Ok. In my bid to expand my empire I tend to pick on a lot of NPCs. Some of these are even caveman level (tech 2). This series of scenarios is a portrait of a bid to try to take one planet. Forget the financial cost on taking the planet as I will never return the cost for taking it. This was about calculating what has changed and what needs changing. In each of these scenarios you can assume a tech 40 fleet and tech 40 marines against tech 2 defenders. There were originally about 6500 MU and 5000 HMU defenders on a size 9 world. With this scenario all the HMUs have been killed.
Scenario 2: MUs against MUs
-Action 24-
Fleet 100 reports orbit achieved around XYZ31112
Planetary scan initiated for XYZ31112
Size 45,000 Km (9)
Status Pirate Haven
Atmosphere Argon, CO2, NO (4)
Hydrographics 50% (5)
Mining Pot. 5
Aggression level 43
Tec level 2
MU(s) 6485
Population unit(s) 4
Planet Owner FEERZA REPUBLIC
Mining Center No
4867 MU(s) report ready for invasion assault on XYZ31112
900 Invasion unit(s) lost on XYZ31112 in wave # 1
Battle Control reports heavy losses in the last wave.
866 Invasion unit(s) lost on XYZ31112 in wave # 2
MU commander requests immediate reinforcements!
934 Invasion unit(s) lost on XYZ31112 in wave # 3
Battle Control reports heavy losses in the last wave.
832 Invasion unit(s) lost on XYZ31112 in wave # 4
MU commander requests immediate reinforcements!
551 enemy MU unit(s) killed
Marine Commander reports abortion of mission,
total casualties reported as 3532 MUs!
-Action 25-
Fleet 100 reports orbit achieved around XYZ31112
Planetary scan initiated for XYZ31112
Size 45,000 Km (9)
Status Pirate Haven
Atmosphere Argon, CO2, NO (4)
Hydrographics 50% (5)
Mining Pot. 5
Aggression level 43
Tec level 2
MU(s) 5934
Population unit(s) 4
Planet Owner FEERZA REPUBLIC
Mining Center No
Your opinion was probably the same as mine. WTF! Now if you do not understand what I was doing here I will explain. If I wanted to take the planet with the minimum number of casualties previously I would just FTR strike it till the defending MUs were gone. This is not what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do is create the maximum number of GMUs as possible. Why you may ask. There existed an exploit that if I created a large number of GMUs, say 2000 for arguments sake I could then take my MUs off planet and have an ally perform a GMU vs MU attack on the world. My ally would take the planet and the 2000 GMUs would become MUs. Also because the ally is a spacefaring nation the planet automatically goes to tech 10. The ally then has (in this case) a size 9, tech 10 world with 2000MUs on it when the world should only be able to support 900. Also because of the disparity of tech the casualties of the tech 40 MUs were generally less than the number of GMUs created, thus if the ally used the same tactic on a different world we would both end up with a world and more MUs than we expended.
So what happened here. Previously the formula would have worked that I landed 900 MUs in the first wave with tech 40 support ship for a combat factor in the first wave of 900*40= 36,000. The defenders would have all their troops defending rather than be limited by planet size like I am. So their combat factors should have been 6485*2= 12970 + the population bonus. 4 Pop on a size 9 world works out to about 3.4%. So 12970 *1.034 = 13411. So why did I not rock their world. That is a question for Thom maybe. Did the exploit need to be fixed. Yes I think it did. What would I have done. Probably when the ally performed a GMU vs MU attack I would limit the GMUs turning to MUs by planet size and keep the remaining GMUs as GMUs so the ally would end up with 900 MUs and 1100GMUs on the planet. Definitely not an ideal situation and ths would probably end the exploit.