Does invading planets work in strategic combat?
 

Last night, I tried out troops for the first time. I attacked a planet of the Sallega with four light cruisers and a small troop transport.

In tactical combat, I chose auto and watched what my troops would do. To my annoyment, the transport would not even try to come close to the planet even when it had no weapons platforms anymore! When I took over to manual, ist was easy to invade the planet.

The transport's strategy was "capture planet", and I have no idea why it did not do that.

Will this be the same in strategic combat?

Re: Does invading planets work in strategic combat?
 

I'm not sure but I was having problems with it as well. I think one thing that helped me was making sure that the design type was troop transport and not population transport.

Re: Does invading planets work in strategic combat?
 

Did you group the ships into a fleet and then set the fleet strategy to capture planet? If not - thats why the planet was wacked..

Re: Does invading planets work in strategic combat?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by eagleton:
In tactical combat, I chose auto and watched what my troops would do. To my annoyment, the transport would not even try to come close to the planet even when it had no weapons platforms anymore!
Will this be the same in strategic combat?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I have found that if you attack a world that has weapons platforms using both attack ships and troop transports, the world gets glassed in strategic combat because the attack ships don't stop firing once the weapon platforms are gone. However, if you just send in the troop transport, it'll dive in and take the weapon platforms out using its troops (if it has enough shields/armor to live through any fire it takes on the way in).

Lately, I've been building ships whose role is "troop transport" using the Dreadnought hull, giving the things tons of phased shields (and a repair 3 and 8 emergency propulsion 5s), and having them take planets solo using strategic combat if the planet doesn't have satellites or ships or the like. I need to send in a warship or 3 to deal with orbiting ships/bases/satellites, and I do those in tactical combat.

Note: don't do this against the Earth Alliance. You can't see the fighters on the planet (even using long-range scanners, which seems like a bug to me), and a fighter swarm will mess up even a heavily-shielded transport.

Re: Does invading planets work in strategic combat?
 

Hydraa: My troop transport was signed out as one, so there must be another problem...

AJC: fleet strategy! I forgot about that. This should be why it did not work! Many thanx!

Umber Gryphon: I'll try your strategy this night against the Sallega and the Praetorians!

I'm still waiting for the AI to invade at least ONE of my planets. I'm getting the impression that they simply cannot do it...

Re: Does invading planets work in strategic combat?
 

I've had similar problems with strategic mode. If the enemy planet has ships/bases/platforms/satellites/fighters, you usually want to take them out first. So your fleet needs to have "Ideal Range" as its strategy. But the problem is, that once the enemy defences are gone, your fleet proceeds to destroy the planet. If instead you choose "Capture Planet", then all your ships run into the corner except for the troop transports, which run right for the planet and get destroyed by the defenders. Has this been fixed by a patch?

Re: Does invading planets work in strategic combat?
 

The few times I've assaulted defended planets in strategic mode, my fleet has fired, then stopped firing as the transports move in and take the place. Only a few times have they actually destroyed the colony. I stopped using Strategic after I lost an entire fleet to a single planet. Why? Because my stupid ships closed the range to take out the planet's defenses and were cut to pieces. Normally I would keep the direct-fire ships back and take out the WPs by missile dancing.

Re: Does invading planets work in strategic combat?
 

In your empire options under strategies you can set capture planet strategy to not target planets. This will probably mean that you will not attack the weapons platforms however so its not always a good idea. It may however help with being able to fight the ships and orbital defences without destroying the planet.

Re: Does invading planets work in strategic combat?
 

Yes you can invade planets with troops in strategic combat. But you have to set your fleet strategy to "capture planet" instead of "optimal firing range" or other strategies.
Your attack ships should go in and pound the planets defenses, then when its safe enough, your troop carriers will come in and attack with troops and the ground combat screen should show up.

[This message has been edited by Valleymite (edited 12 January 2001).]