ship and planet capture

[spoon]

Originally posted by capnq:
The first thing I'd do is get those Ship Capture ships without APBs to a shipyard for a refit. I wouldn't design a Ship Capture ship without at least one weapon to chip away at the enemy's shields.

Unless, of course, you enemy didn't have shields...

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by spoon:
I think if Ship Capture ships are in a fleet set to "Capture Planets" with the Secondary Movement Strategy Set to "Optimal Firing Range", the Ship Capture ships with no weapons will say to themselves: "I have no troops, so I can't follow the Primary Strategy. And I have no weapons so I can't follow the Secondary Strategy. It's probably best if I run to the corner and get shot at."
The Ship Capture ships with weapons will follow the "lets go shoot our weapons at stuff" plan, but will forget about the marines they have on board.
Main problem, I think, is that the game doesn't consider Boarding Parties to be a weapon. I think.
-Spoon

I think you are correct about the boarding parties not being considered weapons, but I have tested it and it doesn't do what you think it will. The troop transport attacks the planets and the boarding ships attack the ships. It works just fine as one fleet. Just set the fleet strat to capture planet and set the boarding ships strats to capture ships. You don't even have to worry about secondary strategies.

Where you might have a problemn though is if the planet has defenses and you don't have any ships with weapons that can hit them your troop transport is going to rush in unsupported and might get pasted.

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Couldn't you give the fleet "capture planet" orders and then have the boarding ships break strategy? Would they then capture ships on just their design orders?

Yes, but it's not even neccesary to do that. Your boarding ships will do their ship strategy even if they are not set to break formation. At least in my tests they did.

Geoschmo

[spoon]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Just set the fleet strat to capture planet and set the boarding ships strats to capture ships. You don't even have to worry about secondary strategies.

Thanks for running a test... Did you set Ships (no weapons) to break formations? I think that's what I meant by case (3) in the original post:

"3) as (1) above, but set ships (and Ships (no weapons)) to break formation: troop ship will head directly to the planet, instead of waiting until all WPs are destroyed"

This is probably the option I'll use - I'd rather accidentally glass the planet than lose ships, in this case...

[Phoenix-D]

"Thanks for running a test... Did you set Ships (no weapons) to break formations?"

Ships with no weapons ALWAYS break and run for the corner; they will never stay in formation regardless of that check box. I don't know how BP fit into this.