Ship Strategy & Fleet Strategy in strategic combat-how does it work?

[MegaTrain]

quote:

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Originally posted by Puke:
isnt there an option in the strategy section to 'fire until all weapons are destroyed'

or do you mean that this option does not work for planets

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The problem is, it's not:
"fire until all weapons are destroyed and then sit around and wait for the end of combat"
it's actually:
"Fire on each target until its weapons are destroyed and then go on to the next target. When ALL targets have their weapons destoyed, go back and DESTROY THEM ALL COMPLETELY."

That's the problem. I don't want to destoy all population and facilities on the planet, because I'm using this to force surrender.

[capnq]

I just successfully took a lightly defended world in a PBW game. Strategy was Capture Planet; Primary Movement - Capture Planet, Secondary Movement - Point Blank, Firing set to Use Type Priorities Before Targeting Priorities, with Planets first in the list; Damage Until All Weapons Gone; all Ships Break Formation. The Attack Ships ignored the planet after the Weapons Platforms were gone, but the planet only had two facilities left intact after I captured it.

This was in actual combat rather than the simulator.

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Cap'n Q
My first SE IV mod! Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[dumbluck]

Just to prove that these questions have been around for a while...

[tbontob]

Yo!

And they will be around much longer if we do nothing about it.

[Q]

Originally posted by MegaTrain:
That's the problem. I don't want to destoy all population and facilities on the planet, because I'm using this to force surrender.

But then why do you want to destroy the weapon platforms at all?
In this situation I use the "don't get hurt" strategy and blockade the planet. The ships will still defend themselves if attacked by ships/fighters/drones but will not at all attack the planet and stay out of range of its weapon platforms.

[Q]

Originally posted by rusty nail:
If the analysis of this thread is correct, then how do the AI's ever capture planets? Has anyone ever seen an AI actually capture one with population still alive? I haven't. It might only work if the AI sent in a troop ship without escort and got lucky. I understand from another thread that they often do just that.

I can confirm that the AI can and will capture planets with fleets that contain troop transporters. I conquered a planet from the Aquilaeian and to my outmost surprise a few turns later they attacked this planet again with a large fleet (about 100 ships!), whiped out my ships, the newly built weapon platforms and my own troops then landed their troops and conquered the planet. Later in this game I found 10-20 colonies of the Aquilaeian with different races on it. They most certainly had captured all these colonies from other empires.