Orbital fire

[Mastik (OP)]

A construction brigade managed to dig up some angry robots, and combat has started.   I have a battleship sitting in orbit, is there a way to drop some battleship fire onto this robots?   

[Nathan_]

Depends, if the atmosphere of the planet is greater than 1 atm of pressure, no beam weapon will work. Nukes will always work, but the planet will suffer some collateral damage from getting nuked. You need to have an active sensor paint the hostile ground force, and then target it with said battleship.

[Prince of Space]

One exception: If the atmosphere is equal to or greater than 1 atmosphere of pressure, most beam weapons won't work, but meson cannons will be unaffected by the atmosphere.

[MarcAFK]

I always forget about mesons, I think I should equip my troop carriers with them.

[Hawkeye]

Mesons can´t be used vs. ground troops, however (pinpoint weapons with no area of effect)

[MarcAFK]

So basically you can only use missiles against ground troops, and you'll wreck the planet?

[Paul M]

Pretty much.  Steve is trying to encourage ground combat.  That is why there are no dedicated kinetic kill weapons, chemical weapons or for that matter simple HE.  Lasers should be effective orbital fire support but well since they are not allowed except against planets without much of an atmosphere for game balance I gather your choice is:  a solid ground force or calling in Sgt. Nuke'm.

My personal feeling is that people have been declaring ground combat dead ever since not long after WW1 and strange but true it still seems to occur.  Even with modern sensors, spy sats, drones, etc.  Air superiourity is a force multiplier but 0x(whatever) = 0.  And I see no real reason that orbital superiority will be significantly different.  Admittedly saturation nuclear bombardment is something that does render ground combat null and void, but it does have a serious draw back in terms of ecological damage.

But the problem is you are basically dealing with a game balance type issue here for which I can see the arguments on all sides.  It is not a problem with a simple easy solution.

[Mastik (OP)]

  Thanks for the input guys.    Never got to fire a shot, i had other issues.    None of my warships had active sensors, even tho i knew they had been built with them.    After a few moments of stewing over the issue, i discovered the damaged systems window.       Every one of my active systems was broken.       But that was after my ground forces took care of the robots.    Anywho, it is something i will routinely check now.