[douglas]

I don't see much point in having separate fleets for capturing. There is one very simple rule that makes it almost useless: if a friendly ship with Drop Troops strategy is in combat and has troops on board and the planet has no weapons, then all of your forces will automatically not attack the planet no matter what their strategies are set to.

If a ship has five weapons and the first one destroys the last weapon platform, the remaining four will still shoot at the planet, but once that single volley by that one ship is done no more shots will be fired at the planet. It is theoretically possible for those final shots to glass the planet, but almost any planet worth capturing will survive. Missiles already launched will not abort their attacks, but missiles aren't worth much in stock anyway.

In summary, set your fleet's strategy to break formation and put the troop transport in the main attack fleet, and it will have almost exactly the effect you're looking for with the added benefit of not crippling your combat fleet's tactics. Seriously, the way SE4 handles formations makes staying in them almost universally a very bad idea.