(October 22nd, 2015, 20:12)Psillycyber Wrote: Does the game really calculate each stack separately? That's kind of weird. One would think that the game would pool all of the stacks together in the same way that it does on the combat screen when several fleets converge on a planet on the same turn. Strange.
That's my understanding. (I think the last time I tested this was Imperium 14 or something, but still...) It makes sense from a game balance perspective: The player's ability to coordinate transports from multiple planets - something the AI will never even attempt - is very powerful already, and if they all went in as a single stack, it would (in some cases greatly) reduce the value of maintaining space superiority, an important and way-more-challenging-and-enjoyable-than-fiddling-with-transport-timings part of the game.
(Of course you could add flavor justification too, as they can't possibly be that well coordinated and unlike spacecraft, have no measure for last-minute coordination; they're on a one-way trip short of Hyperspace Comm, with no way to retreat. But that's just justification-after-the-fact for a decision that was all about balance.)