- - - *Using quick engineer raids to raze multiple cities per turn.* - - - ### Glassing: Etymology Glassing is a popular term from popular science fiction universes in which a weapon, ship or fleet in orbit bombard or otherwise attack the surface of the planet with such significant devestation that the surface turns to glass. ### Glassing in Vanilla In Vanilla, ship weaponry are not powerful enough to cause significant enough damage in such a large scale. "Glassing" using orbital bombardment is simply infeasible in practice. Orbital bombardment may be very effective against units, but glassing refers explicitly to cities. Glassing in Emperor of the Fading Suns usually means razing cities across a planet using engineers deployed from orbit. Using a combination of orbital bombardment to eradicate a city's garrison and then landing a single engineer in the now empty city and then razing it is in essence a "glassing" of the planet. ### Glassing in Vanilla: Using Engineers One only needs a single engineer, but require multiple orbit-capable transports. Any single engineer that razes a city will be left with zero movement points and must use a form of transportation in order to raze multiple cities per turn. This is usually best done with Freighters, Bulk Haulers and Assault Landers. Starbases and Naval Transports may also work, but require prolonged presence of infrastructure on the planet in order to build them. Assuming we are using any ship with at least one transport capacity and three movement points, we can both land and take off in order for us to safely jump away from the system at the end of your turn (assuming the ship started it's turn in orbit). You may instead use this single movement point for landing, but you then lose out on the option of retreating from the system, and your engineer requires another transport to continue the glassing. After selecting a planet for glassing, the one carrying out the glassing action would require a single engineer in orbit and at least one transport that has the engineer as cargo. The glassing faction would need to completely route or eradicate any defenders in all cities they wish to raze. This can be done either from orbit using bombardment ships, or use a powerful ground invasion army, possibly against a cluster of cities close together. If using orbital bombardment, the number of transports in orbital space is possibly diminished as the space is taken up by cruisers or dreadnoughts. The benefit of using bombardment is that you can be certain whether or not enemy PTS are in the target city. If using a ground army, such as a stack comprised entirely by air units, you can likely achieve a better reccoinnassance of enemy garrisons and possibly deal with concentrated PTS units. In all likelihood, using a mixture of orbital bombardment and air assaults is the better approach. Use the orbital bombardment to target the initial city of which you believe your opponent to have little reason to garrison. Land your air stack after confirming enemy PTS coverage. Scout and eliminate targets of opportunity and possibly heavier PTS-stacks. Supplement with more air units or orbital bombardment as necessary. In both cases, as long as the enemy cannot retaliate in space in the span it takes for you to capture the planet, it may be more prudent to consider capturing the planet normally and then later "Glass" the cities you conquered as a sort of short-time "Scorched-Earth" tactic. ### Glassing in Mods Glassing in mods may be considered fundamentally different depending on the feasibility of orbital bombardment versus cities, prevalence of PTS and how easy it is to acquire and transport engineers. #### Glassing in Mods: Acquiring and transporting engineers Depending on the cost of an engineer, where it can be built, how long it takes and if they can be transported (or have innate jump-capability) you will find a particular effectiveness of razing cities on distant planets with engineers. If the engineer can be transported and you have a star vessel with cargo capacity with enough movement, a single engineer can be used multiple times to destroy multiple cities. If the engineer cannot be transported, say that a unit is only capable of being an engineer after being disbanded, you may find this tactic more dependent on the cost and build-time of the engineer in question. The engineer cannot move after a raze, and unless it otherwise can move (towing or through cargo capacity) then you need to expend or expose the engineer for a single turn, until it can move and raze again. ### Glassing in Mods: Orbital Bombardment If you have enough firepower, you can directly damage the cities themselves. Units present usually means you will have to destroy those first (not to mention enemy return fire from PTS). Mods that through a combination of setting the damage configuartion such that cities can be damaged by significant firepower, accuracy and agility of the attacks and cities and movement/firepower of your own ships, let this tactic be viable may change how one refers to "Glassing" by the mod in question. ### Glassing in Mods: Collateral Damage Ground units that attack a city (enemy units inside) may "miss" and damage the city instead. If this is viable (say through strategic bombers) then it's not referred to "Glassing", but "Collateral Damage".