I've successfully conquered a few populations, but never anything serious. One was a large pre-spaceflight species, and several others have been small precursor listening posts. And so the following technique, however weak it may be, has always been good enough:
- Build a bunch of slow, poorly-armored troop transports with a few cargo handling modules but no combat drop pods
- Start a colony on the target world
- Have the transports waddle up to the target world and land their troops at whatever sorry speed they can manage
- Once the troops have all landed, order them to attack
I'd like to start doing this properly, but I'm not sure what properly is. I've got a few ideas and I'm wondering if they'd work, and I'm wondering what else I might not have considered. Specifically:
- I've got a design for a somewhat faster troop ship that carries five battalions and has a 5,000-ton hangar deck, into which I can fit five 1000-ton dropships. The dropships have heavy armor, short range, tremendous speed, and a one-battalion combat drop pod each. Will this work? Can troops in the assault transport's troop bays climb aboard the drop ships in the assault transport's hangar deck?
- The idea here is that the assault transport parks about 1.5m km away from the target world, outside the range of any ground-based guns and far enough away that the fleet's point defense can protect them from missiles. Then the tough, fast little drop ships go in. They're fast enough that they'll take far less fire than the assault transport would, and tough enough that they might be able to withstand it better. And, finally, carrying only one battalion each, it's less painful should I lose one. Is this good technique?
- I've been creating a colony on the planet I mean to invade, landing my troops there, and then ordering them to attack. Is this how it's done? Is there a better way?