GRR planetary invasion help please!!!! (noob)

bye the way could it be they have ships orbiting the planet?

I just reported that problem on the official bug thread.

In my case, they did have ships orbiting the planet, but they were all unarmed scouts.

You're kidding, do I really have to clean out all of the scouts before invading?

You're kidding, do I really have to clean out all of the scouts before invading?

Yes! You cannot invade a planet that has ANY ships in orbit.

Absolutely. Any ships in orbit about a planet, even unarmed ships need to be killed before an invasion can take place.

That is how the devs designed the game, so it is not a bug.

In theory I guess unarmed ships could ram transports and take them down, or fly in front of them in such a way that they have to abort their descent. I don't see a problem with it, as you should have escorts for your transports nearby anyway, and you can always use the same defence on your own planets in an emergency!

My spyships once saw a Dreng scout scoot to one of thier planets just in time to block a Terran transport fleet. The stunned Terran fleet just sat by the planet for a few turns until a Dreng fighter came by and blasted them !!! Some pretty nifty AI.

This makes me feel better every time a Space Shuttle gets launched in real life, knowing that there's another layer of defense (other than glasses of stale water and baseball bats) against extraterrestrial invasion, and me being forced along with the masses by alien overlords to build a giant gun to shoot at a planet I've never even heard of. Not that I spend a LOT of time worrying about this stuff, but hey, you never know what the future might bring.

Ok, then, now I have to figure out why some of my colony ships won't colonize....

Maybe that explains why a lot of AI's just park a half-dozen scouts in orbit over their colonies early in the game: to keep unescorted transports from snapping up planets before they've researched enough for real combat ships with which to legitimately defend their planets.

Yep. That's also why I do it.

Yep. That's also why I do it.

That tactic will be less useful though if you play on higher difficulties--the AI does sometimes arm the transports themselves...

Standard practice for me is to put at least 1 rubbish ship in orbit of every colony ASAP to discourage opportunistic invasions. Then I build a defence fleet to go out to the border and actually stand some chance of stopping an invasion force from reaching the colonies in the first place. Should I be able to spare ships later on I bulk up the planets, otherwise I focus on stopping the enemy from entering my space.

This is my version of the "Defender" : Tiny hull,no engine,sensors,life support - just one gun. The AI will put one on each planet to start, so I put 3 to show them who's boss !!!

This makes me feel better every time a Space Shuttle gets launched in real life, knowing that there's another layer of defense (other than glasses of stale water and baseball bats) against extraterrestrial invasion, and me being forced along with the masses by alien overlords to build a giant gun to shoot at a planet I've never even heard of. Not that I spend a LOT of time worrying about this stuff, but hey, you never know what the future might bring.

You need to get out more. Call a 1-900 number if you have to. Seriously.