Semi-fancy tactics in Strategic Combat?

[Hunpecked]

Whoops! I looked again, and I was apparently confusing the "Vehicle Types" line with the "Can Target" line. I swear I nailed Sats with CSMs in tactical, but I guess the memories must have been implanted while I was on that mother ship. (Must get more sleep...)

As for glassing the planet, given my current fleet I guess my only hope is to prevent all firing on the planet. I'll see what I can do.

Any ideas about "semi-glassing" a planet? Other than subtracting ships until the fleet lacks the firepower to do it within the time limit?

[Slick]

There are some options in the strategy setup screen that you can tinker with. Specifically there is an option to damage until all weapons are gone; also there is a damage percent that you can adjust. Using this, your targeting priority and your "don't fire on types" you should be able to do what you want.

Some "gotchas"

- Missile ships can easily accidentally glass a planet. They have a high damage per salvo and when they attempt to stop damaging a target per their strategy, there are usually missiles in flight which will continue on to further damage or destroy the target.

- Having too much beam weapon firepower in a fleet can result in a similar problem as above.

- A planet is considered to have weapons when it has undestroyed weapon platforms.

- If you capture a planet with enemy satellites, moons (with weapon platforms) or defense bases in orbit, these will attack your newly captured planet. Try to take these out first. Although targeting a main planet instead of its moon really doesn't work; your fleet will attack all planets in the order they encounter them on the combat map and capture the closest one(s) first and then continue to capture up to the number of troop transports you have in the fleet.

[Hunpecked]

OK, thanks for the advice. I'll keep playing with the settings as the occasion arises.

Strangely enough, I found a partial answer to question #3 above, just when I had given up and decided to play on. Going after the colony with all the Sats, I directed the "Seek After" order AT THE SATS instead of the planet, with "Capture Planet" as fleet strategy. This time the fleet concentrated on the Sats, with individual ships dancing in and out of PDC range. True, they got in each other's way quite a bit, but they gradually nibbled away at the Sats while shooting down missiles by the dozen. Meanwhile one LC silenced the planet's weapons platforms with a single missile salvo. Net result was 69 Sats and two WPs killed for no losses, and one AI planet captured with all 4 facilities intact. I couldn't have done better myself.

I realize this was probably a fluke and isn't necessarily repeatable under different circumstances, but at least it gives me a shot at a favorable outcome in future invasions.

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually, if there are only unarmed weapon platforms, the planet is considered to have no weapons, and troop ships will merrily attack.

In GritEcon, I removed platform weapons, and gave them only powerful armor, to act as civil defense bases and shield against orbital bombardment.

[Blueentity]

I have not found away to knock down a plant to a certain percentage and then leave it alone in strategic combat. Unless I have a ship with troops, the ships happily glass the planet if they can. I have tried this with:

Various weapons (direct fire and missile)
Various combat strategies (Optimal Firing, Capture Planet)
Various % on “Damage Percent Per Planet” (10% to 100%)
Toggling “Damage targets till all weapons gone” (on and off)

Of course I could chose “Don’t Fire On Types”, but there are times, especially in the early game where you are short on troops or trying to inflict some unhappiness, where you want to soften up a planet without destroying it.

Also, is there anyway to have the troops land on the “Biggest” planet instead of a moon? Choosing “Largest” or “Strongest” doesn’t seem to make a difference.

[Suicide Junkie]

Just bring multiple transports and capture them all together?