I don't understand the difficulty discussed here. Against even homeworlds I never needed bigger than a Battle Cruiser (or was it a Dreadnought ?) with basics plus three phased shields V and the rest cargo bays. It holds 150 large troops equipped with shields 3, ecm, sensors, and a ground cannon 3. Possibly you are using some other weapons ? Somebody pointed out that other weapons do not work properly for troops. I would not know since I always considered GC3 to be most cost effective and cheap to research to boot.....

I ignore weapon platforms on the target, just use a decoy ship to draw off missiles, then when they fire the troop ship runs in. But it occurs to me that only works in tactical, not strategic. Okay, use two decoy ships at least as fast as the troop ship, with the decoys leading the fleet. Since they have weapons the AI will target the weapon platforms on them first. Use the cheapest combination of shields and armor available (no regenerators) and just one cheap and small weapon on each decoy.

The 150 troops will blow away all weapon platforms with no effort. Before you send in the invasion fleet, make sure you soften them up by taking out all satellites, otherwise the sats will fire on the newly captured planet. Also checkout any moon colonies for WP and if found just wipe them first. A piece of cake. Your fleets need to be given orders to stop firing when all weapons are gone, otherwise they will bLast population, when capturing it is the whole point of the exercise. OTOH if you are an organic just build facilities to change atmosphere and whatever it is that generates 40m pop/turn per colony in each system....

[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 09 August 2001).]