Please, explain me, how with the fleet of these ships

invading this system

I'm getting this values

???

Is there something with System defense (screenshot #2) which doesn't allow invasion of all my Manpower and cuts it to 900? Or what exactly number of '900' represents? What represents all numbers marked with red arrow on my screenshots?

I thought if I bring ships full-packed with manpower modules to invade the system the things should go smoothly. Well, maybe if not smoothly but if I bring 1200 manpower, and enemy has 2000 system defense it should look like 1200 vs 2000 at third screenshot. But whatever ships I bring I always see near identacal values. When AI invade me with literally one ship I see enormous amount of his manpower (my amount is small due no protection buildings though).

At top of this after such invasion (screnshot #3) all ships in all fleets orbiting the invaded system is left with 0 (zero) manpower on them. The thing just don't fit, you see?

P.S. Why does wiki cover lore but not game mechanic after all?!! I remember like i was forced to search on the Internet how to achieve different victories in ES1. There was only vague description of almost every crucial things. Is it so hard to explain how game works right in the game?..

RainyDays wrote:

I think the way it works is when you invade, all your troops go onto the planet, and your ships are now free to leave if you want, but the number of troops participating in the battle is limited, and your troops will be reinforced and battle over and over until either your total troops on the planet or their total troops on the planet, are depleted.

I kinda think the "and now your ships can leave" part is a bug, because you can still do orbital bombardment as a tactic even though there are no ships in orbit. But other than that (and that leaving might bork the number of available troops) yeah, that's why your ships show 0, because all their troops are currently deployed on the planet.

Anyway, I think the changed to limited Manpower per turn was to make sure the defender had at least a decent chance to draw out an invasion until reinforcements can show up, rather than get immediately curbedstomped by an invading army that is several times larger than anything they could ever have on the surface (upgrades to ship manpower being more accessible and less costly than system ones)

As for why you would want to bother with siege modules with this new change... Honestly there needs to be some work there. the module the OP has in the SS is the only one that shows up on the tech tree; I think you can find others via curiosities but beyond that +15/turn per ship is all you get. Also I think there needs to be more manpower costs in invading systems than there currently are so that it's actually an issue beyond the first 30 odd turns, so sticking in orbit for a couple of turns reducing the defenders from saftry is something you actually want to do if you don't want to constantly have to ferry back to worlds you control for new troops after every couple systems.

 ships show 0, because all their troops are currently deployed on the planet

Sounds legit. But what happens to them after? Do they return to ships on board? Still, if only 700/900 fight I could never score a win with first battle. And if somehow I'll manage to start with e.g. 1200/900 and kill everything from that '900' in first battle there is no need for me to bring >1200 manpower for the invasion. So as for the defending side no matter how strong their defence is - he'll lost one battle and it means he'll lost the invasion. Or no? Or with ratio 1200/900 it would never happen so I need approx. 12k to kill 900 with one and only battle? Looks like this is how AI won his invasions IIRC.

After all, the questions are:

1. How can I raise my number (which was 700 in example)? On what it depends?

2. How can I control how many of my troops is still there? They were landed all-in-one and now fighting piece-by-piece. How many land battles 'pieces' will handle?