What is the sense of blockade?

[WiZz]

Can somebody explain me what is the sense to blockade the planet? Can it really prevent reinforcements to come when you are invading the colony? Or troop transports can breakthrough anyway?

[thegreybetween]

I believe the point of the blockade is more to hamstring the civilian activities of the planet. Your blockading ships will attack any freighters, passenger transports, miners, etc that ignore the blockade and approach the planet. Therefore, you can use it to strangle the economy of a poorly defended planet.

But nothing prevents a blockaded planet from drawing the attention of the opposing military (in fact, a blockade often invites it). Your blockading force will also attack military targets like other ships, but a blockade isn't intended to be a wall against military action, but rather civilian operations. You should assign an attack fleet to support your invasion fleet and keep the skies clear while troops are doing their thing.

I hope that helps. Happy hunting.

[Nightskies]

Expanding on that, depriving a colony of luxury resources will choke it of Happiness that it might be reliant on to avoid rebelling.

If you can get a colony to successfully rebel, there's a good chance it'll join your empire at full Assimilation (perhaps an ally of the former host empire, not sure what determines it but chalk it up to RNG). Most likely (I think), it'll go independent, which will allow a more peaceful preservation of the value of the colony.

Great in conjunction with the spy incite ability, which will assuredly make the colony yours if successful.

Another thing that a blockade does is that it really pisses off the target empire. Want them to declare war on you? Blockade a major colony. It'll cost your reputation a bit to target civilians out of war, but you'll start the war with a zero or positive war weariness score.