Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

Hi, all. After a long hiatus not playing the game I've just recently started up a TDM against the AI. What are your strategies for laying seige to a planet? I mean in the sense of being able to invade with ground troops.

I find that by mid to late game the AI has formidable ground batteries (literally dozens of heavy mount weapons) on its large planets that will chew through fleets of ships in seconds, often without my fleet being able to do any real damage, let alone land troops.

In the past I've had to come up with exotic strats like building large ships packed with armour and shields to serve as a screen that leads a fleet to a planet. They soak up the damage, getting pummeled into oblivion and that MAYBE gives my other ships a chance to pound the planet and erase the defences. But as you can imagine, when there are dozens of planets like these this takes ages. I usually then just get bored and use the above tactics but instead drop a plague bomb and let the planet die that way. Not too fun, though. (The AI has no clue about med labs, oddly enough.)

So is there anything I'm missing about how to take on these extremely heavily defended planets?

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

The mechanics of this are covered in great detail in the Newbie FAQ:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=23;t=005518

See section 7.2

As for how to overcome massive defenses, I am sure others will post their ideas.

Slick.

[ June 24, 2003, 18:31: Message edited by: Slick ]

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

There are no such thing as massive defenses in this game (unmodded, ofc). You can always get enough ships to overwhelm any planetary defense.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, I know that. And that's often what I do. But I find it's not all that fun. You just kind of get a huge fleet together, go in and calculate that you've got enough ships left over after you've destroyed the defences. But when you have to do that for 20 or 30 planets, it gets old real fast. And that doesn't take into account having enough ships for my own defence and battling other enemy fleets.

Just wondering if there were other finesse ways of handling this.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

If you're facing massed massive guns, try fighters.

They should be able to get in under the guns, as long as there isn't too much point defense.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Interesting, but those well defended planets I spoke of always have tons of PD as well. Plus some of the regular guns can target fighters anyway so I have a strong feeling the fighters would get chewed up real bad.

Still, I haven't tried that before so I'll defintiely give it a shot.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

One suggestion that might help is to set your fleet to point blank range. If the planets weapons outrange you anyways there is not really a point in keeping to optimal distance or anything. And doing so will sometimes cause your formation to "stack up" and leave half your fleet out of range of the planet. You end up attackign with 6 or 8 ships at a time and getting chewed up when you could swarm him with your entire fleet at once.

Geoschmo

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I didn`t saw it in the FaQ or perhaps I oversaw it. Does mount weapons like heavy or huge mount means they can not target fighters as good as normal mount? Does they have a negative to hit modifer?

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

No, they don't. But barring the Talisman, most ship-to-ship weapons don't hit fighters all that well. Especially on planets, where you can't get a training bonus.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

Then again ground based weapons with mounts get very high to-hit boni. They will eat your fighters at close range.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

I like to use medium or large transports...

ECM III
Stealth and Scattering III
Lots of extra armor III
Solar sails III
A few point defense.
Maybe a weapon or bomb if I feel giddy.
Usually trained 20% in a 20% fleet

This gives your invasion vessel some quickness, defense, and survivability.

Carry a small sample of every breathing type for instant exchange.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">My DUCs, PPBs, APBs, etc. never have problems hitting fighters.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

For Massive Missile defense:

Align your ships in a Broad formation.
move your ships as close as you can get to the planet without being targeted.
Then let a stray ship move into targeting range.

Most of the time, most of the missiles will lock on to that 1 ship only, and will follow that ship only.

Move the targeted ship out of the missile range.
Move in all your ships and bombard the planet.

Repeat until all weapon platforms are gone.

For Massive Gun defense:

Move in as close as you can.
Get into range of your guns, fire at the planet, and move back out of range, or furthest away from the planet as possible.

Repeat.

For Massive gun and missile defense:

Combine the two strategies as best as you can.

[ June 24, 2003, 22:43: Message edited by: TerranC ]

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Bear in mind weapons on a troop transport will not fire, even when in range. Unless you change the strategy, and then they won't drop troops. Point defense is ok though I believe. Will help if the planet is shooting missles at you.

Geoschmo

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

Thanks Geo-

You're right. Nix on the weapons. I don't use anything but PD.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

How about some unconventional warfare ....

.... like "Puppet Political Parties"? Sure it's expensive, but, it's just as likely to succeed against a heavily populated planet as it is against a new colony.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wouldnt some shields be better than the armor?

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

Wouldnt some shields be better than the armor?"

Stealth and scattering armor provide a 15% bonus each. Using them both means you are 30% less likely to be hit.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No; Shield Depleters can make short work of shields.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

You get 160 points of protection with armor, for 40kt. With max shields you get 375 shield points plus the 40kt of the generator. Even against shield killers, its ussually more efficent to have shields..especially since armor leaves you wide open to boarding parties, engine killers, and the otherwise pitiful skips-armor crystaline weapons.

Re: Want strategies for seiging a planet
 

I build "planet destroyers". These are DN's with a lot of armor and shields and 4 to 5 planetary napalm on them. I set their tactic to point blank.
I keep several of these in every fleet and they serve as primary assault ships. You might want to bring several space yard ships along to built some along the way since these ships tend to have a short lifespan