Capturing planets with moons

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, I can now confirm the problem. I just had a fleet take a stupid moon and trash a HUGE planet with 146 percent mineral value and full of mineral miner facilities. What a waste! I definitely clicked on the planet, NOT the moon, but the combat replay shows the transport go straight to the moon and drop troops. This is a serious problem. I had changed the targetting priorities to 'largest' also, so that doesn't work.

[BeeDee10]

When attacking a multiple-colony sector (ie, one with both a planet and one or more moons that have been colonized), I believe it's essentially "random" which planet the troop transports will go for first; they seem to aim for the nearest, and the moons get positioned randomly so there's no way to predict which it will be.

The solution to this is to use at least as many troop transports in your fleet as there are colony worlds in the sector. After the first colony is captured, the remaining troop transports will pick the next-nearest colony world to drop troops on, and so forth. Of course, the first troop transport has to be _successful_ in capturing the planet, so if you're attacking a full-up homeworld plus a dinky little moon you're going to need two full transports each capable of capturing the homeworld in order to be sure that you won't fail to capture one of the worlds and end up bombing it out.

I really hope that in Gold there will be an easy and effective way to order a fleet _not_ to bomb planets. Committing accidental atrocities really screws up roleplaying, not to mention the sheer waste of it all.

[Q]

BeeDee if you specify in the strategy orders "fire until all weapons gone" for the strategy "capture planet" this should prevent the glassing of the planet.

[shino6]

quote:

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Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Well, I can now confirm the problem. I just had a fleet take a stupid moon and trash a HUGE planet with 146 percent mineral value and full of mineral miner facilities. What a waste!

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Yes, this has happened to me many times. It needs to be fixed. At the very least, whichever planet you click on to attack should be the primary target, not the random destruction the game forces on you.

- Shino6

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Q:
BeeDee if you specify in the strategy orders "fire until all weapons gone" for the strategy "capture planet" this should prevent the glassing of the planet.

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It should, but it doesn't. The ships only seem to apply that to other ships. THe only way to get them to not glass a planet is to order them not to fire on the planet at all, and that makes dropping troops in strategic combat very dicey.

Geo

[Baron Munchausen]

Actually, the 'Fire Until Weapons Gone" strategy is only in effect UNTIL all enemy weapons are gone on all units/planets. Then the AI combat routines go into massacre mode and finish off all the unarmed ships/bases/planets they can get to before turns run out. So all this setting really does is make your strategic combat more efficient. If a ship cannot fire at you, fire at ships that can, until no ships can, then finish them all off.

[ 31 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[BeeDee10]

I really think that there should be some sort of "mercy mode" you can put your ships into whereby they will only attack targets with weapons. In games against the AI it probably wouldn't be very useful because the AI tends to fight all-or-nothing genocidal wars, but in PBW I have found myself very frequently wanting to fight a _limited_ war against some other empire where all I want to do is fight ship-to-ship to establish a pecking order. Being stuck in "massacre mode" makes that an extremely dicey plan. This is far more common for me than wanting to wipe someone out, in fact.

In fact, while I'm already dreaming, how about a limited war option where combat is only initiated in contested systems and not in uncontested ones? Claiming systems would actually become _meaningful_ then. Of course, either side would still have the option of upgrading to an all-out war of the current variety, even if only by claiming all of an enemy's systems for oneself.