Ground forces

Ground troops are troops on the ground, unsurprisingly. They provide a reduction in unrest (by, we must asume, shooting dissenters).

In addition, Engineer brigades allow you to exploit alien Ruins, and can assemble PDC elements.

Transport

Individual ground units MUST be manually transported from place to place. It is also important to provide your troopships with sufficient capacity to embark the whole of the formation, you can't have a brigade spread around five troop transports for example.

How To Transport

Bring a ship over to a planet or another ship with troop transport bays. Select the ship you want to load from and select Load GU into Troop Transport.

Combat Drop

Infantry loaded into drop pods can be combat dropped, which doesnt require any time for them to hit the ground and begin fighting.

How To Combat Drop

1) Go to the f12 task group screen, select a Ship with Combat Drop Modules, click load GU into Drop Module in fleet. You should see a selection of units to load into the unit right below the Plotted Move screen called "Select Ground Unit" appear. Select one and hit add move.

2) Advance time till this is complete (takes time to load GU's into the drop pods but they exit the drop pods instantly).

3) Your unit should now be loaded onto a Combat module.

4)Now when you get near a planet or ship you can select an action for this ship called Combat Drop Ground Unit, or Boarding Action.

Ship Boarding

The ability for drop modules to be shot toward an enemy ship and get infantry onto the hull of that vessel.

Infantry then begin blowing holes into the armor to enter the ship if none already exist.