What's good assault technique?

[Jumpp (OP)]

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?

[Conscript Gary]

Troops can transfer from troop bays to drop modules between ships yeah, so the assault carrier is a valid strategy. I don't know how successful it'll be, but that's the fun of it!
As far as the colony goes, if you didn't make one the troops would automatically when they landed

[Gyrfalcon]

This all sounds correct.

Generally, you don't want to land troops while hostile PDCs are active, so mass landers (regular troop transports) work fine, especially since combat is currently only fought every five days. If the ground combat system ever gets a new pass, it might become more necessary to use the drop-ship attack method, but right now I think it's almost entirely for flavor to do so.

If you can swing it, I'd up the troop ship to six battalions and six dropships. This lets a squadron of four bring in an entire division, plus division command and three replacement battalions.

[Jumpp (OP)]

That's all very helpful stuff.  Thanks, guys.

[HaliRyan]

I'm a big fan of the assault carrier/shuttle method, but I typically use a civilian-rated troop transport ship with a separate dedicated assault carrier. Unfortunately it isn't generally worthwhile (or necessary) except from an RP standpoint. The one time I tried to use it to avoid bombarding the enemy PDCs into rubble and potentially ruining the planet, the NPR just nuked the hell out of my landed troops with said PDCs and ruined the planet themselves.

[madpraxis]

Personally I go for a ridiculously armoured, short range, high speed dropship with space for six battalions, then attach a tanker (or three) to it until it get's close to the said planet, drop the tankers then go 'oogy oogy oogy' and charge in for a landing. 6 battalions for the headquarters, it's 4 battalions, and a replacement battalion...Until I get drop capability then usually do something like HaliRyan said.