Strategies

[douglas]

If the fleet's strategy is set to break formation (which it almost always should be), then the fleet's strategy doesn't actually matter. To capture planets, the ship carrying the troops must have Drop Troops as its primary movement strategy (which is how the Capture Planet strategy is set up by default). If any friendly ship with troops on board and a Drop Troops strategy is present, all friendly ships will automatically only attack planets that have armed weapon platforms and will stop once the last armed platform is destroyed, at which point the troop ship will stop following its secondary strategy (usually Don't Get Hurt) and approach. If the troop ship is the only ship present, then it will charge the planet in an attempt to drop troops before the weapon platforms can destroy it.

[IuchiZien]

Which would explain the ships completely ignoring a battle station which proceded to savage my attacking ships whilst they ignored it and continued to fire missiles at the planet, which naturally, were all destroyed by the %^&*^% battle station. This also implies that multi-role ships are a bad idea since you would only be able to give each class of ship one order per turn (e.g. equipping troop transports with boarding parties) yes?

[Suicide Junkie]

Adjust your targetting priorities, then.
Check the box, and move "bases" up above "planets".

That way your ships will clear the bases out before bombarding the planet.