Troops are useless

[RCCCL]

Q said:
Or make fighter weapons unable to target troops.

That would push the advantage to far in the other direction, especially since the AI tends to keep a number of fighters in cargo, which are then used in ground combat.

Someone might try creating an AntiAircraft weapon, ie: only targets fighters, with higher damage.

I don't know if it will work though, because I think in ground combat the targeting is a little off. Weaponplatforms will often have DUCs or Laser weapons that should target fighters, but only their point defense weapons fire during ground combat.

[Phoenix-D]

That's because ground combat gets a separate damage line, and space-based DUCs can't fire during ground combat.

[RCCCL]

I see, so a AA type weapon for troops should work.

[GuyOfDoom]

A point worth noting is that the Weapon's Platforms listed above were equipped with 2x Point Defense Cannons Lvl 4 and 2x Anti-Proton Beams lvl 2.

I think it should be changed such that fighters are only good for space combat or at least are incapable of planet capture without troops.

[Fyron]

You can make such a change in your local copy (preferably in a mod folder, such as copying the file into the "GameTypes\Standard SE5" folder), by editing VehicleUnitTypes.txt.

[GuyOfDoom]

Alas it happened on a PBW game with some friends.

[AstralWanderer]

It seems that the "best" answer would lie with Aaron here...

Ground troops should be a requirement to conquer a planet - a fighter-only force should be restricted to inflicting casualties and/or destroying facilities.

It would also be nice to have the option of using a fleet's main arnament in an orbital fire support role - increasing attacker firepower at the cost of greater planetary destruction (happiness, facilities, etc) and blue-on-blue casualties (which could be reduced with Advanced Military Science research).

[narf poit chez BOOM]

First shouldn't be to hard.

Second would require whole new code sections.

Third option (blue-on-blue casualties) may or may not require new code sections. Shouldn't be too hard with proper programming in place (Just modify the bombardment code (The new code sections) so it occasionally picks a friendly).

Two is the sticking point.

[Fyron]

Yeah, but how many troops would you require? Is a contingent of 1 sufficient?