to capture a planet. Off course it depends on the mod you are useing, but I have only rarely seen the AI trying to capture a planet and do not remember seeing an AI useing fighters...

my usual tactic is to send in a lone frigate of fighter as cannon fodder to test the defenses 1st, i.e fighters and sats that the planet will launch, and then scale asualt accordingly by havn enuf ships to keep defenses busy while troops land, after troops land ships no longer target the planet so the facilities dont get damaged.
works a charm but guesing the right amount of force is a tough one.
and only realy worthwhile for homeworlds and built up planets cus with this strat your bound to lose ships by not using overwhelming force.

I use a cloaked transport for landing troops. You can also drop fighters!... as long as you don't have fighter bays on your transport.
I enter the planetary sector cloaked. Then uncloak your ship. Attack the sector using Tactical Mode. Turn off Auto Targeting and Auto Move.
Turn clock speed to 1/8. click Drop Troop button then select planet.
Click the play button an let run half a sec. Stop play. Give move orders to your transport away from planet. If you have adequate shielding and armor... your transport may survive 2 or 3 WP. Otherwise it is a one mission trip for your transport... but you have successfully landed troops and fighters... I do however modify my transports to 20% Cargo Bays so I can load them with shields, armor, and cloaking device... ok... I also add a 30% structure modifier to my transports.
Have Fun!

Um you do realize that you can put cargo bays in a regular hull? Very useful to me. Means I don't have that annoying limitation on cargo space. I honestly don't use cargo ships, they have only a size advantage over regular ships and their limitations are a waste.

This game needs a planetary assualt device designed for hitting weapon platforms. It has them for certain facility types.

They also have an huge maintain advantage...

In strategic PBW games do troops work similar to SEIV in the way you give orders to hit multiple colonies?

~Slimbo

Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design...

My personal strategy is to rely on MAssive number of troops. WPs always fire on whatever has the biggest guns, thus they'll ignore troop transports whenever warships are in firing range. If your warships didn't take much of a pounding annihilating the orbital garrison, they can just sit there and soak up damage while your transports deploy troops.

I often use troop invasion forces just to do that; capture a race to add it to my empire. I invade a lot, actually.. relatively little trouble to send in a bunch of ships with lots of PDs, some good guns and good armor near the planet to absorb its missiles and kick the WPs a bit (a few controled salvoes from my fleet does the trick nicely) Then when the ships appear to hold the line for a bit send in one or two transports and have them launch the troops.
Then move the gang out of range of whatever remains. Forces of ~80 average troops are decent in most battles, more if planet is well defended. (and dont forget that defenders get militia in balance mod, wich is quite a bunch of them) I also bring in some troops equiped with missiles to take out WPs quickly so my normal ones are not wasting ammo on hard targets.
________________

Without ammo, nice guns are just sophisticated clubs.

Militia spawns in stock too. lots of them in fact....

How do you deal with invasions of well defended planets in simultaneous games? I find that generally if I have troop transports the combat ships will not approach the planet unless there are ships or fighters to engage, and then they break off once they are destroyed leaving the troop transports to run the gauntlet alone. Are there any fleet or ship orders that will keep my fleet together and protect the transports so that they can drop their troops more effectively?

Can you conquer multiple planets in a single turn of simultaneaus games?

~Slimbo

Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design...

Haven't tested that yet, but 1.71 might have introduced the same issue as with the fighter launch limitation for troops.
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