Conquoring a Planet

[AerionIstari]

I currently have several fleets in a system. I own all but one of the planets in that system and the owner of that one planet is at war with me. How do I tell my fleets to attack and invade that planet? I get the Invade order for my fleet of transports but since the planet is Defended it won't invade. There is no corresponding Attack order for my fleet of warships. I've tried Orbiting the enemy planet but that doesn't trigger combat. Can someone please suggest a way to trigger an attack?

[Zaimat]

You can manually Engage a sector on the galaxy map if you have attack ships there. Click on the sector where you system is on the map and the Engage button should appear (it's not an order).

[AerionIstari]

That worked! Thank you, Zaimat! I had noticed the word, "Engage" above the sector but I never realized it was a button. An "Attack" order in the Order's menu would be more intuitive and would allow you to choose which planet to attack. In the case of these sectors, there were friendlies in there two that I wished NOT to attack.

[AerionIstari]

The other thing that bugs me is there isn't an order in tactical combat to end the attack (other than retreat). When I engaged Halven I quickly destroyed the starbase. There were no other defenses I could see yet combat did not end. Hoping Auto would end the engagement, I turned it on and my ships started off in a random direction. I was afraid they would attack my allies so I retreated to prevent that.

[Zaimat]

That worked! Thank you, Zaimat! I had noticed the word, "Engage" above the sector but I never realized it was a button. An "Attack" order in the Order's menu would be more intuitive and would allow you to choose which planet to attack. In the case of these sectors, there were friendlies in there two that I wished NOT to attack.

The reason it's not an order is that you "Engage" combat with all your forces in the system. Putting in on the order list would indicate specific to that single task force.

Engaging won't result into combat with friendlies unless you specifically select them on the combat prompt and also manually select to fire on them. The Auto AI won't attack neutrals or friendlies.