Can't Invade enemy homeworld?

[Schwam (OP)]

Greetings, (this is my first post)

I recently wiped out the fleet of my arch enemy, the Nebronian Theocracy, and decided to invade their homeworld, a perfectly suitable earth-like world that would be a crown jewel of my empire. I used my fleet to wipe out their ground units and brought in the 15 heavy assualt battalions and the 10 marine battalions I had loaded on my 3 assault transports and ordered them to combat drop on the planet. I waited a bit and... "Cannot combat drop ground unit as target is not a population". Whaaa? Maybe it's because I had the planet selected, instead of the population contact. So I tried again, this time selecting the EM and Thermal Contact coming from the planet labeled "Population [Neb]". Except, the only option I could do was "Boarding Action". Anyone know what I'm doing wrong here? This invasion is the culmnination of a 15 year interstellar war and I really want the planet instead of glassing it.

[sloanjh]

Greetings, (this is my first post)

I recently wiped out the fleet of my arch enemy, the Nebronian Theocracy, and decided to invade their homeworld, a perfectly suitable earth-like world that would be a crown jewel of my empire. I used my fleet to wipe out their ground units and brought in the 15 heavy assualt battalions and the 10 marine battalions I had loaded on my 3 assault transports and ordered them to combat drop on the planet. I waited a bit and... "Cannot combat drop ground unit as target is not a population". Whaaa? Maybe it's because I had the planet selected, instead of the population contact. So I tried again, this time selecting the EM and Thermal Contact coming from the planet labeled "Population [Neb]". Except, the only option I could do was "Boarding Action". Anyone know what I'm doing wrong here? This invasion is the culmnination of a 15 year interstellar war and I really want the planet instead of glassing it.

You need to add one of your populations (colonies) to their world, then offload the troops to your colony, then you can go to the Ground Units tab and attack their colony from your colony.

To add a colony, go to the System (F9) screen, select the body in question, and hit the "add colony" button at the bottom.

John

PS - Please post new user questions in The Academy.  There's a "Where to post" FAQ in the FAQ board that might be helpful in getting a feel for where things go.  Thanks!

[Steve Walmsley]

Greetings, (this is my first post)

I recently wiped out the fleet of my arch enemy, the Nebronian Theocracy, and decided to invade their homeworld, a perfectly suitable earth-like world that would be a crown jewel of my empire. I used my fleet to wipe out their ground units and brought in the 15 heavy assualt battalions and the 10 marine battalions I had loaded on my 3 assault transports and ordered them to combat drop on the planet. I waited a bit and... "Cannot combat drop ground unit as target is not a population". Whaaa? Maybe it's because I had the planet selected, instead of the population contact. So I tried again, this time selecting the EM and Thermal Contact coming from the planet labeled "Population [Neb]". Except, the only option I could do was "Boarding Action". Anyone know what I'm doing wrong here? This invasion is the culmnination of a 15 year interstellar war and I really want the planet instead of glassing it.

The mechanics here are slightly clumsy. If you are not boarding something, you can only drop combat units on one of your own populations. Just create a population on the same planet as the enemy population (using the Add Colony button on the F9 window), then drop your assault units there. Then open up that population, go to the ground units tab and use the "initiate ground combat against" dropdown at the bottom to attack the enemy. I really need to make all this happen automatically but you will have to go through that process for the moment.

Steve

[Schwam (OP)]

Ah, thank you. I suspected it was something like that but it's a great thing to hear it from the designer himself. I'll be sure to post any new questions in the Academy section, though.

[sloanjh]

The mechanics here are slightly clumsy. If you are not boarding something, you can only drop combat units on one of your own populations. Just create a population on the same planet as the enemy population (using the Add Colony button on the F9 window), then drop your assault units there. Then open up that population, go to the ground units tab and use the "initiate ground combat against" dropdown at the bottom to attack the enemy. I really need to make all this happen automatically but you will have to go through that process for the moment.

Jinx

John