Yet another planet capture problem

[Slick]

Ok, I have been able to take over planets in simultaneous and turn based games under test conditions and have cargo survive. This includes satellites and mines. It just seemed strange for a while there that the cargo was always being destroyed. I am still wondering about the no-bombardment cases that I have seen where the cargo was gone.

Slick.

[couslee]

In my "test", I was using minimal troops, mainly because the system I am attacking in the game has all low pop worlds. I don't know if the mines that did survive were because of that small amount. Given the same planet and a 100 troop drop, might have destroyed all the cargo. I don't know, maybe would have captured more (as it would have taken less combat turns). I guess cargo is what is exploding on the mini-world during planet combat and not alien heads. lol

[PvK]

Sounds like probably a change in 1.84 has ground combat randomly damaging non-troop cargo, the report below is correct about some mines being destroyed during a ground combat round.

What would probably be good to test, then, is what if you build weapons platforms with lots of shields or armor, but no weapons. Planetary bombardment will stop short of killing them (I've captured such WP's before in 1.78), but the troops - will they now have most/all of their shots hit these tough WP's instead of the enemy troops?

PvK

[couslee]

same game, came across another "only mine cargo" planet. ran two quick single tests.
first one I dropped 93 troop (way more than enough) and all 20 mines in storage were destroyed. Total troops exceeded planet storage capacity. Second run, I used only a few troops, and kept 16 of the 20 mines. Combat was still only one round, cargo was still exceeded, but only with the combo of the two. (tiny world, domed, 10 troops dropped).

[Slick]

Ok, I can confirm via testing what others have mentioned below. Thanks for all the testing. Looks like it's a wrap and the bottom line is: Cargo is randomly destroyed during ground combat.

It is no longer always advantageous to use overwhelming numbers of troops. The only problem is that it is cumbersome to tweak the number of troops being dropped and, in simultaneous games it's impossible to tweak more than 1 drop per fleet per turn. GRRR!

Slick.

[couslee]

Originally posted by Slick:
It is no longer always advantageous to use overwhelming numbers of troops. The only problem is that it is cumbersome to tweak the number of troops being dropped and, in simultaneous games it's impossible to tweak more than 1 drop per fleet per turn. GRRR!

Slick.

if there are no WP to deal with, couldn't you pace two seperate planet capture ships to hit one after the other to get that effect? of course, that still would be a hassle. but possible, yes?

[Slick]

Originally posted by couslee:

quote:

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Originally posted by Slick:
It is no longer always advantageous to use overwhelming numbers of troops. The only problem is that it is cumbersome to tweak the number of troops being dropped and, in simultaneous games it's impossible to tweak more than 1 drop per fleet per turn. GRRR!

Slick.

if there are no WP to deal with, couldn't you pace two seperate planet capture ships to hit one after the other to get that effect? of course, that still would be a hassle. but possible, yes?

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It would be a gamble. If you put too few troops in the first one and lost, the militia would "regroup" along with any remaining defending troops and then you might lose the second set the same way. You might have won if you attacked with all troops at once. The way I look at it is that it is much more important to win the ground battle and capture the planet than to risk losing over potentially capturing some cargo. Also, unless you have done intel to determine what cargo is stored on the planet, you have no idea if there is even anything there. I guess it is more realistic this way anyway - collateral damage.

Slick.