The planetary damage is considered not to have happened in case the assault is lost. It was made this way to prevent cheesy 1 man invasions to damage planets.

So, the answer to my question is no. That is cool, and I guess I can understand why. Thank you. However, you must forgive me for delving deeper into this scenerio.

I will start with in game discriptions of the planetary assults themselves.

Mass Drivers " While the attack will be almost unstoppable, destruction on a planet - wide level is inevitable. " ( inevitable ) wouldn't you do this prior to landing any of your own troops?
Core Detonation " Before the attack begins we'll send a crew down to the surface of the targeted planet." ( Pre - invasion )
Tidal Disrupters " By scattering gravity-altering satellites into orbit around inhabited planets, we'll be able to control the oceans and bury our enemy in a watery grave. " Again, before you sent your troops in?
Gas Warfare " Preceding attacks, viral clouds will be released upon the most poplous areas of the target world " ( Pre - invasion )
Information Warfare " Communication vessels orbiting inhabited planets will warn citizens of our invasion plans." ( Pre - invasion )

Most of these are Pre - Invasion plans.

I am not so sure I would call this cheesy. My reasons would be the following.
You have to build the troop ship, send it to the targeted planet without it being intercepted, destroy anything which may be in orbit around said planet, which would take in some cases a rather large fighting force, but also you would have to defend against the same happening to you. Think about it, 1 man, 1 F-22 Raptor, 1 nuclear tipped missile..... scratch one whole city. All is fair in Love and War.

I guess this would add an entirely new dimension to the game. I do understand why the developers decided against it.

Thanks guys.

mebey the effects and damages caused by the invasion options could be scaled to the amount of men on you trooper transport, to cause full damage at full capacity and miniscule damage with 1 man

scorched earth warfare is a valid and realistic tactic IMO

Quixen, the point simply is that Stardock doesn't want to include planet destruction techniques in the game. (Mainly because of balancing reasons and the AI having difficulties to cope with it.)
You can dislike this decision, and the non-existing "inevitable" damage isn't logical, yes, but it stands as it is.

usually use 1000 soldiers and the most damaging invasion "tactic" I have available. My invasion force gets toasted but usually takes at least half the enemies with them. Now my main force can easily take the planet without too many casualties and without damaging the planet. So you saved a lot of your soldiers and probably some of your transports for the small investment of one small and thus cheap transport.

How could this be a bug if it's a tactic that's been used for thousands of years? You send a small strike force to attack with surprise, wipe out a larger number than you sent yourself, and then send in your main force, to preserve it. This is a strategy as old as war itself

I just wish Stardock would add an option for "Single-Click Invasions" along with the starship battles options for those who don't want to repeat every step in the process for each planet.

So, rather than having to click "Invade" and wait for the next window, then click "Skip" and wait for the next window, then click "Done" and wait for the next window, you just succeed or fail based on a random advantage % (about what you get, anyway) and go straight to the planet window. Well, unless you fail... I'm really not sure what happens then.

I don't have a problem with the invasion process per se, but with the miniscule amount of control you actually get after you choose your invasion type, it gets really old after the twentieth time or so, and I would rather use the time to get in a couple of extra turns.

Most of the warfare ever recorded dealt with subjugating con[q]uered peoples and converting them to your side.

That was true maybe up until WWII. Have you watched the news lately? Warfare has evolved from that model, especially warfare between different cultural groups, and that evolution is not finished. Pick any two countries in the world right now. Consider how likely it is that the larger one could invade the smaller one and totally win over the hearts and minds of the population.

That said, I also hate having to completely depopulate a planet to take it. I would rather have evil factions take slaves while good factions take some kind of production hit for having a captive indigenous populace.

IMO, the neutral factions are already taking a big hit every time they gain a planet (by culture flipping or invasion) from another civ. When you play as neutral and take (for example) a Class 12 world, you only get about nine useful tiles. It gets worse as planets get bigger. I'm sure this is unintended, and I've seen others post about it too, but no response so far.

I always thought the numbers were off also.

I mean, 1 BILLION soldiers fighting against the ENTIRE population of a plant, men, women, and children? All effectives? Granted population is the population actually paying taxes, and maybe not the whole pop.

I'd do it like this: some percentage of the population are soldiers. Percentage can vary based on tech, race, improvements, etc. So maybe in 10 billion 10% or 1 billion count as soldiers.

Of course the advantage factor would have to swing back towards defense, which is real anyway, as despite "air superiority" I'd wager the defense has the advantage.

The only problem is planets taken over would have alot more population than under the current system, maybe to balance it there can be a happiness penalty for awhile.

only losing one man in the effort

Remember you're also losing a transport that cost billions of credits to build. And no matter how good your economy is, you're also losing the real time that it took you to select the option to build that transport, launch it, click the destination planet, wait for it to get there, and click through three invasion screens to kill a few hundred aliens. Not saying it's bad, just that there are a lot of resources expended for the effect.

As far as those rocks not hitting the planet, but the invader still getting his bonus; the way I see it, a planet has a certain amount of both ground and orbital defense that the game rationalizes into one defense factor. A big part of that defense is taken up fending off your bombardment, leaving the assaulting troops a bigger attack bonus.

When the attacker loses, that means he didn't use enough troops to swamp the orbital defenses. Those stayed intact and were used against boulders instead of the attacking troops' drop pods. The ground defenses were still strong enough to keep the attacking soldiers away from the orbital defense installations and the entire attack was foiled for lack of troops.

It's not a direct correlation, but if you can find a copy of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (the book, not the braindead Hollywood version), read the chapter about Operation Bughouse. It talks about a lot of things that can go wrong in a planetary assault; kind of like D-Day with Vietnam-era rules of engagement, or if we hadn't had Italy to practice on first.

To take full advantage of the mass drivers invasion strategy you should win the invasion, then bring in an empty (or as good as empty) troop transport, and pick up your remaining troops on the planet. Then, destroy the colony.

Assuming that the planet is then re-colonised by your enemy, repeat this strategy so that they are saddled with a bunch of Class 1 planets that can't really do anything except suck money.

I am also not happy with how invasions currently work. I wish that invasion tactics were applied regardless of winning or losing, but i respect the developer's decision.

If it were to be inplemented, however, this is how I think it should work:

Right now, invasion tactics involve paying a small ammount of money to increase you chances or winning a ground war and risking a penalty to your prize. If invasion tactic were to instead be you paying money to penalize the planet, whether or not your troops ahve been successful, it would cost a lot more money. In modern wars, both ground troops and cruise missiles are used. People keeps saying "omg it would be cheap to attakc with one guy and a nuke!" Well, in real life, it wouldn't be cheap at all. Invading with 10,000 footsoldiers would be cheaper than a hundreds of thousands of credits worth of nuclear weapons/mass drivers/chemical agents dumped on a planet. But that said, this isn't what the developer wants and I respect that.

Here is the way I think it should work:

A certain percentage of each planet's population comprises it's military force. Only these troops can defend the planet, but they don't pay taxes. You must balance the military population with the civilian population. You would be able to transport both types of people obviously, but only soldiers would be able to fight would be able to fight.

You could take this idea a few steps further if you wanted. Planets with a mostly civilian population would get certain bonuses, like production, morale, social, while planets with a mostly military population get a bonuses to research and influence. These could also effect random events and dangers, such as civilian planets becoming pacifists and coups being staged on military planets.

I know it would be a lot of work to add another type of people, but I think the possibilities are awesome.

: That was true maybe up until WWII. Have you watched the news lately? Warfare has evolved from that model, especially warfare between different cultural groups, and that evolution is not finished. Pick any two countries in the world right now. Consider how likely it is that the larger one could invade the smaller one and totally win over the hearts and minds of the population.

I disagree. Converting populations has become even more important in these "enlightended" times. Take Israel or Iraq as current situations. Should Israel wish, they could wipe Syria or Iran off the map. They do not do so for many reasons. The same holds true for Iraq. If the USA wished to extend its might, we would not have to worry about Iraq for the half life of Uranium. If you wish an example further back in time take the American Indian or the Germanic Tribes in Roman Times.

Unfortunately, our "sensabilities" do not allow us to do what is necessary to convert populations. Japan and West Germany are prime examples in post-modern time of successful conversion.

The only large scale masscares that go on in these times are CIVIL WARS and the analogy breaks down.

This is the 26th century soldiering we're talking here. Doesn't anyone think they can render asteriods harmless by hitting them with fusion bombs or giant laser cannons as they hit the atmosphere? That's why soldiers are needed on the ground to disrupt those countermeasures so the asteriods can get through.

If people could destroy entire asteroids before they did any damage, how could troop transports possibly have a chance or landing troops?

I think it would be a good idea to have the different invasion tactics made into ship systems? So if you want to use Mass Drivers while invading, you'd need the Planetary Mass Driver ship system on the dropship, and that sort of thing. Makes things more planned.

Yes. That is a very, very, very good idea. Also, Having planetary invasion be under the galactic warfare tech tree as it is, but then have a lot of specialized invasion tactics under different tech. Mass drivers should be under Mass Drivers, Tidal Disruption should be under Planetary Improvement. Gas warfare should be under Xeno Biology or something. Those are just examples. In order to not rework the entire tech tree, different invasion tactics should be made.