[dogscoff]

I *never* bombard population from orbit. It's just not nice. I've been trying to capture the crysonlite homeworlds recently (Devnullmod, V1.35) and I think soon I will also be able to take an 8000m world intact.

First up, getting troops in to land is easy. Destroy most of the weapons platforms from orbit without damaging the population. Then either use a heavily shielded troop transport, or a heavily shielded/ expendible "decoy" ship to soak up what's left of the weapons platform fire.

One shipfull of troops just won't be enough, so you need to make sure your first wave will survive at least 10 ground combat rounds. Othrwise, you can't get any reinforcements in.

For this reason I developped the Scuffle III vanguard troop. These are all shields and no weapons, so won't do much (any?) damage, but based on my experiences with 4000m worlds, 1200ktonnes of these will Last long enough to deploy a second wave of troops. Once I have 2 or 3 loads of vanguard troops down, I don't have to worry about the 10 ground combat turns while I deploy as many ships full of heavily armed troops as I need to take down the militia.

I'll let you know how I get on.

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so Brain but, if you replace the P with an O, my name would be Oinky, wouldn't it?"