[geoschmo]

Also,

What exactly is the concern with monster planets being captured? What is it about the facilities that makes them so valuable?

Maybe you are planning this already, I didn't see it discussed, but you can make the monster ships self replicating (construction ability) and negative maintenance (old P&N mod did this IIRC) and the monsters won't be dependant on planets to survive. Make the planets ordinary, if they are captured, no big woop. And once they are captured or killed then the monster ships become impervious to intel attacks.

Actually that's good. Monster ships could build copies of themselves. But the planets (monster nurseries) can build them much faster. So the incentive for the players is to get the planets as quick as possible to cut down on the numbers, and then hunt down the ones that got away.

Although, I am not sure the monsters will attack your ships once there planets are gone, because they won't have any reason to get angry anymore. They might just go idle.

Geoschmo