If the destination is one of your planets then the transport does not disappear!!!

Each transport that can be filled with troops after the invasion will survive! For example, if you invade a planet using two transports, each holding 3 billion troops (for a total of 6 billion) and 3.5 billion survive then you lose one transport and the other will survive.

you think

Thats a good tacktic. Since logistics limit the number of transports that can be used in an invasion... small transports could well increase your chances of taking a planet (If you have an extreme amount of miniturisation).

I would really love to know for certain if fleets make a difference with invading?

You would think that the extra firepower of increased numbers would be an advantage? well it certainly is in space combat!

Ah ok so i can go off and invade people, and there is no reason for me to try to get better logistics first.... hehehe almost a cheat bug??

Umm you would lose both. Even if you win the invasion you will lose the ship. The difference is the amount of population you leave on the planet. More troops = more pop remaining = quicker estabilishment of the tax base.

I always invade with more than one troop transport, and I DO NOT loose all the transports when I win. If the transports hold 1000 legions, I keep one transport for each 1000 legions left over after the battle....Makes assured winning easy, without destroying the planet.

I had never thought about putting a troops module on anything but a cargo hull...I will have to try it.

Thanks. Its such a small point, but I like to know how these games work in and out. Discovering all the tiny intricacies is a huge part of the fun for me.

Read the developer log on ship speed and AI. The AI wasn't designed to be able to react to fast ships, so using speeds faster than say, 20, and it's just an exploit that unbalances the game.

I've been making small modifications to the ship stat files. I think my next one will be to slow the max speeds down a bit by making the engine components and sizemods slightly bigger so they take up more space.

I've been wondering about why I can invade a planet with 12B pop using a fleet of precursor rangers modded with advanced troop modules (making 7k troops right?) and after the battle it says I have 3k survivors but when I check my fleet I've lost 1 ranger transport and have 6K troops still loaded on my other 6???? Is this a bug?

You must be at a really high miniaturization tech. You have to be at Enhanced Miniaturization just to fit an Advanced Troop mod on a Tiny hull at all, let alone a weapon on top of it.

I like putting Ion Engines on transports and colony ships both, just because population on transports doesn't make you any money. But if I've got planets running into food or morale limits, the priority is to make cheaper transports, to bleed some off the planet and quickly. Those transports just kind of work their way toward the front lines, ferrying population along the way.

But if I'm Super Breeder, bleh, whatever--who cares if a couple billion are on a transport. You'll grow that back in what--4 turns?

On a different note, I've discovered what I feel is a very significant finding relating to troop transports. Any population kept in transports or colony ships adds directly to your influence as extra population. It doesn't affect nearby planets like an influence starbase does, but it is used in influence calculations and for UP proposals. If you control influence in the UP anyway it wouldn't matter. However, in my current game I'm number 2 (the Iconians are #1 in influence because I only have 28 worlds and they have 61). However, I have nearly closed the gap - with of all things transports. The problem was how to keep maintenance from eating me alive. The solution was cargo hulls modified for planetary garrison and attack. Why, you ask? In my game I was using precursor rangers modified with advanced troop modules, but it was expensive to maintain 54 of them at 22bc each plus maintain tiny hull garrison ships for each planet. Bear in mind that my maintenance budget was up to 30% and rapidly becoming unsustainable. The Iconians had a huge numbers advantage which I have struggled with until I finally figured out a useful ship mod solution. I created planetary garrison ships with a cargo hull, regular troop module, 6 blackhole massdrivers a survey sensor, and 3 hyper-mark3 engines for 15bc maintenance per week. The regular troop module was a cheap way to accommodate population transport, since an advanced actually adds ~2bc each. The engines were added because DL combat has a first strike bug. I built one on each planet, and then created a second design for invasion and influence, where I replaced the regular troop module with 4 advanced troop modules. This design allows me to fleet 11 transports at a logistics of 56 - which I garrison at my military starbases - I have 1 at each resource I own. That means a maximum of 40B population per fleet for UP proposals, and a significantly reduced maintenance burden since each assult transport uses 21bc maintenance. Now I can finally stop the Iconians from ramming their UP proposals down my throat ...   

I checked my results on invasions with my garrison ships (500 troop module with a fleet of 6) and discovered I had no such luck as before. In fact I lost 2 troop transports after winning the battle and the surviving population matched what I had in my ships and the planet. I suspect either I was extremely lucky or there is something different about using modified precursor rangers. Either way I couldn't duplicate my previous results.