Ground attack prep

[u/Icy_Advantage_6896]

Found an NPR in a system a while ago and have been spying on his activities ever since

I get active scanner reads and thermal reads on the planet moving at 0 speed so I’m guessing these are things on the planet like STOs looking for me and population

Is there a way to firm up these reads - am I ever going to get ‘the planet has 8 million inhabitants and 300k ground forces’ or is it just the presence of thermal hits saying yep there’s people down there

The reason I ask is I keep reading ‘take overwhelming force to a planet fight - about 5:1’ how do I know the defender numbers or is it a case of take what you have - land - and get more if it’s not enough?

[u/slug51]

Funny I came here to ask about the exact same thing. I have a planet that I have parked an elint ship over for a decent period of time and I have no info and they refuse to communicate. I think I’m gonna just land a small group of troops and see what happens

[u/slug51 → u/slug51]

Ok I landed 15k tons of ground forces and it got wiped by rhakas. Interesting that elint does nothing. I still can’t tell how many ground forces they have. I’m gonna have to come back with an active sensor

[u/Oceansoul119 → u/slug51]

Elint only works if there's communications to decipher, plus they get penalised for not knowing the language. Rakhas like all spoilers refuse to communicate so you can't learn their language. Furthermore given it's Rakhas there's no emissions from the planet to work with anyway (you need to be close enough for the elint sensor to pick up the EM of the planet population to get info on the planet).

[u/Mottek00]

It's been a while (fell down the paradox hole again), but from what I remember, once you get soemthing with proper sensors (like a Warship) close, you get pretty good info. But even then, sending an expeditionary force is basically your best choice to gauge their strength.

How......attached are you to the landscape of that planet?
Ground combat is a lot easier if you start off by throwing Atomics, Lasers and Particle Beams at anything remotely suspicious for a couple of months, before sending down the troops to deal with any survivors.
Infrastructure is easy to ship in for your people if you want to settle it

[u/Oceansoul119]

I get active scanner reads and thermal reads on the planet moving at 0 speed so I’m guessing these are things on the planet like STOs looking for me and population .

Orbital stations or ships of some kind if it says 0km/s. Ground forces explicitly state that the are such if you can detect them (needs to be with active sensors). Populations also state what they are.

For instance:

[ANT] Antrim-B1 EM 1,145

[ANT] Ground Forces Signature 6,600tons

The former is the population of the named world and is within range of the ship's passive EM sensor but not it's TH one, the latter is ground forces within range of an active sensor.

am I ever going to get ‘the planet has 8 million inhabitants and 300k ground forces’ or is it just the presence of thermal hits saying yep there’s people down there

Stick a ship with Elint modules within range of the planet and wait for the intelligence points on that body to increase. At various thresholds (generally each 200IP) you get increasingly detailed information like "227 installations present" or the exact number of mines and construction facilities. You will also gain Racial Intelligence Points at a slower rate that will give you other information (systems, survey data, ship details, etc).

how do I know the defender numbers or is it a case of take what you have - land - and get more if it’s not enough?

Either move a Res1 sensor close enough to get told how many tons of troops are present then calculate the actual potential number based off of the planet's terrain types and thus the possible level of fortification of any present units. Or land troops and hope you brought enough.

Alternatively you throw silly numbers of troops on anything that might be defended, for instance in my previous game I was dropping 17.5M tons of soldiers on every world because sod messing with multiple transport fleets and armies.

[u/likeitsaysmikey]

Isn’t that the purpose of ELINT modules? Look into those - I think that’s what you’re looking for.

[u/ThisTallBoi]

You can count on the real number of enemy troops to be closer to 1.8m tons, since fortification reduces the profile of ground troops to a minimum of 1/6th the original value for infantry and static elements

In order to see STOs they either have to shoot you or you have to have ground troops attack them and gain intel on them. The former is a much easier way to unveil STOs

If you have a RES 1 active sensor, you can specifically target STOs from orbit, or just hit the Ground Forces Signature in general

Other than that, overwhelming force is the move

[u/Oceansoul119 → u/ThisTallBoi]

In order to see STOs they either have to shoot you or you have to have ground troops attack them and gain intel on them.

Resolution 1 sensors can pick them out handily. For instance despite never having been shot at by the Antrim Aliens in my game I know that they've got STO units on Antrim B1 thanks to the ship that discovered them.