Posted December 18, 2017
I've been struggling a lot with invading planets in Polaris Sector, and I've found it to be incredibly tedious. It requires absolutely astronomical investment in resources to take down a planet even after winning the fleet battle. I'd like to share what I've found, and maybe hear back on ideas others have tried:
Bombardment clean, simple, and effective. Bombardment is the way to go... if it weren't a war crime that turned you into a galactic pariah. Also I guess capturing a planet intact is economically valuable, but given how expensive the other options here are I think you're better off just bombing it into the stone age and rebuilding. If it's a total war situation where you have no allies go to town with bombardment, it outclasses the other options here by a ridiculous margin.
Ground Force Invasion is expensive, messy, and time-consuming. It works well enough on undeveloped worlds, but once planetary defense systems and military bases are in place they're highly ineffectual. It's not uncommon to see worlds that will intercept 80% or more of the incoming troops, which makes it basically impossible to ferry in a sufficient number of ground forces to win by brute force. Ground forces need support to work, and the sheer amount you need to ferry in to break a heavily-defended planet even after establishing a beachhead is mind-boggling.
Espionage Ships are expensive and low-risk, but are a complete and total micromanagement nightmare. Espionage actions have a 100% chance to fail unless the ship undertaking them is in stealth mode (this is not explained anywhere, the user interface still states that you have normal success chances, and the game doesn't warn you when you build an espionage ship that doesn't have any stealth capabilities). This means that every time they are revealed, which is most of the time, you need to send them two jumps away from the front-line to re-stealth then send them back. You also can't fleet them together, since that will knock all of them out of stealth mode whenever one fails, so you need to issue orders to them individually. When you have 20+ of these things running espionage missions relays to try and destroy the surface defenses, this is an overwhelming micromanagement load and makes the game simply unfun to play.
Starvation by focusing on the enemy's oceanic and earth-like planets you can shut down their food production, sending their empire into revolt and collapse, weakening their planets to invasion. Of course, this has a chicken-and-egg problem since you need to take those planets, plus they could have built up astronomical food stockpiles earlier. I've only seen starvation play a factor once, and that empire was already on the brink of collapse, so I'm really unsure of it as a general tactic.
Anyone else know of any other ways to crack planets?
Bombardment clean, simple, and effective. Bombardment is the way to go... if it weren't a war crime that turned you into a galactic pariah. Also I guess capturing a planet intact is economically valuable, but given how expensive the other options here are I think you're better off just bombing it into the stone age and rebuilding. If it's a total war situation where you have no allies go to town with bombardment, it outclasses the other options here by a ridiculous margin.
Ground Force Invasion is expensive, messy, and time-consuming. It works well enough on undeveloped worlds, but once planetary defense systems and military bases are in place they're highly ineffectual. It's not uncommon to see worlds that will intercept 80% or more of the incoming troops, which makes it basically impossible to ferry in a sufficient number of ground forces to win by brute force. Ground forces need support to work, and the sheer amount you need to ferry in to break a heavily-defended planet even after establishing a beachhead is mind-boggling.
Espionage Ships are expensive and low-risk, but are a complete and total micromanagement nightmare. Espionage actions have a 100% chance to fail unless the ship undertaking them is in stealth mode (this is not explained anywhere, the user interface still states that you have normal success chances, and the game doesn't warn you when you build an espionage ship that doesn't have any stealth capabilities). This means that every time they are revealed, which is most of the time, you need to send them two jumps away from the front-line to re-stealth then send them back. You also can't fleet them together, since that will knock all of them out of stealth mode whenever one fails, so you need to issue orders to them individually. When you have 20+ of these things running espionage missions relays to try and destroy the surface defenses, this is an overwhelming micromanagement load and makes the game simply unfun to play.
Starvation by focusing on the enemy's oceanic and earth-like planets you can shut down their food production, sending their empire into revolt and collapse, weakening their planets to invasion. Of course, this has a chicken-and-egg problem since you need to take those planets, plus they could have built up astronomical food stockpiles earlier. I've only seen starvation play a factor once, and that empire was already on the brink of collapse, so I'm really unsure of it as a general tactic.
Anyone else know of any other ways to crack planets?
Post edited December 18, 2017 by Darvin