Fleet against planet fight

[felsen2000]

Hello all,

nice. After so many years a game of my youth find its way to steam. ;-)

I send a big fleet against a big planet with enemy fleet.
Plant; 15 empl
Enemy fleet; 3 to 4 lv4 ships

My fleet 8 to 10 lv 4 ships

I destroy the enemy fleet. No prob. Then my fleet attaks the planet. But I can not destroy the planet defence. I attak the planet for 10 oe 20 rounds.... no effekt. And the planet attaks my fleet and destroys one by one my ships. That´s crazy, what is my fault? Do I have the wrong wapons to attak the planet?
For example: no impact of my energy wapons -> bettter attak with nuklear bombs.... ?
What is the best way to attak big planets?

[Walker]

you need bombs a bit atombombs is enought if the planet have a defence field

[mpnorman10]

You need bombs, as Walker points out, to destroy the people and general buildings. To destroy the defenses you need strong enough weapons.

By level 4 ships do you mean Battleships? Ground defenses can be very, very tough. You should not expect otherwise. If you do not have sufficient point defense and the enemy has, for example, a Missile Base, any leftover missiles from killing one ship will hunt for a new target. Also, ground defenses are destroyed in the reverse order added, so if a Missile Base was added first it will be the last ground defense taken out.

As far as weapons, Heavy Plasma Cannons will certainly do the trick. Trying to take out ground defenses with only Graviton Beams might be too slow if there are ground defenses. Each round there are lot more missiles that the example Missile Base throws up there. The base that throws up fighters only sends more than the initial volley after a long while, like 10 rounds, but the ones sent up do a lot of damage and unless they are specifically destroyed, like with point defense they keep on destroying. Ground Beams are immediate and fire the highest weapon researched automatically.

Further even a simple Radiation Shield can greatly slow down weapons in orbit from destroying ground installations. Advanced forms of planetary shield are stronger, of course, but even a simple Radiation Shield is powerful for defending ground weapons.

[Albinator]

It usually happens when you have mass-drivers on your ships, and the ennemy have a radiation shield indeed. Damages made to the planet should show up when attacking (you should see a floating "100" if you do 100 damages to the planet). If you don't see any digit, radiation shields absorbs all damages.
Also, radiation shield does not work like ship shields: you cannot destroy it. It "only" reduce your weapons damages by 3. Each mass driver does 3 damages, so it negates their damage. Graviton beams is strong enough to go through radiation shield (but is negated by Flux Shield I think).
So having bombs makes you (almost) sure to go through the shield and be able to destroy their defenses.

[Sloan]

Originally posted by felsen2000:

I send a big fleet against a big planet with enemy fleet.
Plant; 15 empl
Enemy fleet; 3 to 4 lv4 ships
My fleet 8 to 10 lv 4 ships

By building ships manually, you will get the best result.
equip ships: mass-drivers, gausse cannon, disruptor. pulson torpedo. Antaran weapons will give good damage. Battles will need to be completed in manual mode.

[cotss2012]

Can anyone translate OP into English? It SOUNDS like their fleet is getting shredded by Missile Bases and Ground Batteries at the ship combat screen and they can't do crap against the planet because it has a radiation shield, but it's hard to tell.

But anyway, yes, this is what bombs are for. Missiles are also effective against planets.

[Sinophile]

Ehhh, when he says no impact of energy weapons, but better attack with nuclear bombs, I think of radiation shields. It seems everyone else came to a similar conclusion based on the comments.

Generally speaking, if the AI players have planet shields, I can assume that they also have ground batteries, missile bases, and fighter garrisons. OP didn't state what was taking out his ships.

[cotss2012]

I believe it's possible for beam weapons to be useless against a planet even without planetary radiation shields being involved because planets still have normal (Class 1/3/5/7/10) shields, but it's been a while since I've checked.

[felsen2000]

Very interesting - thanks to all !

[wallofsleep_vol4]

If you ever get stuck in a battle, go ahead and turn "auto" on. HV beams seem to pierce through the shield at close range. Also battles resolve after several dozen rounds, so surviving is enough for the draw.

[Simpson3k]

cpmbine your energy weapons with stuff like high energy focus and structure analyzer to further increase the damage.

[cap-boulanger]

Most (not all) energy weapons are useless against most planets because they can't cut through the planetary shields.

The Stellar Converter is one of the exceptions.

[Albinator]

Originally posted by cap-boulanger:

Most (not all) energy weapons are useless against most planets because they can't cut through the planetary shields.

The Stellar Converter is one of the exceptions.

Well, don't really agree, only mass driver ( and laser canons and fusion beam obviously ) is useless versus planetary shields. Neutron is ok versus radiation shield. But indeed, you have to put better beams as tech advances, graviton is useless versus barrier shield IIRC, and plasma has to be in front of the planet in order to do very few damage to barrier ( no damage digit shown, but health bar actually slowly decreases ). Death ray and mauler do great damages to barrier shield though. But a good rule of thumb is to retreat once you see your weapons are useless, build some ships with massive bombs, and attack again :)

[cotss2012]

It all depends on what technologies your opponents have. Beam weapons are rarely truly "useless" against planets unless you're fighting the Psilons.

[KwaZulu-Natal]

I encountered the same problem and first thought it is a bug. Because the same battle ships equipped with Neutron blaster (Hv) wound some times easly kill Missle bases on planets but sometimes do 0 damage no matter how often they shoot at the planet.
But it is no Bug.

As RanDoM wrote the key to understand what is happening is the damage reduction by the buildings Planetary Barrier Shield, Planetary Radiation Shield and Planetary Flux Shield.

They do their damage reduction on every single weapon so if you shoot with a ship with 20 Neutron Blasters the damage reduction is applied 20 times and if a single instance of weapon you shoot with does less damage than the damage reduction of the planetary shield you do 0 damage no matter how many of those weapons you have.

This can happen with all weapon types even bombs. E.g. the 20 damage reduction of the Planetary Barrier Shield will completely block the damage from nuclear bombs (3 - 12 damage) no matter how many your ship has.

[Jack Burton]

I would rather use a few heavy weapons that take up space like plasma or disruptor then use multiple weaker weapons. Disruptor and gauss Cannon are nice cuz you can hang back without getting closer. Gives time to shoot down enemy missiles and fighters