[Will]

Oh, and it gets worse with Carrier Battles... ground combat lasts only 1 (!!!) round. Stock has 10 rounds. So, you really need overwhelming numbers to capture a planet in any reasonably short period of time (which certainly adds to the overall feel of the mod).

As an example, in CB#2 (version 1.0i of the mod, meaning carriers are friggin HUGE) I just had a battle where I captured a planet with about 220M population. In order to do this in one turn, I needed three Heavy Carriers full of troops. At max tech for a Disposable Society (double build rates), it takes two turns to build one of these empty carriers, and to fill them all with 4500kT of troops each (not militia!) took the output of about 6 planetary spaceyards over a period of about 25 turns. If I had only one of these troop transports, it would have taken much longer, possibly 6 or 7 turns of "stalemate" messages -- since in the one turn, it was really three combat turns, with first one transport full of troops, then two, then three, so 1+2+3=6 turns, plus take into account attrition for a possible 7th turn needed.

Anyway, for a decent indicator, make note of the troops on the planet and the population on the invasion turn. Then, run the simulator with a planet having the same population and enemy troops, and fill out a transport with your troops, and a bunch of smaller transports with only one "empty" troop. Run the simulation in tactical, bring your transports in, and drop your main force, and it will show a ground combat. Keep dropping the individual troops, and the number of extra drops needed to win (or lose!) is how many turns stalemates will last with no reinforcements on either side. To simulate your opponent building more troops to repel the invasion, watch the combat reports over the planet, and make note of the enemy units on the planet compared to the previous turn; these are the new troops built in the last turn. If you keep a log of these, you can estimate how much impact they will have by running an extra simulation with the previous estimated troop levels plus these extra, and your estimated remaining invasion force. Unfortunately, the simulator doesn't allow friendly troop drops, so you can't guage things any more precisely than that.

A kind of exploit for these mechanics: if you design a few fast and hardened troop transports (so they don't get shot down before making it to the planet), you can fill them with armored troops, designed only to last for a few rounds of ground combat against your target. Then, have a bunch of small, slower transports drop high-damage troops and some "damage control" troops instead of having one big transport drop those same troops. Each drop will start combat all over again, and if designed correctly, an invasion force will have that first core of damage soaking troops last long enough for the big firepower to deplete enemy numbers and the reinforcement damage control troops to take their place. So, a bunch of smaller invasions adds up to a quicker resolution than a few huge invasions.

Hmmm... I should probably sit down some time and write a course on the art of planetary invasion for SJ...