troop transports

Perhaps because they are used up upon re-entry when delivering the troops?
Unless I am mistaken, GalCiv doesn't use drop ship

Actually, they're not always used up.

If you attack with your troop transports in a fleet, then as long as enough soldiers survived the attack to fully fill a transport, that transport will stick around.

Let's say you had 3 transports in a fleet, each holding 1000 troops. In the battle, 1200 troops died off, leaving you with 1800 surviving. That's enough to fully fill 1 transport, so you'll end up with one fully filled transport remaining after the battle, with the other two having been 'used up' in the attack.

As an amusing note, the population on the planet would also have been set to 1.8 billion people. in extreme situations, such as where you invade with 4000 and end up with 3500 survivors, you could easily have 3.5 billion people on the planet, and 3000 troops left in orbit - meaning that you effectively ended up with MORE people than you attacked with! Yay for cloned troopers, eh?

crickel

you don't need 4000 troops to conquer a planet, u can always manage the job with 1000 troops and mass drivers and u are sure to wipe out a planet with a population of nearly 10 billion while they have too better soldiering and techs

But then the planet sucks... :/

I like information warfare when their morale is low. Nothing like attacking a 15 billion planet with 1 b and having 5 billion more join me.

Only if you click at just the right time and get that 30 to 6 advantage Mario. Personally I don't like a chance of an invasion failing, given the trouble of getting all the transports over there I want it to 'take' the first time.. sure I guess I could just save right before, and reload, but that's not very immersive.

*Plays the Thraddash themesong as his 10,000 troops swarm a small planet after a Core Detonation; just to show 'em who's boss*

Oh and I figure the cost of transports might include the price of tanks and other support vehicles which have a chance of being lost in the invasion, plus the transports themselves probably take massive ground fire on the way in. Really, I think the reason is so invading planets isn't too trivial, compared to some other space 4X games each planet in GalCivII is an extremely important chunk of rock.

Stromko i agree in part with your point of view because soldiering is nearly a nosense as the planetary invasion is managed now. As example in my last game there were 27 planetary invasions which 25 were successful and 2 failed (ai failed to conquer my planets). With traditional warfare things can become a bit harder but u can have successful invasion with less than 1/3 of defender troops.With mass drivers enabled there is really no chance to fail an invasion; as example i was human and was invading a yor planet with 12000 troops, with mass drivers enabled i managed to conquer the planet with 1500 troops and worst soldiering and techs with an advantage factor of 25 vs 8.
in one of the two invasion failed ai had narly 2500 troops and my planet had 22000.The invasion failed but i lost 20000 troops. So i can agree with you that invasions are costly but advantage factor must be based on number of troops soldiering and techs and not strange hidden algorythms which enable so easy invasions.
Another thing about mass driver it's true that they destroy planetary improvements and PQ but in a war of attrition or when u are not sure not win a war scorching earth is the best tactic to weaken your enemy based on my experience

Planetary invasion is too easy in my book. I have had successful invasions where I had MUCH lower tech and be out numbered greatly. I wish they would give more overall information when invading (like each sides soldier bonus and such things). More information guys, that's all I ask. Also, the AI is easily able to invade my planets even though I have racial solider bonuses, tons of planetary defense techs, planetary defense buildings, etc. Is there any more information available on the subject?

I agree with Jefe. I don't understand why it is so easy for the invaders. However, I don't think it is reasonable for every citizen of a planet to be considered part of the defense either. (Remember the picture of the little Terran female with the stuffed representation of a Terran quadruped looking up into the burning eyes of a Drengin Terror-Trooper) Somehow I bet she went down real easy. And probably was tasty too.

More realistic would be to say X% of a planet's population is its garrison and that's who fights back, but with much more zeal than they do now. Maybe even have each species of alien have different capabilities in this area. (I.E. Drengin more because they all have violent tendencies, Altarans less because even though they're being invaded, they need to make a quick stop at Lulu's Love Palace before joining the fight.) Maybe even have a slider that each emporer can use to direct more population to garrison at the expense of tax revenue. And, to keep us from just pumping it up when we see a transport, make it so that the change takes place over time (to simulate 'training' for new recruits and 're-socialization' for vets.)

Eh, what do I know.

In one of my games I had plenty of issues invading Drengin Worlds with 1000 man transports and latter 2000 man. They had alot of soldiering and tech bonus as well as some very filled up worlds. I lost billions of troops. I did eventualy wear them down though. I had to use mass drivers if i wanted any chance of victory though due to the drengin advantages.

In one of my games I had plenty of issues invading Drengin Worlds with 1000 man transports and latter 2000 man. They had alot of soldiering and tech bonus as well as some very filled up worlds. I lost billions of troops. I did eventualy wear them down though. I had to use mass drivers if i wanted any chance of victory though due to the drengin advantages.

Man probably u were very behind in soldiering and tech.Based on my experience there is nearly any chance to defend a planet also if u have better soldiering techs and number of soldiers

Losing an invasion isn't always a curse. You can use mass drivers to wear them down and the PQ won't lower.

In my current game I have 88 ships - 54 are percursor rangers I discovered which were basically obsolete. I decided to upgrade them with advanced troop modules, loaded them up and placed them in fleets of 7 at my military SBs. I just invaded the Arvantian (?) world with pop 12B using 6 ranger transports carrying 6000 troops. The world had 40% morale and I used information tactics to get a total troop count of 10000 versus the planets 12000. After the battle I had 3500 troops left and I lost 1 ranger transport with 5 fully loaded which I parked in orbit for 8.5B pop. Is this normal or a bug?

You just got a whopping 4 billion troops out of Information Warfare, and that is out of the ordinary, even for a 12B population planet at 40% morale. I don't know that I would call it a bug, but it's certainly out of the ordinary. However, if you were down to 3500 troops after all that and yet had 8.5 billion pop, that's a bug all the way. What were the odds you got on that particular invasion? Around 2-to-1?

My odds were, off the cuff, around 30 to 6 with 70 troop advantage versus 30, and an enormous tech advantage. I had 3.5 billion pop after the battle with 5 fully loaded troop transports. I suspect something going on in the background which I don't understand. My ships were precursor rangers which I added advanced troop modules to before upgrading. The ships originally had 115+ hit points each before and 77 hit points after the upgrade and were fleeted together. I haven't built any other troop transports so I don't know if my ship class/type is a factor. I'll have to try regular transports to see if there is a difference.

I just hat ewhen I lose an invasion by less than 1000 troops. Cause unless I happen to have another on the way, I have to go out of my way to make another quickly, and get it there before the population rises too much.