Avoiding "glassing" a planet

derb · #1 February 26th, 2002, 03:51 PM

I have a carrier group with "strip planet" orders. My intention was to kill off any weapons platforms and satellites before my troop ship arrived. The custom strategy was

"Damage percent (for planets)" 10%
"Damage targets until all weapons gone"

But my fighters glassed the planet anyway.

What is the best way to accomplish what I wanted? I assume if I had had my troop transport with me it would have done the right thing?

Suicide Junkie · #2 February 26th, 2002, 03:59 PM

From What I've Seen:

I believe that the "Damage until weapons gone" overrides the 10% damage rule.

Also, those rules only decide when to reconsider the targetted enemy. If the planet is still the best target according to the nearest/strongest/etc rules, your forces will choose it again as a target. If the planet is the only thing left, they will shoot at it just for something to do.

What you need to do is drop those troops.

Arrange the speed of your transports and the number of attack ships so that they arrive at the planet with cover fire.
Once the troops are down, an unarmed, contested planet is no longer considered hostile.

Wardad · #3 February 26th, 2002, 05:38 PM

I have taken over 6 planet systems in one turn. Using two fleets, with 12 movement points, and splitting the fleets up for the smaller planets.

In Strategic Mode: As long as a troop transport has troops, and it's safe for it to advance, planet bombardment will pause. Note: launched seekers will continue to the target planet. Bombardment will resume if you lose on the ground.

You might glass the planet if you brought too many armed ships along. In one combat turn the weapon platforms and POP could be destroyed.

capnq · #4 February 26th, 2002, 10:41 PM

quote:
But my fighters glassed the planet anyway.

Were the fighters set to break formation (break is the default, IIRC)? And if they were, did you set their individual default strategy to "strip planet" as well (the default for units is "optimal range")?

PsychoTechFreak · #5 February 26th, 2002, 11:47 PM

AFAIK the capture planet fleets should better not break formation. I know there are some cons, like not always the optimal weapons range due to formation overrules, but with this setup the fleet should not glass the planet unless it is not a tiny weak one where every single shot would be too much.

The only problem for the ai seems to be, how to gather together a fleet with ships and transports on the galactic map, because transports are usually slower, they are often chasing behind the fleet. But I think I have recently seen a post about a solution to this problem...

Will · #6 February 27th, 2002, 05:37 AM

In my Last game (vs. AI, as my availible time is very sporadic), I had a strategy that resulted in no glassed planets in capture attempts, and I'm pretty sure glassing could only happen in a situation such as a planet with one WP and something very close to 1M population.

I had two strategies, with the only difference being in the Primary Strategy; one was Optimal Range, the other Maximum. In the Firing Strategy, I said use Type before Targeting priority, with planets selected as "Don't Fire On", and listed Last in the priority list. The rest was default.

The "Fire Until Weapons Gone" strategy will override the "Don't Fire on Planets" strategy while it has weapon platforms. As soon as the attack ships destroy the Last platform, they stop firing, and the transport zooms in to drop its troops. Breaking formation are the transport and the other support ships (for my main capture fleet; I had several other makeshift ones made from enemy carriers).