Fleet Hightech modules/bombardment questions

[bubb_tubbs]

Starting off with an easy one: I'm aware fleet modules don't stack with each other, but do they stack with standard targeting/countermeasures modules in the other ships? e.g. if I have a 30% targeting bonus on my cruisers, and I have a carrier or capital ship with a 5% fleet targeting module, is my effective modifier 35% for the cruisers? I assume they do, simply because you're saving virtually nothing on the power/size/upkeep by removing those modules from the various ships and replacing them with only the fleet bonus, but it wouldn't be the first time I've seen something silly in a game.

The second question might be easier with a story behind it. I'm currently playing a Dhayut game: prewarp, 8x8, 700 stars, spiral, 28 empires, chaos, strong pirates, extreme, expensive tech, victory conditions 2200, no shakturi, RetreatUE.

It (was) currently 2138 and I'm located in the galactic southwest, ~ 3.25 sectors from the corner. About a year ago, I finished the third upgrade to the Dhayut drive (speed 10000) and set my explorers to automate in an attempt to find the rest of the races (7 encountered) and locate the other two ultraluxuries (found zentabia in unclaimed space 4 sectors away around 2122 and fortified the snot out of the location - worth every penny in maintenance).

I'd conquered the Zenox a decade or so ago to secure my western border and in 2137 I invaded a desert independent. Can't recall the race, but they weren't terribly numerous and Zenox was maxed, so they were exterminated to make room for more spiders. To my immediate northwest is a small Atuuk empire. The sudden massive influx of colonists from the maxed, taxed Dhayut 4 grew the colony fairly quickly, and there was significant border friction as their influence was pushed back. When they attempted sabotage, I demanded they cease covert operations, and they subsequently declared war. With slightly more than half my firepower, I wasn't terribly worried and it gave me an excuse to move up their extermination timetable. However, the Securans a couple sectors northeast of THEM apparently had diplomatic ties and also declared for their ally. This *was* a problem, since the Securans were the most powerful empire I'd encountered, had slightly more firepower than me, twice my population, and controlled 13 colonies to my 3.

However, scout ships parked between systems and equipped with LRS showed their hyperdrives were still back at improved Gerax (I think 5000 speed, don't have the game open at the moment) and only 4 of the 13 colonies had any real development to speak of. So, I came up with an elegant solution: the bulk of my fleet would stay in the empire to defend my new holdings and engage in economic warfare with the Atuuk by destroying bases inside their border, while a small detachment of 6 destroyers and a resupply ship secured a caslon cloud southeast of the Securans after clearing out a few pirate stragglers. I designed a detachment of quick ships with ~2400 shields and a bunch of bombs on them, then proceeded to glass the undefended planets in the Securan empire one by one. If a fleet came to their defense (and I had ample warning with the LRS scout ships), I'd just move to another undefended one and start on it, returning to the other one at a later time.

With the number of colonies reduced to 7 and their population decimated to my level, the Securans sued for peace, giving me a couple mining stations in the deal. The Atuuk, now facing the full assault of my military without backup, almost immediately agreed to be subjugated. My reputation was tanked from this, but I was planning to eradicate almost everybody else anyways (and I've currently taken both the homeworld and the second-most populated Securan colonies in the playthrough) so I wasn't all that concerned - I'm an insectoid, after all, so most of them hate my guts as it is.

So, other than not being able to be all buddy-buddy with other races, what's the incentive to NOT glass every planet you come to that you don't intend to take? Or, for that matter, to kind of glass them to reduce the ground forces you need to take the ones you do? You can always terraform them later to remove the damage if you don't go HAM on the planet, and if you don't care about the race, you can always turn it into a sweet penal colony a la Dune's Salusa Secundus.

Would it be different if the Ancient Guardians were around to get uppity about my reputation? I've used bombardment a fair bit as pirate Boskarans, since (as far as I can tell) there's no diplomatic penalty for pirates being scurvy dogs, but this is my first experience with it as an empire.

[Aeson]

Starting off with an easy one: I'm aware fleet modules don't stack with each other, but do they stack with standard targeting/countermeasures modules in the other ships? e.g. if I have a 30% targeting bonus on my cruisers, and I have a carrier or capital ship with a 5% fleet targeting module, is my effective modifier 35% for the cruisers? I assume they do, simply because you're saving virtually nothing on the power/size/upkeep by removing those modules from the various ships and replacing them with only the fleet bonus, but it wouldn't be the first time I've seen something silly in a game.

If I recall correctly, fleet and standard modules stack with one another. I don't recall whether the stacking is additive or multiplicative, but I'd think probably additive.

So, other than not being able to be all buddy-buddy with other races, what's the incentive to NOT glass every planet you come to that you don't intend to take? Or, for that matter, to kind of glass them to reduce the ground forces you need to take the ones you do? You can always terraform them later to remove the damage if you don't go HAM on the planet, and if you don't care about the race, you can always turn it into a sweet penal colony a la Dune's Salusa Secundus.

Which is more valuable - a (more or less) fully-populated high-quality high-development colony, or a lifeless radioactive marble floating in space?

If you don't care about your empire's reputation, the incentive to take a planet by conventional invasion rather than by orbital bombardent and recolonization is that you get a mostly-undamaged productive colony more or less instantly through conventional invasion. Yes, colonies will recover from orbital bombardment over time - especially if you go for a more limited bombardment rather than wiping the colony out completely - but while the colony is recovering, it isn't as valuable as it could be. Of course, if you're going to exterminate the population anyways, whether because you're playing a genocidally-xenophobic empire or because you don't want to deal with some hippie space elves whining about how they don't like being part of your empire and are really upset about how you're conquering their as-yet-independent brethren and exterminating the space teddy bears, that's perhaps less of a concern.

Also, poor reputation hampers diplomatic relations with other empires - not just with the Ancient Guardians. Everyone else is less likely to trade with you and more likely to impose sanctions, engage in covert operations, declare war, or even wage undeclared war on you when your empire's reputation is bad than when its reputation is good. Of course, if your empire is sufficiently powerful or sufficiently far away from everyone else, that might not matter.

I will add that in the unmodded game (though possibly not RetreatUE; I don't know what was changed in that mod off the top of my head) bombardment weapons other than the Boskarans' Shaktur FireStorm torpedoes kind of suck. Bombardment missiles are okay at bombing planets, but are specialized for it to the point that they're literally useless against ships and orbital installations, and Heavy and Massive Rail Guns, while not completely useless, are much worse than the missiles are at bombarding planets and are probably the worst ship-to-ship weapons in the game for where they are in the tech tree. One "incentive" not to bombard planets would therefore be that if you aren't going to bombard planets then you don't need to bother developing specialized bombardment weapons and maintaining specialized bombardment ships.

[bubb_tubbs]

ORIGINAL: Aeson

So, other than not being able to be all buddy-buddy with other races, what's the incentive to NOT glass every planet you come to that you don't intend to take? Or, for that matter, to kind of glass them to reduce the ground forces you need to take the ones you do? You can always terraform them later to remove the damage if you don't go HAM on the planet, and if you don't care about the race, you can always turn it into a sweet penal colony a la Dune's Salusa Secundus.

Which is more valuable - a (more or less) fully-populated high-quality high-development colony, or a lifeless radioactive marble floating in space?

Say there's 1141K worth of troops on a 17 billion pop world. You can bomb it for a couple ticks, reduce the quality (temporarily) by 6 or 7%, destroy any fortress installation they might have, and reduce the troops decently below the 1000k mark. There's a lot of gray area between pristine, populated paradise and radioactive wasteland.

If you don't care about your empire's reputation, the incentive to take a planet by conventional invasion rather than by orbital bombardent and recolonization is that you get a mostly-undamaged productive colony more or less instantly through conventional invasion. Yes, colonies will recover from orbital bombardment over time - especially if you go for a more limited bombardment rather than wiping the colony out completely - but while the colony is recovering, it isn't as valuable as it could be. Of course, if you're going to exterminate the population anyways, whether because you're playing a genocidally-xenophobic empire or because you don't want to deal with some hippie space elves whining about how they don't like being part of your empire and are really upset about how you're conquering their as-yet-independent brethren and exterminating the space teddy bears, that's perhaps less of a concern.

It depends on the race. If I already have the bonus in the empire that the new race will provide and I'm just looking to add influence for building and taxes for more guns, I'll enslave the planet. I see what you're getting at, though.

The AI tends to build colonies absolutely everywhere, which is suboptimal because development is slower than focusing on 1 or 2 and using migration from the maxed worlds to fill them up quickly before starting a new one. Some of them are on worlds I'd consider garbage, so if there's only 2 billion people on a max 8 billion, strategically unimportant world, glassing it with 6 ships is way faster than invading it and having to administer, supply and put down rebellions on it afterwards. That kind of headache is for planets that matter, like homeworlds and juicy population centers with lots of buildings I haven't bothered to research yet because I'm building guns.

Also, poor reputation hampers diplomatic relations with other empires - not just with the Ancient Guardians. Everyone else is less likely to trade with you and more likely to impose sanctions, engage in covert operations, declare war, or even wage undeclared war on you when your empire's reputation is bad than when its reputation is good. Of course, if your empire is sufficiently powerful or sufficiently far away from everyone else, that might not matter.

If I were surrounded by empires in the core, I probably wouldn't have taken this line, but since I'm effectively alone in the corner (having already eliminated my competition there), and my southern neighbour lacking the necessary tech to be able to reach me) it wasn't a concern.

I brought up the Guardians because they'd have the range, tech and firepower to just DoW from anywhere in the galaxy and show up on my doorstep with the pain train relatively quickly.

As far as trade goes, well... Dhayut. Even before this with a Satisfactory rep I couldn't convince anybody except the Teekans to engage in Free Trade. All they want are the Super Luxuries, and I won't share because I'm a dick.

I will add that in the unmodded game (though possibly not RetreatUE; I don't know what was changed in that mod off the top of my head) bombardment weapons other than the Boskarans' Shaktur FireStorm torpedoes kind of suck. Bombardment missiles are okay at bombing planets, but are specialized for it to the point that they're literally useless against ships and orbital installations, and Heavy and Massive Rail Guns, while not completely useless, are much worse than the missiles are at bombarding planets and are probably the worst ship-to-ship weapons in the game for where they are in the tech tree. One "incentive" not to bombard planets would therefore be that if you aren't going to bombard planets then you don't need to bother developing specialized bombardment weapons and maintaining specialized bombardment ships.

Research Unleashed II and RetreatUE have an earlier bombardment tech in T2 research that is available to Dhayut, Sluken, Gizurean, and Keskudons, I believe. That's what I'm bombarding with, so it's a negligible research investment in this case.

Thanks! Your answer was most helpful. Basically, I'm ok with a bit less population and everybody hating my guts, so bombs away! If nothing else, it'll make the playthrough more difficult, which is something I never say no to.

In MoO2 it was optimal to take Repulsive trait (no diplomacy) and on impossible difficulty the computer would conspire against you anyways, so I'm used to just assuming everybody is going to attack all of the time.

[Retreat1970]

In RetreatUE all races research planetary shielding around mid to mid late game. They also research planetary fortress (?) at mid game. Eventually bombardment wont work and invasions will be costly (+100% def). It varies race to race but construction of the previous two facilities can commence at 500M to 1000M colony pop.

[bubb_tubbs]

ORIGINAL: Retreat1970

In RetreatUE all races research planetary shielding around mid to mid late game. They also research planetary fortress (?) at mid game. Eventually bombardment wont work and invasions will be costly (+100% def). It varies race to race but construction of the previous two facilities can commence at 500M to 1000M colony pop.

Perfect.

I was hoping this wasn't a house rule I was going to have to implement.

Thanks.