why put troop pods on ships?

[dannyslag]

Why does the ship builder recommend I put troop carriers on my destroyers? What exactly do these do beyond let you drop off troops at planets? Do they defend against boarding as well or improve the ships stats?

I build troop carriers for that, but the tooltip doesn't really say what it does so I'm wondering If i'm missing something.

[ShadowB]

It's my understanding loaded troops do help against boarding attacks. Ground forces are a bit expensive to maintain to use them purely for boarding defense, but I suppose it's viable to put a single troop compartment in every warship when attacking planets with fleets. I mean, the invasion force would be so dispersed among your vessels it'd be hard to diminish it to any considerable extent before the soldiers drop to the target.

Compare that to concentrating all your groundpounders in a handful of transports and a couple get blown up on the way in. That's more eggs in one basket.

Different approaches.

[Mansen]

Yep - Troops add additional protection from boarding attacks. Putting a few on a mothership/flagship doesn't hurt - they can be helpful to add a bit more invasion power on the fly.

[Aeson]

If a ship is carrying troops, then the troops will contribute to the boarding defense of the ship. As far as I know, there are no other benefits to the ship's performance when troops are carried.

Presumably, a part of the reason why the game recommends that you place troop compartments on destroyers, cruisers, and capital ships is to enable you to use a small raiding group to launch an opportunistic invasion, rather than having to wait for a troop transport to land troops at a world you hit with destroyers 20 minutes ago and discovered to be only lightly defended, or so that any medium or heavy warships assigned to transport fleets as escorts contribute a bit to the carrying capacity of the transport fleet. Another part may be a nod to history - medium and large warships have on occasion been used as troop ships for a variety of reasons, ranging from convenience to speed, and since the game lacks a concept of fitting troops in by making them share the same space as the crew the only way for this to be done within the game is to include a troop compartment.

Regardless of why the recommendation is made, you are not alone in ignoring it. I myself rarely place troop compartments on my warships, as I see little reason to not use the space for something else like weapons or shields, and I feel that the risk of losing troops carried on front-line warships outweighs the value of having a ready-made invasion party should opportunity come knocking.

[ldog]

Original DW ship designs, destroyers on up actually included troop modules.
At some point it was changed (for the better) but they still carry the suggestion, and some derelict ancient ships still include them.

To add to what Aeson said (although his points should be good enough reason for most of us) about why you should ignore it. Loading and unloading takes a fair amount of time. You are better off not having your warships tied up in that mess.