Conquering defended planets

[Bartab]

I've got an enemy planet that has defenses built (It fires missiles, etc) and I've thrown an insane number of ships at this planet and never gotten to the point where I can bombard/drop armies.

Is there some reasonable strategy that can take out a city that has the defensive shield enhancements without being massively overteched?

[Trystan]

I would say that if the only thing it is sending at you is missiles is to make a bunch of poiint defense ships with a few long range ships. The point defense can shoot the missiles while the long range takes out the orbitals. I find carriers will work pretty good at attack planets, missiles do a good job against orbitals.

Take your time and build up a good mass of ships, leave your troop ships behind for now. You can bring them up next turn if take out the planet's defenses.

[Main_Brain]

Defensive shield?
-Carriers!
I really like carriers by now :=)

[stesergio]

Re: Conquering defended planets

Originally posted by Bartab
I've got an enemy planet that has defenses built (It fires missiles, etc) and I've thrown an insane number of ships at this planet and never gotten to the point where I can bombard/drop armies.

Is there some reasonable strategy that can take out a city that has the defensive shield enhancements without being massively overteched?

Except that PD is apparently broken in this game, so plantes with Missle Bases are just about unbeatable.

[TrainWreck20]

Heh...and I thought my PD fleet commanders were just not paying attention. Well, that sounds like an easy patch fix, anyway. Kind of parallels Civ3 and the interceptor bug.

[Harry Seldon]

Do you have the PD tech? I saw a noticeable difference when I had researched this as opposed to when I just created ships for the PD ring.

[TrainWreck20]

Come to think of it, I did have the PD tech in one game, and it did a very good job of shooting some fighters down that were attacking. I am not sure that PD ships shoot at missiles (or fighters) that are not targeted at them or not.....

I had not thought about the PD tech versus the PD location...maybe the PD location does not make them act like PD (even at reduced effectiveness w/o the PD tech)..bummer.

[BoDiddly]

I've not had troubles with point defense, but the first time i ran up against a heavily defended planet, 3 large orbitals plus planetary defenses, it was impenatrable. Definately an improvement over the useless colony defenses in previous games.
Back to topic as faras i can tell point d shoots at anything near the task force even if the missiles are just passing, same with fighters

[TrainWreck20]

Gonna have to make sure to beg/steal/lie to get PD is I don't get to research it myself in a game....