Betrayal mode - How to capture planets? - Please help

[doctrzombie]

I have tried very hard before resorting to this...

I have looked in every Wiki, Searched every term I can think of to search in the forum, and checked every tab, icon, and widget in the game.

How do I create a unit which will drop robot soldiers on a planet to capture it for the Hydral in Betrayal mode?

In short: How do I capture planets?

[Zebeast46]

Well, to create a fleet you go to the fleet management tab which should be in the bottom left corner. After you are in the fleet management tab it should be pretty self explanatory how to create a fleet (there should be a buttom that says something along the lines of "create fleet". To attack with your fleet you go back to that same tab and there should be a button that lets you choose where to send your fleet. However I recommend upgrading your fleet and then making more before you decide to go conquer the galaxy. Also note that you dont have to specifically drop your troops on the planet, most of the time I just bomb the whole planets population to death which lets me automatically occupy the world.

[steelwing]

Armada Management is your friend.  In that screen, you can build new armadas, upgrade existing ones, and send those armadas to whatever planet you wish to attack.
Pay close attention to the availability of Armada Cap techs.  Get those as fast as you can, as they become available.  Each one raises your maximum number of armadas by 1.  When you start out with only 3, you rapidly realize 3 armadas won't take you very far.  Also, make sure you're getting all the ship upgrade techs you can, as those improve the combat power of all your armadas.

[Tolc]

Or you just capture outposts with free armadas included  I never bothered researching armada caps again afterwards (cap was at 3 I think and I had 15 something armadas, so yeah... I should probably mantis that at some point.

[Allafif]

Do the invasion beacon troops actually do anything? I just finished a game on Normal/Normal and I saw them leaving my planets, but they had a negligible effect on enemy population and ground power, even with an absurd tech advantage.

If they're supposed to show up as a ground force, they never did for me. The personal orbital bombardment hostile action was the only way I was ever able to take a planet, and even then I usually had to tank their RCI to maximize their death rates.


The highlight was Andors with the Ark. I didn't realize what that meant until I tried attacking them with two planets gone, which meant they were basically unconquerable - +171.5M population per month, and that's after putting their Medical and Public Order below -100 and their compatibility at 0.1.

My racial ground power was over 13 times theirs and I still couldn't get any losses to stick until a small Thoraxian force showed up with about 2b ground power against the Andors' 39b. That was the point where I was actually able to use "tactical support for your ground invasion" and actually do some damage. The Thoraxians got the planet, but it was very easy to bomb them into oblivion afterward.


e: Save is here, just before sending wave after wave of my ineffectual killbots into their civilians.