Previous Post on glassing vs planetary assault?

[Aris_Sung]

Hi,
I can't remember if there was already a post on the forum that discussed the finer points of orbital bombardment vs planetary assault.
If there is, could someone possibly show the way.

Thanks,
Aris

PS. On another note, how do you add those cool catchy phrases underneath each post. Those phrases that appear each time you post.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Click on 'My Home', in the upper right. Click the little 'Edit' accross from 'Personal Information' and scroll down to 'signature'.

That was probably too obscure; I have difficulty being clear sometimes. If it is, tell me.

[Fyron]

You could do a forum search.

To sum it up, glassing is bad. When you can manage to do so, conquering worlds is far more efficient than glassing them. You get free population and facilities. Conquest is insanely easy in stock SE4. Even with a 50% ground combat trait, it is very, very easy to capture planets. A few dozen troops are enough to conquer most worlds, especially if you use Ground Cannons (Troop Weapons tech) or Electric Discharges (for Organic races) and a shield generator. Shield generators are not necessary, they just drastically decrease the number of troops you need.

Make sure that your troop transport ship has Capture Planet as it's strategy. If you assign it the class/type of Troop Transport, it will be given this strategy by default. Otherwise, you have to set it manually.

Of course, if glassing is your only choice to weaken a powerful enemy, go for it. Or if the territory would be impossible for you to hold for very long, but you still want to cause damage to the enemy, glass it. If you can keep it, conquer.

[Aris_Sung]

Thank for the summary Fyron!
I'll keep your suggestions in mind for my game.

[douglas]

Of course, if you want to capture a homeworld or other similarly high population planet, you'll need at least a hundred or two troops, preferably more. And that's if your opponent doesn't arm his police troops.

Edit: Besides not getting the free colony, population, and facilities, glassing decreases the values of the planet by 10%.

[Ragnarok-X]

Remember, we are talking stock. In most mods homeworlds are absoluty difficult to capture due to the militas. Even standart worlds with lets 200-300 million people can prove hard to capture, given the defender has at least a few troops with weapons to support the militas. But i agree, in stock, capturing is very easy, too easy imho. broken.

[Atrocities]

Yes, I think it was a post I had started. I honestly do not recall. I wish I could find a few of the older threads as they had a lot of great info in them. The one where we discussed the finer points of Torpedoes is just such a thread.

[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?

[Grandpa Kim]

Alneyan! Eeeyuck!

What a horrid philosophy! Even at the worst of times I try to capture. Victory in itself is not enough for me; I must win the righteous way or it is meaningless.

IMHO there should be a penalty for glassing planets. No penalty for the first one each turn, 5% decrease in happiness to your own people for the second, 10% for the third etc. I know my honorable people would be horrified were I to start glassing planets as a matter of policy. I would be deposed in seconds!

Note: Don't even get me started on star destroyers! (I don't even research Stellar Manip 8)

The nicest thing I can say about glassing planets is that it's gauche.

[douglas]

Grandpa Kim said:
The nicest thing I can say about glassing planets is that it's gauche.

It is also sometimes the only possible way. Consider that I arm my police troops, generally build at least one BSY over each homeworld, and generally have that BSY on repeat build troops by the mid-late game. The combination of these factors is why I so easily have several troop transports flying around in one game with around 300 troops loaded on each. I sincerely doubt anyone is going to capture any of my homeworlds any time soon, unless I just loaded all the troops onto a transport a turn or two before the attack.