Conquering planets.
 

Okay, maybe a little late question considering my long membership. But I'm trying to understand how the conquering of a planet works. I've never tried it. I hate building grunts and those stupid transports. Why take over a planet when you can desintegrate it? Anyhow, here are the questions:
- Are ground troops the only forces capable of taking over a planet?
- When can a trooptransport land on a planet (must the planetary shields be down?)?
- How can I restrict a player from building troops, but at the same time enable everyone to take over planets?

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You can disable (Troop Tech) - in the se4 new game Technology Menu allowed options.

Intel may be your next best option for taking over an Enemy Planet intact http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ June 25, 2004, 13:45: Message edited by: JLS ]

Re: Conquering planets.
 

While we are on the subject, How many Militia does a certain population supply?. Is it 1 militia per 10 Million?. In which case the homeworld I have invaded which has 4800 Million would have 480 Militia.
I dropped 160 troops and they are still fighting. This includes the 75 my other transport dropped first (which unsurprisingly were defeated). I guess it depends on the Mod. It is TDM. The enemy are EEE, whose PS is pathetic. I am average.

Edit: Must....fight...impulse...to post without checking newbie guide. 1 in 20 you say, what d'ya know.

[ June 25, 2004, 13:57: Message edited by: Randallw ]

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Haha.. Randallw. Continue your valiant fight. And... don't lose. Looks bad on your CV (Curriculum Vitae).

I know I can switch off troop tech and I know how I could just delete it. But the intel option is not so great. Quite frankly, it sucks.
I want to mod (make) a component with which I can invade a planet and the population of the planet can't fight back. So one ship/module goed into the atmosphere and conquers the planet for me.
Is this achieveable?

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't think there is anyway to do this. You have to use troops or intel to capture a planet. If you want to make sure you never lose with troops mod them to be really strong on your part but weak on the enemies side. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Can't I... nah.
Okay. Now I'm convinced of the thing I'll have to do. Yes, I'll leave those pesky grunts alone. Better to concentrate on more important things. Like toasting a few planets.
Thanks for the help guys.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

I just discovered the "Drop Troops" ability, what does that do?

Re: Conquering planets.
 

drops troops does nothing, its not used. About your other question, i dont think thats possible.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Damn! Stupid grunts... always uncooperative.

Thanks for the help.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Yeah, its way too easy to glass planets IMO.

However, capturing a planet is worthwhile...
Especially if you can identify the resupply depot / spaceport beforehand, and capture that to help your fleets keep rolling.
Plus you get the population for breathing other atmospheres, and a spaceport makes the recolonization productivity jump.

If you are against an enemy with racial techs, you could even capture a psychic training facility, or a religious shrine, and bask in its benefits.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Load a Transport up with 50 troops, send it to any square immediately adjacent to the enemy planet, Order Drop Troops, and hey presto the planet is yours http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

SJ is right, it's really good to take over their planets instead of glassing them. You don't have to build them up from the ground again (and you have to build colonizers!), the planet doesn't suffer losses in production possibility, and they act as staging points to further your fleet's assault. Win-win for me, lose-lose for them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Be careful though, satellites and any other units in space are not captured, and -will- fire on your newly captured planet immediately, possibily losing you some nice facilities.

Abd.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

So Drop Troops is usable? Hmm...
Does this also work when a planet still has his planetary shields up? Hope not, because that really is a bit dumb.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I can see the Planetary sheilds with windscreen wipers slowly moving back and forth wiping grunts off the shield like flies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Hahaha... LOL!!!!!
RD, you da greatest. LOL!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

What colour would the rain have? There must be some tiny hole in that shield.

[ June 26, 2004, 14:44: Message edited by: Timstone ]

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Nope, planetary shields (even massive) don't do zilch against troop invasion. That's why you can take any planet that's not a homeworld really easily.

Besides, no one ever builds them. If they're preparing for an invasion, they're building ships. If they're defending against one, they're building ships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Abdiel

PS. Anyone can answer my question on the StarWars-ii thread?

Re: Conquering planets.
 

When you say Homeworlds can't be taken easily do you mean Hw's have a bonus or is it just becuase they and any other heavily populated world have Billions of people to get lots of Militia from.
I just captured a HW with 4.8 Billion people intact and it took 2 turns because, I am assuming, it took that long to destroy 240 Militia.

Ps. Good thing too since another empire has started to invade my space and I now have to fight them off.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Not bonuses per se, but the number of WPs and militia makes it one hell of a fight. And I lose so many troops (relatively, since good troops take pretty long to build) that I can't load them up on the Transport to immediately capture more colonies. No, I prefer to force a surrender http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I read somewhere that loading troops with shields first will cause Militia to attack them first, but it hasn't worked in my 1.91 games. No matter the order I load them, the troops with weapons get destroyed still. So does anyone know if troops armed fully with shields are obsolete now?

Abd.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Drop Troops the *ability* does nothing.

Drop Troops the *order* is required for any invasion.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">My understanding is that Troops, like fighters, as units merely add hit points (or whatever they are called) by adding shields. The shields merely help them Last longer.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

That, yeah. But shields do count as shields since small PPBs still ignore them.

My question was: Can you build troops with only shields, and by loading them into the transport in some order, make them get hit first by the militias? I read that it was possible, but haven't managed to do it yet.

Abdiel

Re: Conquering planets.
 

I don't know about that but what I would like to know is if the first transport you put in the fleet is the first transport to drop troops. I had 2 transports, one full and one half full. the half full transport dropped first and the small amount of troops lost. If I placed the full transport first, would it drop a full load which might Last long enough to be reinforced by the second wave?

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think you must build X ammount of troops with only shields (X being how many you think is nessercary http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif There is no such thing as Overkill (who'll spot the reference? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )) And load them on to your trnasport, then load your troops with weapons and they should drop the shielded troops down first and they'll get pounded.

Numerous troop transports loaded with them is the best tactic: superior numbers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Conquering planets.
 

thing is, that was what i did. I even tried the reverse. shield troops first in, Last in, it didn't seem to matter. I only lost units with weapons. Even when the shield troops were the first displayed in the ground combat screen, the second box (weapons dudes) numbers dropped only.

bah http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif but not that it matters, one or two lost per planet is a small sacrifice for a brand new load of facilities and everything. and in one turn the new planet could build them back and more! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Try placing a single weapon on the shield troops. There might be something that makes unarmed troops always hit Last.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

There is no such thing as Overkill
(Only "Open fire" and "I need to reload")

- 7 Habits of Highly Effective Pirates, rule #37


-----

As to the troops, try that combat again without the shield-troops.
See if you lose MORE than just the one or two gun-troops.

If so, your shieldies are blocking some damage for you, and are worthwhile.

[ June 28, 2004, 02:52: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I knew you would SJ http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Conquering planets.
 

I might be mistaken, but:
1) If your enemy has weapons with a range greater than 1, the AI will do the intelligent thing and attack your vulnerable troops with weapons rather than your harmless shielded troops; and
2) If you don't have many troops, then the "front lines" might contain some weaponed troops, which the AI will kill first, and then continue killing as the weaponed reserves patch the hole.

Regarding shields protecting a planet from ground assault:
I don't know why, but planet shields NEVER work that way in sci fi movies. It's always:
"Rats! Their shields are up. Now we can't bLast them into oblivion with our 1000-dreadnought fleet. Prepare for ground assault!"
It is never explained why the troop ships can get past the planet shield to drop their cargo, but the dreadnoughts can't go past and fire from just inside. I think it has something to do with Newton's Law of Good Theatre.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Well, attack ships are moving a heck of a lot slower than any KE projectile, and unlike beam weapons they're matter. The shield might just not have the capability to stop both at the same time.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which movie's would these be?

Re: Conquering planets.
 

The Empire Strikes Back is the classic example. Even the puny little Rebel Allaince could build planetary shields that made any bombardment useless, so the Empire had to stage a ground assault.

[ June 28, 2004, 22:50: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Range in troop combat is completely irrelevant. So is rate of fire. All damage done is based off of the range 1 value, and is done every turn.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Why doesn't the empire just put a big bomb on one of their transport ships so it could get past the shields, and then blow up the rebels with it?

Also, in the Episode I The Phantom Menace, those Gungan shields stopped the shots being fired by the droid army, but couldn't stop the droids themselves from walking through the shield?

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Again, bLaster bolts and the bots are two different things. Low speed vs high, and mass vs not. Setting the shield to stop bots might mean it stopping too much (eg DUST), overloading, and burning out.

As for the bombs? Well, if the movies used decent tactics they'd be a bit boring http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif How many times has a major ship blown to a single fighter in that series, again?

Re: Conquering planets.
 

why would u waste the time to take the planets i would just destroy it and re colnize it later so i wouldnt have to lag those damn transports around with my awesome most spactacule FLEET which kills all in its path DREADNOUGHTS maybe 300 or 400 of them and a 100 drone carriers muhahahahahahahah U LOSE and they are gone big booma

Re: Conquering planets.
 

LOL read back to the previous Posts, and you'll see the immense advantages of taking a planet over. Not to mention the planet yields fall greatly whenever you glass it.

Abd.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The first ship to reach the planet is the first to drop troops. In tactical you can send them all in in whatever order you like. In strategic, you will have to consider formation, orders and relative ship-speeds.
Also, in strategic the AI has a nasty habit of sending troop transports scurrying into the corners until all the planet's weapon platforms are down, and/or as soon as the first transport has unloaded. It's often a good idea to put a single meson bLaster or something on your transports, so they will actually stay on the offensive.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">OK, What I think you're referring to is the tactic of having one transport full of heavily shielded/ lightly armed troops and another one full of heavily armed troops.

You drop the shielded troops first, then fly in the second transport and drop the rest.

The reason for this is the way the game handles militia: If you have a planet with a heavy militia defence, it can be very difficult to take, because every time the attacking troop forces get reduced to zero the militia gets fully replenished. This means if your attacking forces can't survive a full ground combat session (the length of which can be altered in the txt files) then sending more transports of the same size is utterly futile. You need to get a bigger transport in there.

The way to get around this is to send in heavily shielded forces first, capable of staying alive planetside long enough to let you get re-inforcements in, thus allowing you to meaningfully drop more than one transport full of troops.

This is ridiculously difficult to achieve in strategic, BTW, but trivial in tactical.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmm. I could be wrong, but my understanding and my own experience has shown that troops are attacked in the order they are loaded onto the transport. If you load troops of type ABC they will be destroyed in that order. Or maybe it's C,B,A... I can't remember so i always load my (proportions mod) transports with a few hundred heavy infantry first, then a handful of high bonus elite infantry and then some heavy artillery at the back. That way, whichever end the enemy attacks from, they have to chew through a few hundred kt of crunchy grunts before they can get to the soft, bonus-giving centre of the elite forces.

For all those ppl who prefer to just glass and rebuild- you should play a few games of proportions, you'll soon realise the benefits of conquering intact.

[ June 29, 2004, 08:49: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

Re: Conquering planets.
 

Conquering planets in tact is stock of my game (except for moons with 1 mining or resource gathering facility) if its a shipyard or resupply base take it otherwise glass it - bigger planets are where you need to take first. population is everything so maximise their movements.

We have discussed if yu have 2 or 3 different atmosphere races and a domed planet with a urban pacification facility and captured races that can breathe the atmostphere to move all the domed pop off and replace with the atmosphere breathers on the lareger planets it goes from 6 facilties (domed) up to 20 or 30 and you can build much more facilities on non domed planets - and if you are capturing planets - take along a transport with a few WP for larger planets (saves building them and youre outward invasion can go much quicker) instead of having to wait for defenses to be built before moving outwards.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

How do you tell what facilities a planet has? Will a scanner do? I haven't tried, sorry.

So far the only way I can think of is going into combat, checking out the facs, then deciding. But obviously that's going to be useless for strategeic.

Abd.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Nope.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You can find out from intel, and you can often spot the resupply depot by watching enemy ship movements. ditto for spaceyards, actually. Human players will generally put their spaceport on the first planet they colonise in any given system, which is usually that huge, breathable one over there with the high mineral value and the most population on it- unless there used to be ruins in the system, of course. Not sure how AIs make their choices.

Best just to capture everything and sort it out after=-)

Re: Conquering planets.
 

I go after the small planets - search no value destroy - then capture big population centres then mop up the resistance.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I thought Stargate SG1 Technobabbled this quite well http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Bullets and staff bLasts couldn't penetrate shields but you could throw a knife and it would pass through (slower moving objects)

That and they made Sam Carter say it, and no self respecting Stargate SG1 fan is going to get on the wrong side of her http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Depends what her "wrong side" looks like http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Depends what her "wrong side" looks like http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Lol...are you going to disagree with a women who is trained in unarmed combat, probably knows 6 different ways of killing you with complex science that you will never understand and can use a P-90 expertly...I know sure as hell i'm not http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

If you mean in another sense then No, i don't think she has a bad side http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which movie's would these be? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Besides those mentioned already, "Dune" comes to mind. Shields reflected weapons back on themselves unless they were slow (and therefore supposedly short-range or HTH only). Although, for all the imagination in the Dune books, I felt the techies never showed much imagination in getting around this issue.
Anyone know how (or if) they handled this issue in Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Star Trek (any and all Versions), Star Blazers, Battlefield Earth, etc.?

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Range in troop combat is completely irrelevant. So is rate of fire. All damage done is based off of the range 1 value, and is done every turn. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Holy Smokes! I see you're officially a Fanatic, but are you sure about that? 'Cause that really changes some of my strategies.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't recall any planetary shields in Star Trek, but there was an episode of TNG where Lt. Ro flew a small ship through a "weak spot" in the Enterprise's shields.

I vaguely remember them opening Earth's shield to let ships in on Buck Rogers.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

sci fi movie and series shields have always come in two flavors

flavor number one
this shield is a high energy shield any fast moving obje\ct is reflected/bounced slow moving objects are passed through like air
slow is a relative term in dune slow was almost molasses like so Thrown knives were too fast
in stargate sg-1 thrown knives were not to fast depends on the intent of the storyteller


flavor number two a solid shield
this shieeld can prevent the passage of energy and matter of a certain density there fore depending on the tuning/ power of the shield it can prevent mass objects from passing usually starting at high mass and going down
example being the starwars deathstar its sheild can prevent the passage of ships however the power to do so was not deemed necessary as the other security measures were deemed enough (note turbulence in star wars as they went through the sheilds in the fighters and the disdain of the admiral for fighters)
however the empire learned with the second attempt to build and upped the power of the sheild to prevent even small ships from getting through course they had to make the sheild ground based and use a huge amount of a moon.s power output (lando calrissian "i hope they got that shield down or this is going to be the shortest mission ever" not a perfect quote but close enough )

in science fiction shields have been a very useful tool to diret the story away from the importance of large impersonal battleships down to the intense emotionally charged arena of the small fighters where the audience ca more easilly become involved in the struggle of the hero
there arte many examples of the one man on his own
very few example of the general or tactical leader
the few that come to mind are movies of ww2 usually about pearl
though a notable exception is a john wayne with kirk douglas and burgess meredith
yet these movies of commanders are still not as involvng or intensly charged as those of the individual pilots of a fighter

as a general rule of thumb the ability of a sheild to prevent the passage of low energy/low mass objects is tied to the amount of power it is useing more power more protection but usually that amount of power would be too costly (like take up the entire gnp of the planet)

there fore slow moving or low mass objects get through easily

edit to my knowledge battlestar galactica had no shields just armor

[ July 01, 2004, 06:09: Message edited by: psimancer ]

Re: Conquering planets.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Absolutely certain. Hopefully SE5 will have far more detailed ground combat...

Re: Conquering planets.
 

A plot device in the Thrawn Trilogy was that they sneaked a cloaked ship into low orbit of a planet (Cloaking being unique, they only had one ship). A whole fleet arrives so the defenders activate their invulnerable shield, which extends to high orbit. The fleet fires and as its fire hits the shield the cloaked vessel (still cloaked) fires. The defenders seeing that the empire has a new weapon capable of defeating shields surrenders.

Re: Conquering planets.
 

any empire capable of weilding a planatary invasion fleet is going to be capable of defeating even an invulnurable shield if nothing else they can set up satellites to stretch out a mylar film blocking the solar primary from ther planet which in most planatary systems will cause sever diffuculties
(sure theyve got fusion etc but hey fusin doesnt grow dinner and that would cause a huge additional power cost to begin planetary light and planetary heating talk about your seige tactics http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )