FreeOrion

Currently (SVN 4592) when I look at enemy planets I cannot see the number of ground troops. This makes it hard to tell how many troops I should use to invade.
Also there is no report of the combat, just that it happened. At the least it should say who won. It is obvious who won, since either you get the planet or you don't, but a message would be good, so I know the game is working! I would like to know how many enemies survived, so I can make a plan for the future.
Some system for knowing how many troops an enemy has, and how the battle went would be good. I assume there is no random element now, just most troops win. An obvious use for spys would be to count enemy troops, so since spys are not yet implemented another system is required for now. Having a ship in the system would be enough for now to stop the current display of zero troops for all planets. Instead of zero, having a greyed out box or even a question mark would be better for unknown numbers of enemy troops.
In future I would like to see more types of troops, or at least different strengths of troops. Also troops invading ships (only some types of troops would be able to do this, so tanks and planes which could be better on planets would be useless for ships. Maybe planes could be good on planets but no use for asteriods)

Is the troop meter not showing for you? As long as you have sufficient detection, you should be able to see that meter on enemy planets, which tells you how many you need (more than) to invade.As you sort of noted, if the planet was captured, then it tells you about that. If not, then the defender won. Perhaps not so obvious, but the info is there.I'd rather keep ground combat very simple, more or less as it is now. It might be worthwhile to add some logic before the battle starts, to change the effective numbers of troops depending on some conditions (eg. double the effective troops when on a planet type they like), but I'm not inclined to have different types of troops or different troop stats once a battle starts.

I agree with Geoff, but i would like to see new technologies increase the power of your troops as in MoO1.

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Maybe this isn't the right place, but (at least on Linux SVN 4593 & for a long while now), the red-except-for-Stealth bar graphs are correct and current, but the numbers under the icon (and the hover popup showing the details of the calculation) are always 0.00 for enemy and monster-controlled planets' Supply, Shield, Defense, Troops, and Detection. Stealth is shown numerically and its hover-over is populated.

For example, I am currently looking at a system with a Stealth of 15 and several of my Mark IIIs with Optical Scanners (Detection of 60) in orbit.

Except an enemy homeworld behaves differently. As with all planets, I can correctly see the Stealth number and hover-over calculations. Unlike other planets, I can additionally see the Troops number and the hover-over calculations. And the Troops meter is orange now instead of red.

Totally as an aside, this enemy homeworld planet and its constellation of defensive Mark I and IIs just defeated 30 of my Mark IIIs the turn they arrived with no defensive losses. Seems a little odd, game-balance-wise, but the planet does have a Defense of 25 and a Shield of 20, so maybe that's what's supposed to happen.

Anyway, I just thought I'd throw this out there...

Shields shouldn't help you defeat a fleet in the system.

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Please make a separate thread about that, preferably with a test save file attached.