Strategies for "clean" planet capture (renamed)

[Shadowstar]

EDIT: Subject was: Weapon Platform target priority

I'm setting up a strategy to use when I want my ships to destroy a planet's defenses but not actually fire on the planet unless it has weapon platforms. Basically, I want them to kill ships, sats, ftrs, bases, etc, and clear the way for troop transports. I've set up a strategy which tells them not to fire on planets but to fire on weapons platforms. Will that cause them to only destroy the planet's WP's and then stop, or will they just ignore the planet altogether?

[Suicide Junkie]

Targetting planets until weapons destroyed is probably what you have to do...
Without troop transports to land and discourage your ships from finishing the job, I don't know of anything to stop the warships from cleaning up.

[Shadowstar]

Hmm, that's what i did in se4. But in SE5, the ships seem to consider people weapons and so the process of disarming the planet involves mass genocide... I guess history really does repeat itself.

[Raapys]

Yeah, I've several times had planets go to just a few mill population left before the WPs were destroyed. So I've really just started sending troop ships in while the Wps are active. Perhaps offer some shield or something for the troop ship, but if you've got other ships there to take the fire it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[tmcc]

Raapys said:
Yeah, I've several times had planets go to just a few mill population left before the WPs were destroyed.

This will be a bsic problem for your proposed strategy. Unlike SEIV WPs in SEV are not destroyed first before damage is applied to facilities and population. I have witnessed my ships destroy almost all of the facilities on an AI homeworld without even damaging the WPs. I don't know if this is a bug or the way it is supposed to be. On the other side of the coin one can no longer count on heavily shielded WPs to protect a planet.

[Shadowstar]

Well, it makes some logical sense that damage done to planets should be spread out randomly across all the things on the surface, but it should also factor in the fact that the ships will most likely be trying to hit the military installations, starting with the biggest threat first. If some pop or facilities get killed in the process, that's realistic, but you'd figure that the ships wouldn't just be firing randomly at the planet.

Maybe higher tech in military science could increase the chance that the ships will hit a WP with a particular shot rather than a population or other thing on the planet? Dunno if that's possible in the current code, but maybe it can be patched in later.

[Astax]

Ummm why not just drop troops/fighters on the planet? They will kill the platforms during ground combat. Then you can build a weapon plaform armed with guns to take out orbiting satelites.

[Raapys]

If your troop transport isn't shot down by the WPs and Satellites, that is.

[Astax]

HAHAHA that's nto a problem, after you enter the planet sector for the first time hang way back till combat is over. Then manually place your transport ontop of the planet in sector view, and reattack the planet. Make sure you tell your ship to drop troops before you start the timer, unless you have your strategy set to planet capture. You will lose your transport but the tropps will land.

[Shadowstar]

A fun little way to exploit singleplayer games, yes...

But then this is why the AI really should build troops for defense. Fighters are ok but they usually all get killed in the space combat and so don't usually factor into defensive ground combat.