newby's guide to ship and fleet strategy

[Wardad]

I have had some good luck with Capture Planet.
I used the Capture Planet fleet strategy and played Strategic Combat. I used the default setting for ships breaking formation. The formation is usually a V.
The transports are unarmed, except for PD sometimes. They have excellent ECM, armor, and shields, and can lay a spy sat.
During combat (replay) the transports just hang back until the armed ships are done, and then rush in.
A small pop planet may get glassed before the attackers are done, but sometimes it can be managed by dropping the fleet size before invasion. Anyway, I glassed more planets by forgetting to load the troops back onto the transport the turn before.
The Max damage setting may help. I'm at the office now nd don't remember what that is set to. Generally it controls targetting order. With only one target, it may not help.