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This new AI has actually made me desperate and forced me to turn towards planetary bombardment. Which is a testament to its effectiveness I guess, since I've never used it before. At any rate, I noticed my bombardment was having no effect, which is when I discovered this sly bastard had planetary shields at all his colonies.

Figuring I was being clever, I researched and equipped railguns for bombardment instead, since they supposedly penetrate shields. However, I'm still not doing any bombardment damage.

As I see it, there are two possibilities; either they only penetrate shields when it comes to actual ship-vs-ship combat, or the partial penetration rounds the '1m bombard damage' down to 0.

Does anyone have any idea which it is? Will researching the '2m bombard damage' railgun make a difference? Or will I be forced to find a planet destroyer to take care of this?

Glad you're getting a challenge Raap

Planetary Shields will stop anything, at least anything short of a planet destroyer. So railguns don't help you with bombardment here. You'll just have to invade their colony.

Elliot

I think it takes a while for the damage/shield penetration to accrue to a point where it exceeds population growth (don't forget about that).

I haven't used it, but had it used against me on planets with shields.

Usually what happens is that eventually the Planetary Shield Facility will eventually get destroyed, then all bets are off.

Don't worry Raap, the password of the shield is...

1... 2.... 3.... 4.... and 5...

Thanks Elliot! And yeah, nice job on the AI. I must admit my interest level was falling off a bit for the game, for the simple reason that it always became a cakewalk when you reached a certain tech level. Here I had already passed that tech level, so even though this guy was at 80k firepower and I only had 60k, I figured his colonies were already mine. Now I'm down from 20 to 4 colonies and in the red ^__^

SpaceCadet, the planetary shield doesn't appear to be taking any damage, so I don't think you can destroy it from orbit. You can probably destroy it by invading, but this guy has all the defensive facilities and a huge defensive force on all (my former) colonies. Would take me years to build up an invasion force big enough to stand a chance.

Damn the AI a threat again?!? SWEET!

Suddenly even more excited

ORIGINAL: Raap

SpaceCadet, the planetary shield doesn't appear to be taking any damage, so I don't think you can destroy it from orbit. You can probably destroy it by invading, but this guy has all the defensive facilities and a huge defensive force on all (my former) colonies. Would take me years to build up an invasion force big enough to stand a chance.

I am not sure if there is anything there, but it could be worth to look at the sabotage missions for agents.

Otherwise, you could give him a reason to start loading new troops. Kill his transports as they fill up. The colonies will probably be emptied to low levels after a while. Just make sure to give them time to load troops, and repeat until troop amounts are reasonably low.

Or if you wreck his economy, you may make him retire them.

I think massive troop counts on colonies that are not the capital, are due to invasion troops never having been picked up. It can make reconquering lost territory somewhat annoying.

I forgot what the units are called, maybe special ops, but land a couple of them on that planet and they'll take care of the planetary shields within seconds then proceed with your bombing if you'd like.

ORIGINAL: Raap

Thanks Elliot! And yeah, nice job on the AI. I must admit my interest level was falling off a bit for the game, for the simple reason that it always became a cakewalk when you reached a certain tech level. Here I had already passed that tech level, so even though this guy was at 80k firepower and I only had 60k, I figured his colonies were already mine. Now I'm down from 20 to 4 colonies and in the red ^__^

SpaceCadet, the planetary shield doesn't appear to be taking any damage, so I don't think you can destroy it from orbit. You can probably destroy it by invading, but this guy has all the defensive facilities and a huge defensive force on all (my former) colonies. Would take me years to build up an invasion force big enough to stand a chance.

I know I've had quite a few Planetary Shields destroyed, but I always thought it was a result of a "lucky" shot or something from Bombardment.

I never really had a chance to look into that too deeply as I usually had way to much other stuff going on [;)]

. . . oh, and I have to add . . . the version you're seeing is toned down from what we were initially seeing [X(]

Very glad to hear that you are enjoying the upgraded AI. [8D]

Special Forces will give you a chance to destroy those shields indeed.

has anyone seen the A.I. use tanks or special forces in invasions?

ORIGINAL: pycco

has anyone seen the A.I. use tanks or special forces in invasions?

Everything, as long as they've Researched it.

ORIGINAL: OzoneGrif

Don't worry Raap, the password of the shield is...

1... 2.... 3.... 4.... and 5...

1, 2, 3, 4, 5? That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

ORIGINAL: Spacecadet

ORIGINAL: pycco

has anyone seen the A.I. use tanks or special forces in invasions?

Everything, as long as they've Researched it.

awesome thanks for the info