Planetary Bombardment Questions

[Lightning (OP)]

Hi again guys... I've secured the system that contains my enemy's homeworld. They have tons of ground forces though. Are there any penalties for bombarding the troops from space before I land my own troops? Do they apply only to the race bombarded? I know there will be environmental damage, but I'm more curious about politcal/diplomatic reprecusions. Does environmental damage gradually diminish over time? Or do you need to do something to repair the damage? I'm not seeing anything under the environment tab and the terriforming choices which seemed like the logical place to look, but I don't have any planets with environmental damage so its possible that something may not be showing up for me.

Are there genocide penalties with other races if I deside I need a really big parking lot in that system and sanitize the planet surface? 

[Erik L]

They won't be very happy with you for bombing the snot out of them...

Bombardments will also destroy facilities (sometimes) and kill off civilians. You should target any PDCs and get rid of them first.

[Lightning (OP)]

Well... capturing their homeworld isn't gonna make them like me much either... Not that they liked me much to begin with... They fired the 1st shot after all (currently like -15k on the diplomatic screen)... Will other races know I bombarded the planet and hold it against me?

[Panopticon]

Other races won't care at all as far as I know.

I don't like bombarding from space if I can help it because it destroys installations that I want to keep, as well as making the planet a bit hard to live on. On the other hand I did have fun once bombing a world back to the stone age, then sending colony ships to use the survivors as slave labor on my forge world.

I tend towards the play style of the Imperium of Man sometimes.

[Lightning (OP)]

I do want to try and capture as many installations as I can. At this point, I just want to elimiate the enemy troops... But as long as I was asking, figured I'd ask all I could think of that was related...

[Panopticon]

Bombarding troops will catch a few installations, but likely not do too much damage, I usually blast defenders a little bit before my ground forces go in.

[Person012345]

If the atmosphere is less than 1atm, lasers can be extremely effective at precision strikes on ground troops.

[Lightning (OP)]

2.2 atm unfortunately, but good to know

[Theokrat]

mesons could still kill them of nicely and without any damage to the population, the industry or the environment...

[Panopticon]

Mesons don't actually work on troops at all, so that isn't an option, they are too precision apparently.

[Theokrat]

Mesons don't actually work on troops at all, so that isn't an option, they are too precision apparently.

Oh, good to know. Sorry for my misleading earlier remark then.

[Garfunkel]

If you have the time and have idle terraformers lying around, suck some of the atmosphere out so the lasers will work. Sure, you'll lose a big part of the population you're about to capture but hey, have to break few eggs and all that... 

[Thiosk]

i stopped dropping nukes.

Building divisional transport capability is now a top priority of mine.  Pro tip: you don't really need combat drop capability if orbit is pacified, and especially so if you cleansed the shipyards.  But you do want to go in with a division of hardened combat troops to prevent getting just a couple brigades from getting creamed.

[UnLimiTeD]

Nuking is always the easy way.
Aurora has a weird policy of discouraging it thanks to some heritage of a boardgame, but ultimately, it's still the best choice if beam weapons aren't available.
Until you get troop transports there, the dust and radiation may even have settled, and even taking out 10% of their troops that way certainly quickens things considerably.

[fflaguna]

After ~50 years have passed and my serious military fleets are rolling off the production lines with division troop transports and multiple wings of destroyers and cruisers, I like to add a heavily armored 36kton meson cruiser to my individual fleets. This lets me target and destroy ground facilities (including missile defense centers) with mostly impunity through the enemy's atmosphere.

And dropping a dozen divisions on the ground surface and watching them wage war for a few months is a whole lot of fun. I never bombard an enemy homeworld unless I'm really upset with them.

Keep in mind you should assign all your combat battalions to headquarters long before you ever plan to use them in battle. They won't accumulate training points unless they are assigned to a higher headquarters. I suggest going through and assigning them all now. Even though it's tedious, you'll have to do it eventually, and the sooner you do it the better.