TF Orders

[Longstreet]

Hi all. Can someone explain why this is happening? I’m playing a Balance Mod game. I give a Task Force an order to capture a colony. There are 20+ ships, five are troop carrying ships. Only three of those five move toward the colony. As it turns out in ground combat not enough troops to take colony. Maybe with all five landing I would have taken it. Why did all five ships not move toward colony? Why do non troop carrying ships not accompany troop transport to colony? Possibly causing ground defensive fire to disperse on multiple targets.

Longstreet

[Longstreet]

Is there a limit to how many troops you can invade with depending on colony cargo size? Example you could only drop troops from one ship if the number of troops exceeds colony cargo size.

Longstreet

[Arkcon]

Its been a while since I played, but here's something to look at: did the ships that didn't close have weapons? That may have been a flaw of the "don't destroy the planet before the troop ships drop troops" logic. Also, were other ships blocking the troop ships? That can also be a problem. Although, IIRC, attack ships that no longer attack usually (often? sometimes?) fly up and over a target to get out of the way. I've seen them do that for other targets, dunno if they do that for planets.

[Suicide Junkie]

Do the ships need to have capture planet as their design orders?
As soon as you break formation your ships start using their individual strategies.

Also, if the planet has weapons, the ships trying to capture will hang back until the armed ships are destroyed or the planet is disarmed. At which point they will charge in.

All that is why I removed weapon platforms from my mod and replaced them with orbital defenses... since the planet is unarmed (though very well armored against weapons fire with troops in most cases) the troop transports rush in. And since there are armed hostiles in orbit, the warships and fighters rush in too and provide cover fire. And the troops land in all the confusion.