ship and planet capture

[geoschmo]

Back to your original question though...

Are the following assumptions correct?
1) set fleet to default "Capture Planets" strategy: your ships will refuse to capture ships.

I believe this is incorrect. If the ship has boarding parties and it's ship strategy is "capture ships" it should do so regardless of fleet strategy.

The thing I know for sure is the fleet strategy has to be "Capture Planet" or the troop ships will not drop troops. I do not think this is true for boarding ships, only troop ships.

Geoschmo

[spoon]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

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Are the following assumptions correct?
1) set fleet to default "Capture Planets" strategy: your ships will refuse to capture ships.

I believe this is incorrect. If the ship has boarding parties and it's ship strategy is "capture ships" it should do so regardless of fleet strategy.[/QB]

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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

[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?

[spoon]

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?

That would make the Ship Capture ships without weapons run to the corner, since I can't set Ships (no weapons) to Break Strategy without affecting the troop ship (which also has no weapons). This is assuming that I'm correct in assuming that the game assumes that Boarding Parties are not a weapon...

[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.

For that matter, I wouldn't design a troop transport without any weapons, either.

[ September 13, 2002, 00:35: Message edited by: capnq ]

[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