How to get a race to bomb a planet

[dmraneo]

In my current game, the Skylaxians are at war with the Burlusts. The Skylaxians have wiped out the Burlust fleets, and currently have their fleet parked on top of the Burlusts. Unfortunately, they then proceed to slowly trickle in ground troops, which promptly get slaughtered by the Burlusts.
This has been going on for about 8 in game years, with the Burlusts mostly launching armadas 1 at a time, which get immediately killed by the Skylaxians fleet in orbit, and the Skylaxians producing fleets to replace the losses mostly caused by the Ion Cannons.

Is there some way I can convince the Skylaxians to start bombing the planet, instead of trying to invade it?

[NickAragua]

I seem to remember reading about the Skylaxians being "honorable" so they won't start bombing. Could be wrong though, the game is in quite a "fluid" state.

You can help them out, however, by sabotaging Burlust buildings and sneaking in during the narrow window where you can 'attack local armadas on your own' or 'help attacking armadas' and launching your orbital bomber (and blowing up any orbital facilities to tank their various RCIs).

[topper]

got ninja'ed by NickAragua 

See quote from Keith:

the main problem I found in the save you posted (or one of them, I was only pointed at the one by Chris) was that the besieging force was purely (or very nearly so) Skylaxians and Andors.  Both of those races have the IsHonorable flag, which prevents them from doing any kind of orbital bombardment (the main way planets got whittled down, before the ground-invasion improvement I just mentioned).  Andors, further, won't even invade.  They just stay up there and shoot any defense fleet that the target builds.

There is a little about them on the wiki page too.

I have the same advice. Get in there and sabotage buildings that are helping the defense.

[runetrantor]

How does the orbital bomber even work? I have never seen it do anything but stay there as a sitting duck.

I prefer the nukes, I generally arm two in my offensive abilities for planet damaging.

[Draco18s]

How does the orbital bomber even work? I have never seen it do anything but stay there as a sitting duck.

I prefer the nukes, I generally arm two in my offensive abilities for planet damaging.

Every 4 turns (10 seconds?) it fires a fireball like sprite which disappears down onto the planet.  At most, last I checked, it kills 1 million people and destroys a building.

And you only get 3 of them.

And they have basically no hp.

And if there are zero hostile ships left the encounter ends (unless you're on a steal-science type mission).  Have fun hitting Q.

[dmraneo]

So not bombing is intentional. But won't this always cause a stalemate at best against the Burlusts/Thoraxians? Or is this supposed to be an intentional statement, about how it is impossible to win a war honourably?

I know I can bomb a planet myself, and it's even relatively easy while offering to kill spy probes. It's just really, really boring. I mean, you just sit there mashing Q. I was hoping there was some more interesting way.

[Histidine]

I've seen the Skylaxians nuke a planet from orbit more than once, so I'm not sure what rules govern their behaviour or when it changed if it did.

[PokerChen]

Blind guess: perhaps there's an additional attitude gate where they have to truly hate (>-100) their victims for them to start bombing?