How does one go about ground combat?

[javaslinger]

What do I need to take over planets with ground combat? What ship designs? What kind of research?

Thanks,

Ken

[Noble713]

Research (in order)
1. Construction
2. Troops
3. Troop Weapons or Smaller Weapons

Design
1. Troop Transport with lots of cargo
2. Troop unit with Ground Cannon/Cluster Bomb mix

Build
1. Troop Transports at shipyard planets
2. Troops at every other planet in the same system.

Load up
1. Send the transport to the other planets, and use either the Cargo Transfer or Load Cargo buttons to pick up troops.

Deploy
1. Get some other ships together to escort your transport, and send the fleet to an enemy planet.
2. If you use Strategic combat, make sure the fleet strategy is set to Capture Planet. If you use Tactical, move the transport next to the planet and press "T". Make sure any weapon platforms have been neutralized by your ships, or your transport will get chewed up.

[Darwin]

You will need to research Troops, To get it you need to research Construction. You will also need Smaller Weapons.

Once you get your research. Design your troops. And design a Transport. Make it a Troop transport and just load it with cargo bays like you were making a population transport.

Construct all this. Load the troops aboard the ship. Take the Ship to the planet you want to concur and attack. If you go stategic it *should* drop troops on its own. You will probably wish to bring along some other ships through if you fear that satilites or Weaponplatforms will be there. If you do this it will probably be advenatious to use tatical combat. Bring the attack ships in and destroy the defenses. keep an eye on the population you don't want to kill all those new slaves. Then bring in your trooptransport to right next to the planet and click orders and drop troops.

Hope this helps.

-edit- Hey, I made Corporal

[This message has been edited by Darwin (edited 27 February 2001).]

[raynor]

Research Construction, then research Troops. Then, research Troop Weapons. You will gain the ability to construct a new unit called a Small Troop. Design a Small Troop as you would a new ship.Build several of these and load them up in a ship with some sort of cargo component. Now, put this ship in a fleet with other warships and give the fleet a strategy of 'Capture Planet'.

Now, when you attack a planet strategically, your warships will first neutralize the planet's defenses and then send your transport to drop troops.

If you want to do this manually, let your warships neutralize the planet's defenses. Then, move your troop transport next to the planet and select 'Drop Troops' from the Orders menu.

If you are going to run the planetary assault in Tactial, you gain a lot more control over what your ships destroy. If you keep an eye on how many weapon emplacements (WEP)'s in cargo, you can stop firing once they are all destroyed and not damage anything else on the planet. In fact, you can even fire individual weapons on a ship by de-selecting them.

[Aussie Gamer]

With the new patch, weapon platforms don't get involved in ground combat.

So you can risk it with a heavily shielded/ Armoured troop ship and rush it in to drop troops on to the planet right away.

You may capture the defences as well when you win the ground combat. I haven't done it so I don't know that yet.