Previous Post on glassing vs planetary assault?

[Alneyan]

I usually do not capture planets myself, unless the benefits outweight the risks (and the extra time spent in handling troops) involved. For example, I will try to capture planets if:
- I have strategical control of the area, and I am fairly confident there can be no counter-offensives.
- I need the happiness boost linked to capturing a planet, but that does not necessarily mean I will keep the planet.
- I need more resources badly (in the case of several wars going on at the same time), and I am confident the planets I target are still producing something.
- I simply want to capture breathers.

In all these cases, I *will* remove the population of the conquered worlds, and throw it into empty space. I have to live up to my reputation of meanness after all. This will also allow to abandon those planets at a later date if there is an enemy offensive in the area.

I am not so fond of capturing planets to keep them because it can backfire rather easily: an enemy counter-strike can glass those planets, bringing down the happiness levels in the whole Empire. In fact, while fighting a losing war, I have often glassed more of my own planets (after they fell into enemy hands) than planets actually belonging to the foe. Along the same lines, there is the problem of those mean players having nothing better to do than fill their planets with defensive troops: this is mostly the case of Empires losing a war, but hoping to do as much damage as possible to help their allies, or suspicious Empires whose police troops were equipped with weaponry.

Further problems include the state of the planets you take over. Indeed, if you know you have lost the war/a system, you can put the threatened planets on Emergency Building, and scrap all their facilities, making your planets more than worthless. Abandoning these planets is another solution, so long as they do not have more than fifty million settlers. The most drastic solution is blowing up your own systems, destroying your planets and any enemy ship in the process, without taking a happiness hit. If you cannot keep that system, why should you foe have it?