Loading Troops onto a Troop Transport

[Dereck]

I have a Troop Transport Fleet. 1 Troop Transport with 12 escorting destroyers.

I have 3 ungarrisoned infantry battalions in the same planet where the transport fleet is.

When I selected load troops it loaded an infantry battalion onboard a cruiser which I hadn't even had selected.

What do I need to do in order to:

1 - UNLOAD the battalion that is stationed on the cruiser
2 - CONSISTENTLY be able to unload troops when I want to? I've been able to load troops but I can't consistenly unload them. I'm trying to move units around.

Sorry for my many questions but this game is new and some things aren't very well explained.

Thanks

[Aeson]

If you want to unload troops at a colony belonging to your empire, then I would suggest selecting the ship or fleet carrying the troops, hold down control, and then right-click the colony. This should bring up a menu where one of the options is "unload troops at (colony);" selecting that option should cause the ship or fleet to unload every troop unit carried by the fleet onto the targeted colony. You may also be able to issue this order when zoomed out far enough to click on the system rather than a body within the system, which may be useful if the colony you want to unload troops at is obscured by orbital stations or ship traffic. You can also unload troops at the colony by right-clicking on it if the cursor icon looks like a tank with a red arrow pointing away from it, but the game tends to prefer to try to load troops from the colony if the ship or fleet you're trying to use to deliver troops has space for more troops.

Be aware that the game likes to reserve space for units as allocated in the fleet's troop loadout as seen in the fleet menu, sometimes even if you don't actually have any available units of that type or cannot actually build units of that type at present, so if you order a fleet to load up with infantry units and it has space for 50 but only picks up 20 of the 21+ available infantry units at the colony, chances are the game decided to save room for the armored, special forces, and planetary defense units you asked it to reserve space for in the fleet's troop loadout. Usually, this will be overriden by reissuing the order to load troops and is only a minor annoyance, but it's something to be aware of.

Also be aware that if you have any automated ships with troop carrying capacity, it is somewhat likely that those ships will try to load any ungarrisoned troops stationed on your worlds unless they are prevented from doing so by being otherwise occupied. My preference is to leave troop carrying to dedicated transports rather than including troop compartments on frontline warships, though such can be useful for opportunistic invasions of lightly-defended colonies that you come across while raiding, and troops carried on board a ship do provide some additional defense against boarding assaults. I think most standard-template warships these days do not have troop compartments, though some derelicts may.

One final thing to be aware of regarding transporting troops, though it probably doesn't matter for your current situation: units cannot be split across multiple transports. You need 100 space on one transport for an infantry or special forces unit, 200 space on one transport for an armored unit, and 400 space on one transport for a planetary defense unit; a fleet containing two transports with 250 transport capacity each will only be able to move four infantry or two armored or two infantry and one armored units at a time, rather than the five infantry or three infantry and one armored or two armored and one infantry units suggested by the fleet's claim that it has 500 transport capacity.

As far as why your 'load troops' order to your transport fleet resulted in one infantry unit going to a cruiser not associated with the fleet and no infantry units being loaded onto the fleet, I have no idea why that happened. The only thing I can think of is that the cruiser is automated and decided that that was a good time to go pick up soldiers, and that this somehow screwed up the transport fleet's order to load troops; this might be likely if you had two colonies in the system with available troops (1 at one colony and the rest at the other), ordered the transports to 'load troops at nearest colony with available troops,' and then the cruiser took the one unit available at the colony which was regarded as being closest after you had issued the order. Another possibility for the transport fleet is the annoyance mentioned above, but I cannot recall ever seeing a fleet ordered to load troops not pick up any units when units are available at the colony and the fleet has more than sufficient troop capacity even with space reserved as the fleet loadout requests.

Sorry for my many questions but this game is new and some things aren't very well explained.

No matter how irritable we are when we respond, you should never feel the need to apologize for asking a question.

[johanwanderer]

Actually, I don't think there is a menu option to unload troops. As far as I know, the only way to do so is to select a ship or fleet with troops and then right click on the colony when the cursor changes to the "unload troop" icon. If your planet is small, and the spaceport is large, you might have to scale the graphics down (on the spaceport design) in order to right click on the planet.

Hope that helps,
Long.

[Damiac]

No, there's a menu option, I've used it before to unload troops at a colony to fight a pirate base. I do think you have to hold ctrl for it to appear.

[Dereck]

I do not see ANY option that says unload. All I get is:

Move to Planet Core
Patrol Planet Core
Load Troops
Stop
Escape
Assign Planet Core as Base
Transfer Character to 1st Transport Fleet
Refuel all Ships
Retrofit to Latest Designs
Disband Fleet
Return to Base (Planet Core)
Queu Next Mission


I have troops on this transport that I can't get to unload. What's the use of being able to LOAD a ship if you can't UNLOAD it???[:@][:@][:@][:@][:@][:@]

[Bingeling]

Try the transport selected, not the fleet.

I can't remember if it was fixed or not, but for ages, the "unload troops" order was missing from the fleet options.

[johanwanderer]

ORIGINAL: dereck
I have troops on this transport that I can't get to unload. What's the use of being able to LOAD a ship if you can't UNLOAD it???[:@][:@][:@][:@][:@][:@]

With the fleet/transport selected, just right click on your own colony. That is the unload option.

[Damiac]

So I checked this out, and the bug apparently still exists. A fleet doesn't get the unload option in the ctrl+right click menu, but individual transports do. So you have to select a transport, ctrl+right click the planet, and then you'll get the unload option.

Sometimes, seemingly depending on how full your transports are, you'll be able to right click a colony to unload, but sometimes it will load troops instead, so just right clicking your own colony isn't reliable. The little icon that shows will let you know which order you're giving, but it's aggravating to want to drop troops onto a planet and instead pick them up, potentially losing the ground battle and/or troops unnecessarily.

[Bingeling]

The missing fleet unload order, makes having for instance cruisers with troop bays very annoying. Start ships automated, do not pay attention, and your new cruisers each have a troop loaded. It is micro manage hell to get those troops unloaded without finding an invasion target.