Neutron Bomb

[Urendi Maleldil]

If you can conquer a planet with troops, you gain control of any units on that planet that weren't destroyed in combat. This includes weapon platforms.

[geoschmo]

Every time I have landed troops on a planet with units (WP's, troops, mines) the defending units are destroyed in the attack. You have seen something different?

Geo

[Taqwus]

I've captured up to ca. 14 million tons of weapons platforms on a single world. There may be some units destroyed (perhaps damage overflowing from your troops' Last salvo -- maybe it spills over to units? Or maybe it's pillaging), but it reliably works for me.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
Every time I have landed troops on a planet with units (WP's, troops, mines) the defending units are destroyed in the attack. You have seen something different?

Geo

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I've noticed that the troops cannot actually TAKE the planet as long as there is any sort of enemy unit still surviving. But, due to recent changes there is no longer actual combat beteeen troops and other units. So, there is a stalemate until the other units are destroyed by some other means. I once dropped troops on a planet containing very little population and some mines -- the troops sat there and "fought" with the mines for the full 10 rounds, neither units taking any damage. I presume this would have gone on 'automatically' at each turn but I fired on the planet before combat ended and destroyed the mines. So, when the next chance for combat came up there was automatic victory for my troops. I never get close enough to drop troops on a WP since WPs in my mod have powerful mounts like bases with extended range. It's is always essential to destroy the WPs before closing in to drop troops.

[CW]

quote:

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I've noticed that the troops cannot actually TAKE the planet as long as there is any sort of enemy unit still surviving.

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Not quite, at least not in my solo games. My standard practice is to bomb the planet with a heavily shield DN with napalms until the place is soften up enough for my troop ships to move in. I AVOID killing all the units because that will leave the buildings intact, and I never ran into a problem with that.

[CW]

Bad news. Just ran a simulation with my neutron bomb ship, if you wiped out the population with it the planet is counted as destroyed, even though the buildings are untouched.

[CW]

Another bad news - I couldn't make the "Damage Percent Per Planet" thing in "Strategies" work in strategic combat, so I have to come up with something more ingenious. Let's see, one large NB kills 40 million pop, a normal one kills 20 million, and a ship needs 4 turns to get into position. So in effect you have got 26 turns to spend, that's 13 bomb runs since it takes 2 turns for the NBs to "recharge". Assuming that you are bombing a 4000m homeworld, that means you have to kill as close to but less than 4000/13=307.69m per bomb run. Now 307.69/40=7.69 large bombs needed on the ship, that's 7 large bombs plus a normal bomb. So, by the end of the combat round there should be about 4000-(7.5*40*13)=100m people left on the planet, and for every 20 million people there is one militia (?), that's 100/20=5 of them so you will need may be 10 troops to overrun the place.


[This message has been edited by CW (edited 12 August 2001).]