Aggresive Expansion

[Harsh Life]

Before you read this guide, please note:
+Aggression provokes aggression, if you attack someone expect to be retaliated upon
+Once a ship is destroyed its gone, destroying someones entire fleet will annoy them greatly
+Be sure you can handle whatever you're getting yourself into
+It is rare that someone else won’t join in, for or against you, have your own friends prepped if you feel your opponent has theirs.

What you're up against

There are three types of defence of a planet
1. Troops
Troops are the baseline of defence; they require food to support them. A defending troop will do twice the damage of an attacking troop (unless you're using Cyber Marines**). There is a reasonable chance that the planet you are attacking won’t have any troops at all, making it particularly vulnerable. In many cases you can take a planet with 1 Pitchfork Marine.
To overcome troops, you will need your own troops. These can only be shipped around using Raptors (a ship available in the "Troops" tab) which can carry 4 troops each. For each of your opponent's troops, statistically you will require 2 pitchfork marines to match them, having more is always better.
On sending the fleet to the planet you'll be able to select the "Invade planet" button on the fleet page. Exception to this, the planet has shield generators.. bringing me nicely to...

2. Shield Generators
Shield generators protect buildings on the planet from bombs and at the same time, they protect a planet from invasion by troops. To take down a shield generator you need planetary bombers. These must be built by equipping 'Planetary Bombers' weapon to a custom ship. Unlike other weapons, the Planetary Bombers tech level 0 is not defaultly available. You will also need the ship to contain a CPU to ensure accuracy (higher the better though not much need after 20 attack score), everything else is up to you. The more bombers you have and the higher their weapon level, the quicker it will be to remove the shield generator.

3. A somewhat less used method of defence.. BLOW THE AGRESSING FLEET TO SMITHEREENS!
To avoid this, check the planet beforehand, a raptor has 50hp and very little defence (it will rarely avoid being hit). The raptor won’t be hit as frequently if you have one or two custom warships in the fleet too, though I will point out this is a VERY rarely used tactic and you probably will never have to worry. If their main war fleet is in the system, it’s probably not worth the fight unless you can beat the fleet with your own warships.

So.. A quick recap.
You will need:
Troops in raptors
your own custom design with planetary bombing capabilities.

What to do:
-If the planet has no shield, you only need troops to do the invading. If there are no troops either, you will only need 1 troop in 1 raptor
-If the planet has shields, you will need to bomb them down. If the planet has level 3 shields, you will have to destroy the equivalent of three shield generators. Higher level shield generators have higher hp so will require more time/firepower to destroy.
-If the planet has shield generators and troops, you will need to take down the shield generators THEN invade. This might all take a while, it may be a good idea to buff out (put other, strong warships in the fleet) your raptors in this case so that your opponent doesn’t sign in and destroy your raptor fleet.
-If it gets out of hand.. your opponent arrives and starts killing your Raptors, or killing your bombers, do not be afraid to leave and come back some other time.

Tips and tricks
Know your enemy - Buy a Zephyr, this will tell you what structures (so what level of shield generator is on the planet) and troops are on the planet and you can respond accordingly. To reap these benefits, you will need to ship the zephyr to the planet beforehand, zephyrs are quite slow, so do some foreword planning
Starve them out - As mentioned, troops require food. You may be able to starve the troops off a well defended planet by taking other, less defended food-producing planets. If a person hits 0 population on a planet, the next thing to go is the troops.


**Cyber marines are an aggressive troop (whereas the Pitchfork marine is typically defensive) only available if you have an X class planet