Incredible newbie? How to make troops?

[Ruatha]

How to make troops?
Can I as a gasgiant race land troops on an enemy rock colony.
How do I capture enemy ships? Can I capture an enemy rock colony ship and somehow duplicate it?
Is there any FAQ? the manual isn't very thourogh.

[Cyrien]

You go into the same menu used to design ships. If you have the proper techs researched (construction then troops) then troops will be one of the options for design.

Build em on any colony and pick em up with transports drop em on ANY enemy planet and watch the battle.

So yes you can use your gas giant troops to attack rock or ice planets.

To capture enemy ships you either use intel projects or boarding parties. Either way you need to research the tech. Military science level 2 for boarding parties I think.

Once you capture the ship you can send it to one of your planets with a space yard and analyze the ship to learn the techs on it.

[Gandalph]

Troops can take over any kind of planet. You ttansfer them to the planet with Troop Transports and instruct them to "capture planet".

You take over other ships with boarding parties, allegiance subverter (psychic tech tree), or crew insurrection (intelligence).

[Cylapse]

"How to make troops"...
Aww, How cute *LOL* Troops are made in the same manner as ships, you are allowed to meticulously design the troop as a unit, (gives me the feeling of 'Armored Core' - anyone ever play that?)...

So once you have researched troops, you should have a whole suite of components available like a Troop Cockpit, guns, armor, etc...

Also, if you research Ship Capture (advanced military science I think) you should be able to kick out boarding parties and security, use them along with some Shield Depleters... sap the shields dry, close to point blank and take over that bastard, using the Order - Capture ship. (I think hitting the 'C' key will change your cursor into a ship selection tool so you can capture without having to open the Order menu)

And yes, if you capture his ship, you can either, use it to colonize your own world, or you can drag it back to a shipyard and hit the 'G' key to bring up a menu which will allow you to analyze it, etc.

[Captain Kwok]

Making Troops:

First of all, make sure you have researched troops. Next, go to the ship design window and create a new unit. Choose a troop size and add the components as if you were building a ship. You can now build troops. It doesn't matter about the target planet, troops can land on any planet type.

Capturing ships:

To board ships, you have to research military science and then ship capture. You'll get a component called "Boarding Parties" and add a few of those to a ship design. In combat, you can now board an enemy ship with no shields left...but watch out for self-destruct devices as they will destroy your boarding ship!

Now Analyze it:

Once you've captured an enemy ship, you can take it to a space yard and analyze it. You may be able to get new tech like Rock Colony etc, but racial techs like organic and temporal will be a mystery unless you've got those traits.

[Captain Kwok]

Whoa, like 3 replies at once.