Capturing planets with moons

Slaughtermeyer · #1 December 28th, 2001, 04:02 PM

I've noticed that if you try to capture a planet that has a moon, the moon seems to always be the priority invasion target. Is this a bug or "feature"?

geoschmo · #2 December 28th, 2001, 04:34 PM

Not sure how it priotizes them. Have never tested it. Have you tried using the "attack" order and click on the planet? Maybe then it will go for it first. Also, have you tried attacking with two transports? then maybe you can get both in the same invasion.

Geoschmo

Baron Munchausen · #3 December 29th, 2001, 01:50 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Slaughtermeyer:
I've noticed that if you try to capture a planet that has a moon, the moon seems to always be the priority invasion target. Is this a bug or "feature"?

It might be caused by targetting priorities. I'm not sure, but maybe the choice of which planet to land troops on is done in the same way as choosing which planet to fire on? If so, changing your targetting priorities under the "Capture Planet" strategy to use LARGEST first might fix this. Erm... as long the largest planet is always the main planet. You never know with some mods out there.

Someone might want to be 'boldly original' and put large planets in orbit around a small one???

Baron Munchausen · #4 December 29th, 2001, 05:13 PM

Well, I can now confirm the problem. I just had a fleet take a stupid moon and trash a HUGE planet with 146 percent mineral value and full of mineral miner facilities.

What a waste! I definitely clicked on the planet, NOT the moon, but the combat replay shows the transport go straight to the moon and drop troops. This is a serious problem. I had changed the targetting priorities to 'largest' also, so that doesn't work.

BeeDee10 · #5 December 29th, 2001, 11:37 PM

When attacking a multiple-colony sector (ie, one with both a planet and one or more moons that have been colonized), I believe it's essentially "random" which planet the troop transports will go for first; they seem to aim for the nearest, and the moons get positioned randomly so there's no way to predict which it will be.

The solution to this is to use at least as many troop transports in your fleet as there are colony worlds in the sector. After the first colony is captured, the remaining troop transports will pick the next-nearest colony world to drop troops on, and so forth. Of course, the first troop transport has to be _successful_ in capturing the planet, so if you're attacking a full-up homeworld plus a dinky little moon you're going to need two full transports each capable of capturing the homeworld in order to be sure that you won't fail to capture one of the worlds and end up bombing it out.

I really hope that in Gold there will be an easy and effective way to order a fleet _not_ to bomb planets. Committing accidental atrocities really screws up roleplaying, not to mention the sheer waste of it all.

Q · #6 December 30th, 2001, 09:07 AM

BeeDee if you specify in the strategy orders "fire until all weapons gone" for the strategy "capture planet" this should prevent the glassing of the planet.