on the subject of attacking planets

[joeclark77 (OP)]

Do I understand correctly that destroying PDCs with missiles causes collateral damage to the population on the ground?  And, should I conclude that spoiler "ships" that appear to be orbiting their planets with zero velocity are PDCs... or does the game somehow make it clear what is a PDC?  I'm now wondering what I might have destroyed when I battled with the aliens.

I had a database problem and started a new game with lessons learned from this thread.  When I attack an alien planet I want to try and do it with dropships and ground forces.  Is that a good way to take out PDCs?  And if so, what's the strategy for drop ships?  I'm thinking you want to make a fleet of fast and small fighter-sized dropships carrying one battalion each, so that the enemy doesn't have much chance to target them and your eggs aren't all in one basket.  And try to drop a whole division at once with lots of assault infantry to attack the PDCs.  Is that right?  Is there anything else to consider?

And if I take the PDCs that way, do I then control them?  Can I steal their technology somehow?

[Brian Neumann]

For attacking the PDC's the Combat Engineer's will work really well.  Like the Marines they get a bonus.  For the Marines it is a bonus for boarding ships.  For the Combat Engineers it is a bonus to fighting in a PDC.

As for getting your troops to the planet you are going to need to run the defenders out of missiles.  Otherwise the point defense missiles will just slaughter your drop shuttles.  They will have a decent range (probably 10+ million km) against your drop ships and you could see 100+ every 5 or 10 seconds.  By the time you get the drop ships to the planet they will probably be dead from constant hits.

Brian.

[joeclark77 (OP)]

I'm thinking I would use my primary fleet of carriers/battleships as missile bait, either to run them out of missiles or at least draw their fire.  Drop ships could be fighter-sized and go in behind a larger wave of armed fighters also playing a screening role.