Actually, Jubala, that's not at all what I was talking about.
I don't think that special damage Ratings for UNIT types is a good idea at all. Now, something I suggested to MM a while ago was a seperate damage multiplier for both shields and armor, so you could have many shades of varying weapon effects. The Time Distortion Burst would not need a special ability, for example, it would just have a shield damage rating of 400 percent. Other weapons could have 200 percent or 110 percent or 50 percent if you judge that the technology is less effective against shields. This would allow a huge range of interesting weapon technologies with varying effects on shields and armor, bringing all sorts of tactical options. I suspect that it would require a rewrite of the entire damage engine/system in SE IV to do this, though, so I'm not holding my breath for them to do it. Sigh...
But back to ground attack.
There can NOT be a special target type of "WP" because WPs do not appear in combat. They are an attribute of a planet, and can only be hit by firing on the planet. What you don't seem to understand is that damage to WPs is NORMAL. Unaltered by any modifiers. Damage to population is affected by the "damage to kill one population" setting in the settings.txt file. If you crank this setting WAY up, to 100 to 1 or so, it becomes nearly impossible to 'glass' a planet as the phrase goes. So, if you then create a special power for weapons to CANCEL this ratio you have a weapon that will do more damage to POPULATION specifically than any other sort of weapon. 100 times more. Yet, it doesn't have an ACTUAL damage level 100 times higher than other weapons and so cannot be used to smoke planetary defenses as the current Planetary Napalm can be used. This creates the need for realistic specialization. You need standard combat ships to take on the planetary defenses, but then you need a dedicated bombardment ship to take out the widely distributed population and industrial complexes.
[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 21 January 2001).]