Planet defence

Some of the bombardment weapons do more damage per kT versus planets than regular weapons. You might want to try them out.

ECM is not effective against seekers, but Combat Sensors do improve the chances to hit for PD weapons except for the Bomblet Missile.

It sounds like you weren't able to capture the planet during the first ground combat, ie, there were still enemies left. Militia respawns each turn so either you need reinforcements or use more troops on the first attack.

No way to resupply ground troops, but you can drop more.

Emissive Armor does not stack, but having multiple emissive armors for backups is usually a good idea. The auto-complete in BM probably adds too few.

The remote mining issue is a bug in v1.71, the upcoming SE5 patch fixes it.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Bombardment weapons maybe?
ECM has no effect on seekers which always hit, while Combat sensors do affect pd IIRC.
Not sure about this one, thought the bug was fixed but do the enemy have damaged fighters in the planet cargo?
Not that I'm aware of, ground units on an invasion can't be resupplied.
You'd have to ask someone like kwok for a sure answer on the emissive but last I heard the emissive doesn't stack but the effect is only triggered when the piece of armour being hit currently is the emissive.
That last one is a bug that will get fixed in the next patch when it comes out.

Are there surviving weapon platforms? Those need to be destroyed as well. Fighters are either launched during the space combat or they participate in the ground combat.

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There's no directionality to armor. They're damaged in the order that they are placed in the design. With this in mind, it's better to add your emissive armors first.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Hello Captain. I had a ground combat with my fighters defending on the ground. Had the planet strategy set so they would not launch. Why would the fighters run away? In the ground combat sym they were very deadly against invading ground troops. In 4 to 1 odds against, I had one fighter take 13% damage.

Caius

There's a couple of possibilities. They could have run out of supply/ordnance or perhaps they could not fire at any of the remaining targets - AM Torps and Rocket Pods can't target troops.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

just realised I answered just after you kwok lol, you hadn't posted when I started typing

My fighters had Rocket Pods,DOH!Thanks guys.

Caius

I just took a look at Rocket Pods in my stock game. Among a few other targetable things is listed Troops.

Caius

If the planet launches fighters while defending, and they are not destroyed, they will be present on the planet for the ground combat.

Will the fighters rockets be replenished before ground combat? They may have been the fighters that attacked the troop ships. Acoring to manuel and in game help, Rocket Pods can target Troops. So only other reason for them running is no OD left for rockets.

Caius

Is the damage militia hiding in one of the corners or obscured by a building?

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Easy Solution
Glass the planet

You can't glass it if you have troops on it, methinks. I don't think your ships will fire on a planet that has some of your troops on it.

I have some BM ground combat problems too: my troops don't move, they just stay clumped together or circling round instead of attacking enemies. Maybe it's because I set their strategy to retreat when enemy 300% of our strengh and there is a weapon platform? But I thought the whole force was compared, not individual units?

It's possible the weapon platform strength is greater than all the units. I suspect MM uses the formula (structure + shields + weapons damage) as part of the "strength" calculation for strategies. I doubt any concessions are made for weapons that can't fire on troops, so all the platform's weapons would count towards the calculation and skew it wildly.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Yep, looks like that was the problem.

They won't if left under AI control but you can take charge manually and direct them to shoot the planet.

In that case then, just wait until they finish off your troops I guess, not an ideal plan though.

You need to get more troops on the ground to counter the militia. There's a lot of militia on heavily populated worlds. Or you should get heavier troops.

Weapon platforms aren't too powerful. One needs a good strategy against them though.

I personally like to build a few platforms on a world with just shield generators on them, to provide my worlds with shielding. (Frontier worlds).

Weapon platforms don't seem to help in ground combat though.

~Myrath

WP will help if had weapons that shoot on troops

and AFAIK WP use the ordnance of the planet, which is marked as 'unlimited'

That is because PD weapons can not shot on tropps. I think they were able to do this in BM some time ago, but with BM 1.14a they can not.
This leaves the weapon platforms completly useless in ground combat, but they can take ages to kill when equipped with emessive armor and therefore bring some problems with supplies to the invader.

EA is still too unbalanced, so i count it is cheat