What I Hate Most About SEIV

[taterbill]

S_J,

Your post brings to mind a off-topic question I've had in my mind for a while. What is the formula for calculating how many militia will be on a planet? And what are the statistics of a militia?

It would be nice to be able to know what I'm about to go up against.

Thanks,

Bill

[Suicide Junkie]

See settings.txt for the exact numbers, but IIRC, there is:
1 militia for every 10 to 100 million.
Militia have 1:4 firepower:hitpoint ratio.
Probably 10 damage, 40 hitpoints.

I'll look it up when I get home, and edit this post in about 3 hours.

[bearclaw]

Research. I much prefer the way research was handled in SE3. That was one of the best features in the game. I don't like this "all or nothing" method in SE4. Although, it does work nicely for Intel.

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"You don't know the Power of the Dark Side. I must obey my Master"

[MegaTrain]

What the heck are militia?

You mean the population of a planet actually defend it like troops would? And how formidable are they? How many troops are sufficient to take over a medium-population planet. (Medium troops, filled with Ground Cannon III)

I thought I'd be able to simply pop my troops down there and take over the planet.

Glad I found out about these now, I'm about to launch my planet-conquering fleet.

[rdouglass]

quote:

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Originally posted by Slaughtermeyer:
That's another thing I hate about SEIV, too much "I think that you should..." "I don't know...probably" and "IMHO you should have" when trying to figure out basic game functions that should have been explained in the manual....

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Sorry, but that is one of the things I like MOST about this game - figuring it all out. The game has so much depth (in game and in modding) that it takes a long time (and a lot of questions) to get stuff figured out. If it was easy to figure out and get the pattern that won all the time, it would quickly bore me and I'd find something else to play...

Just my (humble) $.02....

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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What the heck are militia?
You mean the population of a planet actually defend it like troops would? And how formidable are they? How many troops are sufficient to take over a medium-population planet. (Medium troops, filled with Ground Cannon III)
I thought I'd be able to simply pop my troops down there and take over the planet.
Glad I found out about these now, I'm about to launch my planet-conquering fleet.

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You may want to add some defense to those troops, otherwise they'll be cut down faster than you can say "oops" One tiny shield generator III provides 60 hitpoints!

But aside from that, militia are insignificant for planets of less than 500Mil or so. They will prevent a half-baked capture attempt, so you'll need a dedicated transport design, even if its only a destroyer hull.

Be sure to bring at least 50 troops to any planet capture, large planets will require hundreds of troopers, or planetary bombardment.

Planetary militias will be fully restored to their original size whenever your landing forces are completely defeated.
If your troops hold out for 10 rounds, you can drop additional reinforcements from a second (or third or fourth) ship.

If your first transport's troopers are wiped out, don't bother sending the second one in, since it will suffer the same fate against the same conditions.
If the first troopers are still there, the second wave faces fewer militia and enjoys a larger attack force. Keep dropping reinforcements until you win.

With a decent ground combat racial characteristic, a single Large Transport, filled with 375 Troops should be more than sufficient for most worlds, and a second transport can be used for homeworld assault.

[BeeDee10]

quote:

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Originally posted by MegaTrain:
You mean the population of a planet actually defend it like troops would? And how formidable are they? How many troops are sufficient to take over a medium-population planet. (Medium troops, filled with Ground Cannon III)

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If you're playing against a human, make sure to check your opponent's ground combat racial characteristic. A lot of players drop it to 50% in order to get extra racial points to spend on other things, but this makes them extremely vulnerable to invasion; the 50% reduction applies to militia number as well as militia combat ability.

From what I've seen, when a player drops his ground combat ability to 50% you only need _one quarter_ as many troops to take his planets as you would if he was at 100%, and conversely he'd need _four times_ as many troops to take over one of your own planets. Such players make excellent sources of slave labour.