Has anyone Performed "Exterminatus" on a stubborn planet?

[Pury (OP)]

I have been planing my next "This time I will get past 100 years" navy and was thinking how would I want to deal with enemy homeworlds, or other heavy entrenched planets.  While slapping few 99size "missiles" will sure cause havoc, I was wondering if any one of you did it already and how it went? How much it devastated the planet and how many (IF any) civilians survived.

[kilo]

The last time I terraformed a planet I used surface laser batteries on a nearby moon until the temperature became favorable for my ground forces. STOs are not MSP limited and can bomb the surface literally forever. Missiles are only useful after you cleared the ground based point defense though. Those chunky missiles of yours are simply to expensive to be thrown against those positions. When it comes to collateral damage and war crimes, those missiles are great though. You could even consider increased radiation warheads for causing long term damage to the planets economy.
Killing ground forces with those weapons is not very efficient and terrain can make it even worse. It takes significant amounts of ordinance to wipe out ground forces. I would not consider wasting that much and land ground forces instead. You might even capture something useful.

[Pury (OP)]

The last time I terraformed a planet I used surface laser batteries on a nearby moon until the temperature became favorable for my ground forces.  STOs are not MSP limited and can bomb the surface literally forever.  Missiles are only useful after you cleared the ground based point defense though.  Those chunky missiles of yours are simply to expensive to be thrown against those positions.  When it comes to collateral damage and war crimes, those missiles are great though.  You could even consider increased radiation warheads for causing long term damage to the planets economy.
Killing ground forces with those weapons is not very efficient and terrain can make it even worse.  It takes significant amounts of ordinance to wipe out ground forces.  I would not consider wasting that much and land ground forces instead.  You might even capture something useful.

While I agree that in order to drop them you need to clear all STO's (Unless "Bombs" dropped directly on the planet hit instantly, which I kinda remember to be a thing? or at least someone proposed it to be so)Im not so sure if they wouldn't be efficient, as You not only get 100% (minus fortification and To hit) hit chance, the additional sub targets that take dmg (Not sure how it works really, cant figure it out) And the mechanic that divides dmg by 2 and uses both values for another target until value is less than 1 (If I understood all of this correctly, ofc) So for example missile with 512dmg would hit 1023 + sub attacks.  All of that for less than 200 minerals and a bit of optional fuel.  Sure such Bombardment would have to be followed with ground attack, But more in role of a cleanup than real breaking-through force.  As ground units need Transports, Proper training to actually hit, And would die, their cost and the amount of time to conquer the planet would surely out weight few "Bombs".  Sure, the infrastructure will be "damaged a bit", but resources still will be there, and it is not like ground combat itself would not bring some collateral dmg.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

The problem is that on rough terrain (like a forested mountain), the HIT chance is less than 1%.

[Pury (OP)]

The problem is that on rough terrain (like a forested mountain), the HIT chance is less than 1%.

But it applies to ground units too.  Even more so, as they also suffer temperature and Gravity debuffs.  Also base accuracy for them is 20% I think.  1% out of ~1000 hits is still 10 hits, without firing for months and using crazy amount of supply.  There is really no easy way to dealing with such extreme fortress worlds tbh.  Most of the time Accuracy will be higher.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

I think you have mixed up shooting STOs and shooting regular ground troops.

STOs are MUCH easier to hit than regular ground troops cause they give away their position with active sensors and by shooting. The rules for targeting them are under the planetary terrain rules post: 100%/fortification*to hit modifier, which is 5x higher than what a non-specialized ground unit would have against them.

Regular ground troops, though, are 3x harder for bombardment to hit than for your ground troops: they literally use the same rules, but with a 2/3 penalty.

The result is that it's probably better to kill STOs from orbit than on the ground in terms of supply expenditure (though if the STos can kill your ships you are probably better off doing a dropship assault).

I originally thought that it would always end up cheaper to do a ground assault in terms of BP expended in supplies to kill, but that may not be true.

If you get all your Ground Supply as light vehicles, ground force supply costs 2.48 vendarite for 500 GSP. Infantry are cheaper, but I don't know the cost off the top of my head (I found the LV supply costs in screenshots on the original rules posts).

HCAP is 12? GSP for 6 shots, so 500 GSP gives us 250 shots. To get 5000 shots (so assuming 20% as accurate as the bombardment) we'd need 10000 GSP. This costs us 49.6 vendarite (and nothing else).

A 10cm, 30000km range railgun costs 14BP and so consumes 14/100/4 MSP per shot. 1 MSP is 0.25 BP. So 1000 railgun shots (which are EXTREMELY cheap as orbital weapons go) costs 2.5BP. This looks like a great deal for the bombardment! Except you had to sit at 30000km to kill the STOs and so you probably lost your entire navy.

A better weapon for killing STOs is a particle beam (since range doesn't affect orbit to surface accuracy, but DOES affect STO accuracy, shooting from farther away favors the attacker). Consider a Strength 6 beam (so plenty to demolish an STO if it hits) with 240,000km range and 15 second cycle time. This costs 94BP, and so consumes 94/100/4 BP per shot. At 1% accuracy, to kill 10 STOs, we'd spend 23.5BP. This is probably still cheaper than killing them with ground troops at equivalent accuracy, but consumes much more valuable minerals (gallicite and duranium instead of vendarite). If you use bigger, badder particle beams the cost goes up. The cost of using ground troops remains constant.

Of course, the missile you proposed to use instead cost 200 BP. And you'd need a lot more than one if there are any point defense STOs. So the ground forces kick its butt.

[nuclearslurpee]

If you get all your Ground Supply as light vehicles, ground force supply costs 2.48 vendarite for 500 GSP. Infantry are cheaper, but I don't know the cost off the top of my head (I found the LV supply costs in screenshots on the original rules posts).

Infantry-based supply is 1.0 vendarite/BP per 500 GSP. LVH logistics used to have an important role as their cost was balanced by the ability to auto-resupply formations in their hierarchy, however since 1.12 and the replacement mechanic it is far more cost-efficient to use only INF+LOG-S organic to every formation as well as organized into rear echelon supply dumps with "Use for Replacement" checked.

HCAP is 12? GSP for 6 shots, so 500 GSP gives us 250 shots. To get 5000 shots (so assuming 20% as accurate as the bombardment) we'd need 10000 GSP. This costs us 49.6 vendarite (and nothing else).

This is incorrect. First off, HCAP is 9 GSP. Second, the GSP listed is the amount required for 10 rounds of fire, not one - so you pay 9 GSP per 60 shots, not 6. In this case to get 5,000 shots you are paying 750 GSP which with infantry logistics comes out to 15 BP/vendarite.

It is also important to emphasize the relative low value of vendarite compared to duranium and gallicite which are used to build MSP. I have never experienced anything even approaching a vendarite shortage, so expending it is not a big deal to me even if the cost is several times more than for the same operation in MSP.

A 10cm, 30000km range railgun costs 14BP and so consumes 14/100/4 MSP per shot. 1 MSP is 0.25 BP. So 1000 railgun shots (which are EXTREMELY cheap as orbital weapons go) costs 2.5BP. This looks like a great deal for the bombardment! Except you had to sit at 30000km to kill the STOs and so you probably lost your entire navy.

You'll want to check your math: (14/100/4 MSP/shot) * (1000 shots) * (0.25 BP/MSP) = 8.75 BP.

A better weapon for killing STOs is a particle beam (since range doesn't affect orbit to surface accuracy, but DOES affect STO accuracy, shooting from farther away favors the attacker). Consider a Strength 6 beam (so plenty to demolish an STO if it hits) with 240,000km range and 15 second cycle time. This costs 94BP, and so consumes 94/100/4 BP per shot. At 1% accuracy, to kill 10 STOs, we'd spend 23.5BP. This is probably still cheaper than killing them with ground troops at equivalent accuracy, but consumes much more valuable minerals (gallicite and duranium instead of vendarite). If you use bigger, badder particle beams the cost goes up. The cost of using ground troops remains constant.

The correct formulation is: (94/100 MSP/shot) * (1000 shots) * (0.25 BP/MSP) = 235 BP. Note that there is no division by 4 as a particle beam fires one shot per weapon firing (compared to the railgun's 4 shots per firing).

Of course, the missile you proposed to use instead cost 200 BP. And you'd need a lot more than one if there are any point defense STOs. So the ground forces kick its butt.

With the ground forces, you also need to consider the expense of building, repairing, and replacing the heavily-armored transports you will need to actually break through the STO screen, drop troops, and escape back out of range. If the planet is heavily defended by enemy ground forces, you will likely need to do several waves of drops to accumulate multi-million tons of ground attackers on the planet surface, further increasing losses. Depending on just how heavily defended the planet is, as well as various factors such as technology, ship design, etc., the expense of dropping ground forces may well exceed that of bombarding from orbit just because of the damage to and/or loss of dropships. This is really the major factor that will make the orbital bombardment approach tend to be the most effective, especially if you have sufficient shield technology to absorb enemy fire at extreme range in which case you will not even have to pay duranium to repair scratched paint on your battleships.

[Pury (OP)]

I think you have mixed up shooting STOs and shooting regular ground troops.

STOs are MUCH easier to hit than regular ground troops cause they give away their position with active sensors and by shooting. The rules for targeting them are under the planetary terrain rules post: 100%/fortification*to hit modifier, which is 5x higher than what a non-specialized ground unit would have against them.

Regular ground troops, though, are 3x harder for bombardment to hit than for your ground troops: they literally use the same rules, but with a 2/3 penalty.

The result is that it's probably better to kill STOs from orbit than on the ground in terms of supply expenditure (though if the STos can kill your ships you are probably better off doing a drop ship assault).

I did not refer to beam weapons, which use (slightly) different mechanics in Naval phase bombardment. Missiles as I said above have 100% accuracy (divided by Fortification and Planets To-Hit chance) while Beam weapons accuracy are as you described.

Edit.
to clarify, missiles have base 100% accuracy against any ground target.

In terms of the most efficient way to get rid of STOs, It might be either Some sort of Beam attack if The planet has no or few powerful Anty-Ship Batteries, or Some type of MIssile spam directed at STOs, with Balance between Speed and Dmg so they can break through. Maybe then finish whats left of STOs with Beam weapons, and then you can safely use your Giant Bombs to devastate other units before your Ground troops attack. While it would be quite expensive, as fast missiles cost a lot, It might turn out to be less than value of All potentially lost Beam ships trying to get the STOs alone.

[Pury (OP)]

Also it is important to remember the bigger the bomb dmg, the more will it subdivide. So effectiveness of those grows with tech.

[misanthropope]

can you actually exterminate a population with enhanced radiation missiles?  ive never tried it, but suddenly it is looking like a really appealing option in the early game.  remove the threat (which the enemy army *isn't*), come back and mop up when it seems cost-effective to do so.  as a bonus, with a tech advantage in hand you can use lower-collateral weapons.

in VB6 you would routinely capture populations larger than you could make yourself in basically any amount of time, but logistic population growth changes that completely.  empty the real estate, colonize it yourself. 

not the kinder, gentler Japanese Rigellians, baby; those *other* ones

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Infantry-based supply is 1.0 vendarite/BP per 500 GSP. LVH logistics used to have an important role as their cost was balanced by the ability to auto-resupply formations in their hierarchy, however since 1.12 and the replacement mechanic it is far more cost-efficient to use only INF+LOG-S organic to every formation as well as organized into rear echelon supply dumps with "Use for Replacement" checked.

HCAP is 12? GSP for 6 shots, so 500 GSP gives us 250 shots. To get 5000 shots (so assuming 20% as accurate as the bombardment) we'd need 10000 GSP. This costs us 49.6 vendarite (and nothing else).

This is incorrect. First off, HCAP is 9 GSP. Second, the GSP listed is the amount required for 10 rounds of fire, not one - so you pay 9 GSP per 60 shots, not 6. In this case to get 5,000 shots you are paying 750 GSP which with infantry logistics comes out to 15 BP/vendarite.

It is also important to emphasize the relative low value of vendarite compared to duranium and gallicite which are used to build MSP. I have never experienced anything even approaching a vendarite shortage, so expending it is not a big deal to me even if the cost is several times more than for the same operation in MSP.

Thanks for filling in the specifics. I pulled those numbers from the original rules post not the actual game.

A 10cm, 30000km range railgun costs 14BP and so consumes 14/100/4 MSP per shot. 1 MSP is 0.25 BP. So 1000 railgun shots (which are EXTREMELY cheap as orbital weapons go) costs 2.5BP. This looks like a great deal for the bombardment! Except you had to sit at 30000km to kill the STOs and so you probably lost your entire navy.

You'll want to check your math: (14/100/4 MSP/shot) * (1000 shots) * (0.25 BP/MSP) = 8.75 BP.

Whoops. That's what I get for doing math in the search bar instead of an actual calculator.

A better weapon for killing STOs is a particle beam (since range doesn't affect orbit to surface accuracy, but DOES affect STO accuracy, shooting from farther away favors the attacker). Consider a Strength 6 beam (so plenty to demolish an STO if it hits) with 240,000km range and 15 second cycle time. This costs 94BP, and so consumes 94/100/4 BP per shot. At 1% accuracy, to kill 10 STOs, we'd spend 23.5BP. This is probably still cheaper than killing them with ground troops at equivalent accuracy, but consumes much more valuable minerals (gallicite and duranium instead of vendarite). If you use bigger, badder particle beams the cost goes up. The cost of using ground troops remains constant.

The correct formulation is: (94/100 MSP/shot) * (1000 shots) * (0.25 BP/MSP) = 235 BP. Note that there is no division by 4 as a particle beam fires one shot per weapon firing (compared to the railgun's 4 shots per firing).

MSP cost 1/4BP per MSP but you only need MSP equal to the cost of the weapon. The factor of 4 is correct here. You even included it? I lost a factor of 10 tho. I REALLY need to stop doing this in the search bar lol.

[nuclearslurpee]

MSP cost 1/4BP per MSP but you only need MSP equal to the cost of the weapon. The factor of 4 is correct here. You even included it? I lost a factor of 10 tho. I REALLY need to stop doing this in the search bar lol.

You're right, I misread how you did the numbers for the particle beam as they were organized differently from the railgun. Still, right numbers are right numbers in the end.

As pointed out above though I think we are missing a 15x factor as well, as I cannot find the source attribution for the below:

I think you have mixed up shooting STOs and shooting regular ground troops.

STOs are MUCH easier to hit than regular ground troops cause they give away their position with active sensors and by shooting. The rules for targeting them are under the planetary terrain rules post: 100%/fortification*to hit modifier, which is 5x higher than what a non-specialized ground unit would have against them.

Regular ground troops, though, are 3x harder for bombardment to hit than for your ground troops: they literally use the same rules, but with a 2/3 penalty.

I think you might be getting these mixed up with immobile space stations, which IIRC grant a 100% base %CTH for beam fire controls regardless of range. Alternatively if you can locate the Steve post with this info please share as I can't find it and would like to know.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

For shooting STOs the relevant Steve post appears to be the Planetary Terrain one:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg104912#msg104912

The formula given for targeting STOs is:
1/fortification*to hit mod
where fortification is generally 6*terrain fortification mod.

However, the Naval Bombardment of Ground Forces post gives a different formula:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg111435#msg111435
for non STO targets, it says 1/5/3/fortification*to hit mod
for STO targets, it says the 1/3 penalty is absent so we get 1/5/fortification*to hit mod


The Naval Bombardment of Ground Forces post is newer so I suspect it is correct. It gives an STO to hit chance 20% as high as the Planetary Terrain one. Not 100% sure which is right.

IIRC, I had a 0.4% chance to hit reported against STOs on a forest mountain world.

Using the NBGF rules, I calculate 1/5/(6*2.5)*.25=0.33% to hit. However, I had 22% crew grade, which would bring me up to 0.407%.

Using the Planetary Terrain rules, I'd get 2%. So if I'm remembering right, the NBGF rules are accurate.

[xenoscepter]

 --- Glassing Worlds is S.O.P. for my Navy. The Explorer Corps. will find more.

[QuakeIV]

Yea all the time, usually its more economical to use your conventional anti ship weaponry on the planet because it will generally have defenses