Planetary Defense Structures Not Working?

from Stardock Forums
I was testing some of the planet defense structures (Planetary Defense, Star System Defense, etc.) and none of them gave any bonuses to my ships in orbit. But then I read the descriptions of them closer and realized they were sort of ambiguous, and that these structures might actually boost ground combat soldiers instead of ships. Can someone at Stardock confirm which of these is supposed to be the case? Because if they are supposed to be boosting ships then they are bugged.

BTW, on a side note, I tested the bugfix where ships are now supposed to keep their bonuses after you quit the game and restart it, and they do, the fix works just fine every way I tested it.
1,890 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
From the manual :

When a transport intersects a defenseless star system, the invasion screen will be displayed. This screen displays the advantages of both sides. The attacker automatically gets a significant advantage since transports don’t just come with ground troops but an entire air armada and thousands of ground support craft. But other factors do come into play such as the technology difference between the civilizations, general soldier abilities on both sides and what planetary defenses have been constructed.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
At which point the computer chooses an attack method that bypasses your defenses making the construction of such generally a waste of time and maintenance money. So unless you are utterly rolling in cash and can't think of a thing to do with it I'd advise avoiding these structures, as they are expensive to build and extremely expensive to maintain.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
well in my last game I was owning the computer, I had a planet defense and the next one up, along with a lot of soldiering tech and I had like a 4.0 for my tech and the comp a 1.0. I could take over a planet of 20 billion with only 3 or 4 billion on my side.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I've never built a Planetary Defense, so I can't comment on what they do. But if they don't increase the defense of your ships in orbit and only help during an invasion...they seem vastly underpowered to me.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Pick up the Tir-Quan wonder and the +soldiering bonuses and invasion becomes a lot more efficient. And the opposite is true as well, it costs either a lot of troops or a lot of money (to pay for special invasion methods) to invade someone that has a soldiering edge on you. I've seen it as bad as a 1:2 ratio (2 of their guys for one of mine), which in the late game stages where planets have 15-25 billion people that is costly indeed.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
That is odd. The description of the first planetary defence clearly suggests that it is intended to be an aid to space ships stationed in orbit.

Ie. A planetary force field that protects ships while they fire out at invading forces.

If this isn't true, then I agree that planetary defences get to join a few of the other improvements on the virtual scrap heap.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
:notsure: I was always under the impression that planetary defense was to help ships, like planeary missile bases/shields/fighters something like that. If it helps ground troops, well frankly if it gets to the point where a transport gets through there is little that will stop the planet from being taken, whether it be soldiering bonus, tech, anything. I think I have seem maybe one or two failed invasions, and the planet fell the next turn anyway.

I think that planetary defenses should provide a defense bonus for ships. My 2 elddups.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
The computer is very good at using special invasion tactics to beat a strong defensive position, as long as it can raise the money to pay for them. And picking the right one of those specials for a given situation can result in massive damage to your defending population.

The computer uses special attacks I never would, like attacks that destroy buildings or lower PQ. Bad enough I have to start on a planet with relatively low population, I sure don't want to have to rebuild all its infrastructure or have it be gimped down in size.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
If you ask me, planetary defense should act like a ship in orbit, itself. In other words, the invading fleet should have to fight the defenses irregardless of whether there are ships in orbit or not.

Vorlin's right. I have seen the AI use invasion tactics that damaged PQ so badly that the planet was immediately disbanded after capture.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top


If it's true that Planetary Defenses just help against invasion, I think the maintenance should be dropped to zero. In fact, since I can't submit scores to the metaverse anyways, I think I'll edit the data files and give that a try ;)



Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
To confirm, the defense does go towards invasion.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
It's not entirely useless; stacked they're quite annoying. I got into a slog fest with trying to take out the Arceans last night and with all their defenses it took me on average somewhere between 1 to 1.5 as many invaders as defenders to take their systems. Although I had enough ships to pound anything they built to scrap metal instantly, it still took me forever to take them over because I had to keep waiting for my own pop to grow between systems. Once I had them down to 5 systems after years of doing this they finally agreed to hand over all their remaining systems for peace (not sure if that was a bug or not) and finally ended the game.