[Roanon]

Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:
I capture planets all the time with no difficulty. Well, two difficulties: The transport could be locked in the corner by other non-combatant ships (not the case in your graphic) or the transport is blocked from the planet by the warships.

Or the transport is blocked by a moon and the artificial stupidity doesn't find a way around it to the planet Pathing is definitely one of the weak spots in Aaron's programming.

One possible that I have never run into: Is your transport cloaked? This may prevent planet capture.

Definitely not. If combat occurs, all ships regardless of cloaking status will participate. So in a big cloaked attack fleet, uncloaking a single ship is enough.

Same thing happened to me. My enemy fired mercilessly at me and my ships just sat there and took it. *Sigh*

There are definitely some severe bugs in the combat engine. I think most of us have discovered that the only, at least partially reliable, difference in strategies is having "don't get hurt" or not. Fancy strategies - forget them. For instance, it is very difficult to convince a ship close in and fire on the nearest ship, even if your priorities are point blank / point blank and nearest/nearest/nearest/nearest. Likewise, maximum range seems often to be interpreted by some captains with a definite unability to read the numbers on the range finder. I even had cases where the lone unloaded transport with "don't get hurt" headed for the map edge for one combat turn, and then turned around and proceeded straight to the planet into the WP's defense fire. And of course, all time favorite is the famous "sitting duck" strategy being followed instead of your choice.
Ok, strategies work most of the time, but I wouldn't bet my main fleet on the shaky luck of it working just in a critical battle - if your fleet can't win with standard optimum range strategy, better wait for reinforces.