- - - *Return fire on PTS that fires upon your landing stack.* - - - Landing Fire, or "Planet-to-Space Defence Destruction", or "PTSD" for short, is a tactic in which a faction exploits the way enemy PTS fire upon landing stacks to target and damage enemy PTS-capable units, and only those units. ### Landing Fire: Explanation When PTS fires upon landing stacks(COMBAT_LAND_SPACE), only non-space, non-jump units on the ground possessing a ranged space attack will fire. This means that other ground units in the same hex as the PTS units do not participate. ### Landing Fire: Contrast to normal bombardment Using normal bombardment against a target hex, means that your ranged space attacks will target any valid target on the ground. This means that the defender (planetside enemy stack) will be able to utilize, for instance, militia as screening units for their PTS. Since militia has no PTS-capability (no ranged space), they cannot protect the PTS-capable units from orbital bombardment during enemy landings. Landing with your own units that possess ranged space attacks is a way to bypass any screening units in a stack to focus your fire on enemy PTS. ### Landing Fire: Distribution of PTS A further consideration is that PTS units in different stacks will all try to attack the landing units if they are in range, sequentially one stack at a time. This means you can, in essence, divide and conquer versus the enemy PTS units. ### Landing Fire: Counters Since PTS stacks fire in succession, you'll want to mass the entirety of your PTS stacks into one singular large doom-pts-stack so that the enemy cannot sequentially kill off all your PTS with a properly targeted landing fire. ### Landing Fire: Example ``` Enemy Ground Force Composition 15 militia, 5 PTS units in a Fort city. 9 militia, 3 PTS units in an adjacent Factory city. Your Star Force Composition 10 Cruisers in orbit with good ranged space attacks. ``` You could bombard the hexes normally, but have to accept that your initial attacks would be wasted on the militia due to [[Rank Targeting Priority]] whilst taking return fire from enemy PTS. ``` Option 1: Bombarding against the Fort 10 Cruisers targets 10 Militia (5 Militia next in rank) 5 PTS targets 5 of 10 Cruisers 3 PTS from Factory fires on Cruisers without return fire Option 2: Bombarding against the Factory 10 Cruisers targets 9 Militia and 1 PTS (2 PTS next in rank) 3 PTS targets 3 of 10 Cruisers. 5 PTS from Fort fires on 5 of 10 Cruisers without return fire ``` Instead, you take your 10 Cruisers and land them in any suitable hex within a 5 hex radius of both the enemy Fort and the enemy Factory. Now, your 10 cruisers will **completely ignore** the 15 militia and contribute all their fire upon the enemy PTS units, each PTS unit targeted by two cruisers. Next, the other stack containing 9 militia and 3 PTS units will fire (Note that the ordering is ambiguous regarding which PTS stack goes first). ``` Option 3: Landing within a 5-hex radius of the Fort and Factory 1. 5 PTS fires upon 5 of 10 Cruisers, Cruisers return fire on 5 PTS 2. 3 PTS fires upon 3 of 10 Cruisers, Cruisers return fire on 3 PTS ``` Your attack has successfully engaged the enemy PTS directly. ### Landing Fire: Considerations The downside of this tactic is that it likely requires you to have a cleared landing area so that your landing vessels do not take landing damage. Furthermore, landing in this manner means that your ships are now on the ground and likely needs to take off into orbit, meaning each usage of this tactic requires two movement points. If pursuing this tactic, you'll likely want to have a decent planetside reccoinnassance before commiting your expensive space vessels in case the enemy has gathered a super-stack of PTS-capable units. ### Landing Fire: Hybrid Tactics If you combine this tactic with [[Escorted Landing]] you can essentially combined the two tactics into [[Escorted Landing Fire]]. #wip militia is foot, targeting example should be a different unit, such as a tank or artillery. also name could be better, Landing Fire is the superior name likely.