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So I overestimated his build time and lost Ra--something, the northernmost colony, a couple times because he got the first PK moving too fast for my fleet which was busy facerolling the Sluken to intercept it.

This is in Ancient Galaxy.

Then I barely managed to pull off an intercept with my fleet of 30 1500-size "dreadnoughts" i.e. Resupply Ships, totally something between 4000-5000 firepower, and managed to kill the thing literally half a second before it would have killed the planet by being in the right area around the planet where it would exit hyperspace.

Then I realized that I didn't get the Xaraktor/Giant Kaltor unlock event because I killed the PK in time. Uh... I really hope the Shakturi don't have the piles of ground troops that, say, the Sluken had on their homeworld...

I know the Shakturi had 4 PKs building when I scouted them earlier, do they build more after you destroy the initial bunch or not?

Because as things look right now I'm going to be facerolling the tiny AI fleets one by one with my fleet of dreadnoughts (I have better tech i.e. plasma thunderbolts now but only a few of the ships that were built late will be refitted, can't take this main fleet off the front lines...) until my allies finally figure out how to launch ground invasions.

As a side note, Atuuk got defeated without the use of a PK and without the conquest of their last planet. They just had a whole bunch of leaders get killed in a row... does this mean the last world they ahd was bombarded to 0 quality? If so, how does planetary bombardment work? Because I want to do it to the last Dhayut world instead of having to throw 50+ armored divisions at it. Loading up on Nuclear Devastators doesn't seem to DO ANYTHING when I tell ships to attack a planet...

Sudden thought: Is it possible to steal an unfinished Shakturi PK by killing the constructor, then completing it yourself? Because if that's the case then the galaxy will very soon have a whole shitload less bugs to squash.

Bombardment is a separate order you have to select.

Sudden thought: Is it possible to steal an unfinished Shakturi PK by killing the constructor, then completing it yourself? Because if that's the case then the galaxy will very soon have a whole ****load less bugs to squash.

If I recall correctly, the planet killers that the Shakturi construct in the Ancient Galaxy scenario are actually owned by the Shakturi from the time they spawn on the map. If you want to steal them, you're going to have to use boarding pods (I think the boarding defense of a completed planet killer is something like 800; you'll probably need a lot of pods), as your construction ships cannot be assigned to work on projects owned by another faction (the project needs to be either neutral or owned by your empire). Good news is that incomplete vessels and stations are valid capture targets.

Be advised that a completed planet killer (or a planet killer with all of its hab modules completed) has a boarding defense of around 800. You'll probably need a lot of assault pods.

Loading up on Nuclear Devastators doesn't seem to DO ANYTHING when I tell ships to attack a planet...

How many Nuclear Devastators? Because just a handful per ship isn't going to cut it; even a fully-upgraded Nuclear Devastator is only killing 1.33 million per second at normal game speed (8 million per shot, with one shot every six seconds), and even if the planet's population isn't growing it'll take a very long time to kill a world with a decently large population at that rate. Note that to reduce the population of a target world, a bombardment force has to outpace the natural population growth rate of the planetary population or it has to damage the planet's quality to the point that the planet's population cannot continue to grow quickly enough to keep up with the bombardment (either due to the population being capped due to planet quality damage, or due to the population growth rate being reduced by the lower planet quality).

When I bother with planetary bombardment, I bring multiple dedicated bombardment ships, and those ships will have at least 10 (probably more like 20-30, and later in the game potentially upwards of 50) bombardment weapons. If you want to kill a planet quickly, you're looking at bringing 100+ bombardment weapons to the party (even 100 fully-upgraded Shaktur FireStorm torpedoes, the best bombardment weapons in the game short of a planet killer, will take on the order of a minute at normal game speed to kill off a planetary population of 20 billion, even if the ships are undisturbed and the planet lacks defenses against bombardment).

Also, be absolutely certain that the target planet does not have a planetary shield generator; no bombardment weapon short of the Super Laser can touch a planet protected thusly, and you will have to at least land special forces on the planet before you can bombard it (in the hopes that the special forces will destroy the shield generator). A planet protected by a Planetary Shield Generator has a sort of blue-green glow around it that other planets lack; alternatively, you could look at what facilities are present.

I know the Shakturi had 4 PKs building when I scouted them earlier, do they build more after you destroy the initial bunch or not?

If you destroy the planet killers before they're completed, the Shakturi will begin building replacements. I don't recall if they replace them if destroyed after completion, however.

Ty for the info regarding bombardments.

I'm looking at something on the order of 100 basic Nuclear Devastators (3M bombardment damage) parked over the enemy homeworld for upwards of 10 minutes in 4x speed before landing about a million troops. How many of the enemy's million troops on their homeworld do you expect to be alive at the end of that, presuming there's even a planet to capture by then? Mind you this is Dhayut homeworld so their growth rate is crap...

Ah, I saw the PKs were owned, but wasn't sure if I could cap them with a constructor. Tough choice then between whether to capture them barely unfinished or blow them up to be safe and then systematically destroying the Shakturi fleets and letting my allies do the invasions... if the AI is even capable of it.

Actually nvm just to be save I'm definitely grabbing me at least one PK to just blow up all the insectoid worlds I can't easily invade and overrun with (e.g. homeworlds, anything with a shield, anything with more than a dozen enemy units on the ground). The scum don't deserve to live... though amazingly having Shakturi populace on your worlds doesn't make them go nuts and try to migrate all over your empire before all flipping out and going terrorist at once.

I don't think they'll have enough time to build any PKs after this first batch during which I was assembling masses of dreadnoughts, so that won't be much of an issue. I literally ran through Sluken turf blowing up every single orbital installation I could see (given my dreadnoughts had Long range Scanners...) and frying their navy without even one dreadnought taking more than half shields, when I only had 10 dreadnoughts on the job, so I believe that 30 dreadnoughts is enough to faceroll even the Shakturi capitals fast enough to not take component damage. Just to be safe though I'll begin ordering a few fleets of Size ~400 corvettes to secure captured lands i.e. patrol systems I've cleared except for enemy worlds, becauseresupply ship aggro system is purely reactive, not aggressive at all, ugh.

Now if my allies were as good at invasions/combat in general as their enemies...