Taking a planet

[wm.j.olson]

The rebels have planets with two shields protected by an LNR battery and 4-6 troops. In the original game you could use imperial commandos to take down the shields, etc. Now it does not work. I have used multiple attempts with over 60 commandos each time. They all die with no result. You can't bombard the planet, you can't invade. What's up with that?

[Russian Orthodox Revolution]

It still works. What kind of troops are they? Is there a general? Are you using decoys? Do you have any personnel, or are you using commandos only? Try using personnel instead. Depending on the troops, 5 guys might work. 1 guy doing the actual mission while 4 guys being decoys. Might need to bring in Vader.

[wm.j.olson]

I played the game extenively when it first came out. No problems. I tried all the things that I learned back in the day. No luck now, doing all of the things you note. Remind me, however, how to employ decoys. I thought that was what I was doing by sending in multiple teams, but I may have missed something.

[wm.j.olson]

Figured out the step that I was missing--how to decoy. Thanks for the hint.

[Wraith_Magus]

Yeah, it's one of those things about the really poor interface - you need to put all but one or two characters on decoy to succeed at anything, but they default to all doing the mission, and hide it in a tab you wouldn't necessarily think of hitting.

[CoyoteXLI]

Side note, I'm pretty sure you can still bombard. It might take a ludicrous amount of firepower to do anything, and if they have laser batteries it's probably not worth it, but you should still be able to bombard it. Funny story, you can actually get the death star destroyed from bombarding shielded/laser batteried planets you could just blow up entirely....

[wm.j.olson]

Ridiculous amount of firepower indeed. I tried with one planet with a fleet of 3 superstar destroyers, several imperial star destroyers, and other combat ships. No effect other than losing a ship to ground battery fire. Praetor Pyro above pointed the way and I remembered how to use decoys. Works a treat, with some effort.

[CoyoteXLI]

Yeah, as I recall it generally requires a loooooooooot of bombers to get through shields, with officers being nearly mandatory as well. Like I said, it's not really practical most of the time, but it's just kind of a fun fact to know and tell. And sometimes there's just too much detection and missions seem to be completely impossible. Not generally useful but it is what it is.

[maedhros]

decoys? I don't remember that being a thing. I need to play another game. I've also found sending too many people on a mission increases the chance of being caught. I never send more than 5 commandos on a mission and nearly always with a character. Mostly good results.

Lots of resistance nearly always means a juicy prize.

[wm.j.olson]

When you select the groups to be sent on a special mission, a screen comes up with the group. At the top are two tabs. The first shows the group you've selected. If you click on the second tab it opens a decoy screen that allows you to select some, not all, of the unit to send along as decoys. This is especially necessary if the enemy ground forces have a general in place.

[peelc]

Using decoys is a good tip. Another is to target the ground troops and get them out of the way so you can then concentrate on laser batteries and shields. Reducing the garrison reduces the chance of you being detected. Can take a while but the Empire wasn't built in a day, it was built on the corpse piles of its enemies.....

[starbucks_penguin]

On my computer, group select doesn't work. How do I get highlighting more than one unit to work?

[fleatoad]

hold ctrl or shift when selecting them to get more than 1.

[Gabo]

Regarding having 60 agents assigned - not sure if this is literal or not. Regardless, I remember reading guides saying the larger the group, the higher the chance of being detected by the enemy, therefore it is counterproductive sending too many agents.
Not sure to which extent this is true or just a guess, however.

[wm.j.olson]

You will generally need to send waves of agents, depending, if the mission is to succeed, but the larger any single group is decreases the chance for success. Multiple groups of 5-6, with decoys, all sent simultaneously seems to work, especially if the planet is defended by counter agents, generals, governors, units.