Nukes and planets

[ExChairman (OP)]

Have a pesky neighbor, lost badly when I tried to use energy weapons to nock out their ground cannons, so I tried to bombard their ground defense installations, heavy missiles lacked volume of fire and didn't get a singel missile to hit...

So I built a smaller and faster missile to bombard with 2 waves of 6000 attacked their ground installations...

Slightly disappointing results...

Some earlier 11000 megatons of nukes killed less than 3000 tons of defenses, and put radiation and dust into the atmosphere, some 3500 points of each, a few years have passed, the levels have gone down, their population is also down...
but their military is as strong as before, even larger...

So I sent in a new wave of new small missiles at their civilian population, all got throe, killing in excess of 300 millions and doing more than double in radiation and dust... Now at rad 11400 and dust at 10000...
Same yield of bombs and no extra radiation...

Still a lot of more negative effect on planet than when targeting  units rather than cities...

[nuclearslurpee]

On one hand...yep. Nuclear missiles do collateral damage, no surprise there. Frankly there is no way to clear out and take a planet "cleanly" and that is probably by design as planetary warfare should be a messy affair. Using appropriate beam weapons to clear out STOs and the like is the cleanest option but also risky unless you outtech the enemy, while mass missile waves will work but do a lot of damage in the process. Landing a lot of troops is also an option if you don't mind maybe losing some transports in the process due to STO fire.

Note that those ~3,000 tons destroyed are probably closer to 9,000-18,000 tons when you account for fortification levels especially if targeted on the STOs.

That being said, with bombardment missiles larger is usually better due to how the damage mechanics work, both because of how ground units are actually dealt damage and because after the initial detonation a missile will do half its damage again, repeating this process until reaching 1 damage. A mass wave of tiny missiles will defeat point defenses, sure, but usually is less efficient compared to ammunition expended and radiation damage caused.

[Gabethebaldandbold]

yeah planets and ground forces are surprisingly resilient nowadays

[Marski]

Planet is a very, very big place to hide in, especially if you have the resources and time to.

[ExChairman (OP)]

Planet is a very, very big place to hide in, especially if you have the resources and time to.

Yea, I got tired of having to bypass that system and their harassments of my ships and planets, so I spent the last 12 years, building an army, why do I hear "worthy of Mordor"... in my head  Oh well I landed with 2 armies, almost 8 million tons of materials, going back for the flame throwing tanks, should have done it the other way, spent the last 4 months, loosing half the tanks and infantry of the 2 first armies, but now there is 3 men, or platoons sitting somewhere on this bloody, irritated, dust filled and cooled hell hole and I cant get them to surrender...

[xenoscepter]

Planet is a very, very big place to hide in, especially if you have the resources and time to.

Yea, I got tired of having to bypass that system and their harassments of my ships and planets, so I spent the last 12 years, building an army, why do I hear "worthy of Mordor"... in my head  Oh well I landed with 2 armies, almost 8 million tons of materials, going back for the flame throwing tanks, should have done it the other way, spent the last 4 months, loosing half the tanks and infantry of the 2 first armies, but now there is 3 men, or platoons sitting somewhere on this bloody, irritated, dust filled and cooled hell hole and I cant get them to surrender...

 --- At this rate the planet will break before it's guards do...

[Andrew]

Yea, I got tired of having to bypass that system and their harassments of my ships and planets, so I spent the last 12 years, building an army, why do I hear "worthy of Mordor"... in my head  Oh well I landed with 2 armies, almost 8 million tons of materials, going back for the flame throwing tanks, should have done it the other way, spent the last 4 months, loosing half the tanks and infantry of the 2 first armies, but now there is 3 men, or platoons sitting somewhere on this bloody, irritated, dust filled and cooled hell hole and I cant get them to surrender...

I have occassionally had a bug were the last small number of enemy troops become immortal, they cannot be killed the solution is to roll back to an earlier save and refight the last stages of the battle. It usually does not repeat.
I suspect that in one part of the database they are dead and in another part not , so you cannot destory them anymore

[Sebmono]

Planet is a very, very big place to hide in, especially if you have the resources and time to.

This implies that the objective in a planetary invasion is to eliminate each enemy individual and control every square meter of land/water, when in reality an invasion would only need to occupy all major population centers, logistic points, sources or industry and material, etc. And all those should be easier to spot and target. I'd love to see this taken into account with the ground combat abstraction somehow.

[Vandermeer]

--- At this rate the planet will break before it's guards do...

The story of Cadia summed up.

[ExChairman (OP)]

--- At this rate the planet will break before it's guards do...

The story of Cadia summed up.

Well they never did give up...

Had to use my dreadnaughts Forcebeams to kill the last troops...

Then I found out why they didn't surrender, there were no one alive on the planet, except for the small supply base that we built at the northpole.

Was a bit to eager to make them surrender with nukes, those that didn't die in the fireballs seems to have a low tolerance to radiation... 

[Scandinavian]

Planet is a very, very big place to hide in, especially if you have the resources and time to.

This implies that the objective in a planetary invasion is to eliminate each enemy individual and control every square meter of land/water, when in reality an invasion would only need to occupy all major population centers, logistic points, sources or industry and material, etc. And all those should be easier to spot and target. I'd love to see this taken into account with the ground combat abstraction somehow.

It's already in there. It's the reason why orbital bombardment gets much more effective when you have a ground element directing it. Artillery used in a fire support capacity is the king of battle, and allows even extremely mediocre infantry to blast their way through much fiercer opposition. But undirected artillery fire is really just a way to punctuate press releases with explosions. It doesn't really degrade or attrition enemy forces very much. And air and cruise missile strikes - and by extension orbital strikes - are just artillery with extra steps.

[TallTroll]

>> It's already in there. It's the reason why orbital bombardment gets much more effective when you have a ground element directing it

Sounds like a Special Forces infantry type might be useful, leg inf or LVs only, has FO capabilities, and is hard to detect and fire upon if given a special "spot for arty/orbital bombardment" order (any hits scored on them are subject to a "dodge" roll allowing them to avoid all damage, but they don't fire their own weapons in return, just provide the spotting)

[Vivalas]

More variety in ground combat with special roles would be very neat, especially for roleplay. I really liked the vertical / orbital envelopment idea that was floating around previously. I mean sure I can just pretend that my guys are riding around on dropships but I really want my space marine 1st Cav that coats the xeno planet in napalm while Wagner plays

[IanD]

--- At this rate the planet will break before it's guards do...

The story of Cadia summed up.

Well they never did give up...

Had to use my dreadnaughts Forcebeams to kill the last troops...

Then I found out why they didn't surrender, there were no one alive on the planet, except for the small supply base that we built at the northpole.

Was a bit to eager to make them surrender with nukes, those that didn't die in the fireballs seems to have a low tolerance to radiation... 

When only 1 soldier or very small number remain target enemy ground forces with one missile (warhead ~10 or so). The single soldier will be destroyed and the planet will surrender. So this tactic is best used after a ground invasion.