How invading works?

[Smiling_Spectre]

I know two types of invade:

In first case I am engaging sector and letting battle ships do their work. After such battle I am receiving "Do you want to invade" dialog.

In second case I directly ordering my ship to invade colony (it need confirmation, as for me, but I told it already .

But both are not without it's problems. First one collects all ships in sector, making impossible to invade two planets in the one turn. Second works - but only if no planets are defended.

So question is: is it possible to directly order my troop ship to invade right from the tactical battle? If it is not, I will have two suggestions...

[Bansheedragon]

To invade a planet you first need to destroy any defenses on or around the planet.
Missile batteries, space stations, Ships, etc, if any or all of those are present the planet is considered defended and you cannot invade until they have been removed.

[Smiling_Spectre]

To invade a planet you first need to destroy any defenses on or around the planet.

Thank you, but I know that bit.

Question was different: can I start invasion from the tactical screen at all? Not trigger it (it's easy: put ships in battle and press "fast forward" after defense destroyed), but really make it? See, difference is - if I _can_ invade planets from tactic view, I can also attack several planets at once, sparing me some turns. If I _can't_, fast forward is for that - but then I lose any other opportunities except one targeted planet.

[Bansheedragon]

When on the galaxy map, there is an option in the ship/fleet menu for invading planets, but if I remember right, it will not allow you to invade until you removed the defenses.

You could try using it and see if it works the way you want it to, but I cant say for sure

[Smiling_Spectre]

When on the galaxy map, there is an option in the ship/fleet menu for invading planets, but if I remember right, it will not allow you to invade until you removed the defenses.

You could try using it and see if it works the way you want it to, but I cant say for sure

Keyword is "galaxy map". Yes, I can invade from there, but this method have another catch - that you just mentioned. I need to destroy defense beforehand, and it _takes time_.

Ok, then I'll take it as "there is no dedicated button for the invading in the tactical view that I missed". Thank you.

[IISunaII]

I have another question for "how invade works" i would like to know how to calculate the relation Strenght/Number of troops, as i invaded a planet that had 9 troops with 667 str each, with 20K troops with 69 str... and i still lost, and not even one of the enemy troops died
So, how does it work? ._ .

[Zaimat]

I have another question for "how invade works" i would like to know how to calculate the relation Strenght/Number of troops, as i invaded a planet that had 9 troops with 667 str each, with 20K troops with 69 str... and i still lost, and not even one of the enemy troops died
So, how does it work? ._ .

Strength x Troop numbers is what matters for winning (the actual formula is a bit more complex but that's a fair approximation). With the current live version I did a test and it works as expected, I won easily with 20000/69 vs 9/667.

There was a bug in an older version of the game where if an army had less than 10 units it wasn't processing correctly but this was fixed. Are you playing an older version of Horizon?

[IISunaII]

Ah, yes, i haven't actualized it, is that also why when bombarding a colony and it gets 10- soldiers, they get kind of... inmortal? XD
I just have to actualize then? .u.

[Zaimat]

Yes. The formula is in part logarithmic and at below 10 it was making them impossible to kill.

[null]

To invade a planet you first need to destroy any defenses on or around the planet.
Missile batteries, space stations, Ships, etc, if any or all of those are present the planet is considered defended and you cannot invade until they have been removed.

Sadly not true. I ran into a situation where a defended colony world was conquered by transports alone:

I had a little police ship in system for defense. Not enough to blunt a serious attack but enough to stop opportunistic raiders (or so I thought). The nearby Kor`Tahz being their usual a-----e selves decided to attack me. Their brilliant plan: send some unescorted transports. Well, easy peazy. My little police ship captain squares his manly jaw, gives a little speech about the power of justice, fires his lasers, and forces the transports to retreat. Victory! Right?

Nope. After the space combat concludes I see the planetary invasion screen. My baby colony is being invaded by the transports that JUST RETREATED! Whah? I reloaded a few times out of curiosity to examine the phenomenon. Turns out it was repeatable. Heck, I got it to happen twice in a row once (the brave bastards on the planet actually managed to beat off the first invasion once). Got the same results with the police ship orbiting and patrolling. Poor little guy just couldn't shoot down all the transports in the two turns it took them to retreat and the planet fell in the invasion phase.

The thing that kills me is that I'm not sure that anything was going wrong. I mean, is that what's supposed to happen? It isn't inconceivable that invasion ships could do an end run around a single defender and pull off some kind of lightning aerial invasion. Sort of the story of the game for me. I routinely ran into situations where I just didn't get enough information from the UI to know why something was happening.

[Zaimat]

It looks like you didn't meet the criteria of defended so they were able to ignore your sole scout and land troops.

A planet is considered defended if it has any one of the following:

- Starbase
- Missile defense
- Beam defense
- 3 small sized ships or more
- 1 small, 1 medium ships or more
- 1 large ship or more



In those cases it will be marked defended on the galaxy planet panel. where you see the system planets. I'm thinking may be it would be best to change this behaviour so even one ship is enough to defend. It may make more sense now with command points and less ships overall in games. Especially if as a player you feel that is more intuitive/straightforward to understand.

[null]

ooooooooh. That makes more sense. It's the kind of thing that seems really obvious once you know it (the freaking map SAYS defended silly).

As for which is the most intuitive I think you could go almost any way with it so long as there was more feedback. Even a simple little text message that says "The invaders slip past your meager defenses. (You need at least 3 requisition points worth of ships in system or ground defenses to prevent landings.)". It's actually in interesting question though so I'm going to make a post over in suggestions to see what other people think.
(Here: http://forum.l3o.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1361)

P.S. Thank for continuing to support the game! I'm sure the temptation to just say "Pphht. We got their money. Why do we need to keep dealing with these dorks?" must be enormous.

P.P.S. It wasn't a scout ship. It was a POLICE SHIP. While we all respect the Exploration Corps the Space Police are different. The Space Police are the shield that protects the innocent. The hearts of all Space Police beat in unison against the evils of this galaxy! The fighting spirit of the Space Police will never be extinguished!

FOR GREAT JUSTICE - SPACE POLICE ATTACK!!!