Go back and claim your money then. Of course it's WAI, you need the orbital fleet manager to fleet ships on a planet.

Your ships need to actually be on the planet, on it's square.

I find the entire idea of defending planets not really worth the effort and cost. I never build planet defense or orbital fleet manager, I think they're a waste of a tile. The most effort I spend in a war defending planets is to kill all the enemy troop transports that I can reach. If a few slip by me and invade one my planets I immediately send a troop transport to re-take the planet next turn since the AI will usually not imediately put a combat ship in orbit.

IMHO the best planet defense is a high soldiering level which you want for offensive purposes anyway. I always get Tir-Quan Training and research the entire planetary invasion tree before my AI opponents. This results in my opponent usually having to invade 2, 3 or even 4 times to finally conquer one of my planets (I always keep my pop up to 15B even in the early stage), in the meantime I've taken literally 10 of his planets.

The best defense is a good offense. If the battles are in his area, around his planets, then that's where your opponents ships will be, not wandering around your area causing havoc.

That's a viable option, unless they have speed +10 ships or planets near you. Then you just have to be careful about it.

Clearly, as I've said before, there's no single correct way to play this game, there are many viable strategies.

With that said, I think combat ships are more effective conquering someone else's planets instead of sitting around in orbit on all your planets just in case someone comes by with a troop transport.

When you get into a defensive mode then the battles, ships and action tend to be around your planets instead of your opponents planets. I find that trying to go back and forth with your ships alternately trying to defend your planets while also trying to mount an attack merely dilutes your effort.

War generally slows down research and economic development. When I get into a war I try to end it as soon as possible so I lose as little development as possible with respect to AI's that are at peace. I usually find that the quickest way to end a war is to take all the opponents planets as quick as possible. Once he's crippled then you can take back any of your worlds that he's taken and repair the starbases that the AI loves so much to destroy.

It's realy a matter of rate. If you can take 10 of his planets versus every one he takes that's better than taking the same amount of time to take 5 of his planets while preventing him from taking any.

Anyway, that's just my opinion. The beauty of this game is the wide variety of sucessful options.

I never build planet defense or orbital fleet manager, I think they're a waste of a tile

I agree totally. At some future point, perhaps those could be changed to be useful.

I find the entire idea of defending planets not really worth the effort and cost.

Agreed before 1.3, since 1.3 the A.I. seems a bit more crafty, so in the first 1 or 2 yrs I now place my old tech ships in defense (just 1 per planet) until I have the galaxy under my thumb.

IMHO the best planet defense is a high soldiering level which you want for offensive purposes anyway. I always get Tir-Quan Training and research the entire planetary invasion tree before my AI opponents. This results in my opponent usually having to invade 2, 3 or even 4 times to finally conquer one of my planets (I always keep my pop up to 15B even in the early stage), in the meantime I've taken literally 10 of his planets. The best defense is a good offense. If the battles are in his area, around his planets, then that's where your opponents ships will be, not wandering around your area causing havoc.

What can I say? Great minds think alike.

Planetary defence helps when you get invaded

I suppose it does but it sucks big time and I doubt it would really save a planet.

I am currently working on a mod for advanced ground combat, in which i basically seperate the soldiering bonuses out of the tech tree and make it it's own branch.

Right now, if you want to max out soldiering, you need to research planetary bombardment, troop transports, etc. It makes no sense. I believe that most of soldiering could be done without having to learn advanced invasion tactics or weaponry, and that making those go hand in hand makes defense very hard.

My tech tree looks something like this:

Galactic Warefare
|
Space Militarization______Basic Ground Combat___Advanced Ground Combat(etc.)
|
Space Weapons
|
(tree is normal
after this but
with soldiering
bonuses removed)

The point is, even if you don't "invent nuclear weapons" (mass drivers, tidal disruption, etc) you should still be able to train very good soldiers. If you just want to defend your planets, not invade other peoples, you only need to research soldiering.

If a planet has 15 billion people, you can only field 15 million people. Realistically, it's alot less, but there are for example tanks with a crew of 3-4 that fight like 10-12 men, and the like.

Sounds like a good idea. The only thing about this game I'm not to keen on is the ground forces. Is every person on the planet trained in the military? That's how it seems because it's quite possible to take people from a planet and then in less than a week, land a highly trained bunch of elite troops on an enemy world. It just doesn't seem quite right at the moment that you can basically give a guy a gun and instantly he's the SAS.

Yes that's the way it currently is. That's why i think it's dumb that researching invasion tactics is needed to get soldiering bonuses. Invasion tactics are already a big bonus, and if youi have to learn them in order to get good soldiers, the only way to defend your planets is to research invasion, which is just bad for game balance.

So there is a way to create fleets in orbit but you have to research the tech Fleet Manager. Did not know that, but still I wonder why you would need to do that for your in orbit ships if you do not need to for the out of orbit ones. I have alot of questions I tried to get answered with the tutorials but my god they suck for the most part. Anyway, thanks for the replies, above and beyond the question hehe. So far the game is pretty good, I wouldn't go so far as to say it is better than MOO at this point, but the differences in game make for a slightly different approach to some things.

The only way to create fleets in orbit is to have a fleet manager.

d not know that, but still I wonder why you would need to do that for your in orbit ships if you do not need to for the out of orbit ones.

Think about it. While in space, your ships are in formation. Flying around in constant relay with each other.

That's a lot more difficult when you have a HUMUNGOUS piece of rock in between every ship. The fleet manager is ground control (or orbit control, whichever) for the ships, designating where each has to go. In space, you can see what's happening quite easy via your radar. Again, lump of rock. So the fleet manager just tells each and every ship where to go.