[Argh]

Personally, I'd aim for a scenario where standard weapons would be close to useless for killing pop, myself. Most of the standard weapons are beams and such- not the things you'd use to kill people with- and I think that we have to assume that, in the far-flung future of SE:IV that they arrived at some good method of preventing folks from just dropping a lot of nuclear bombs all over the planet. . . maybe the solution isn't to prevent easy glassing with Planetary weapons, but to make the cost so horrendous in terms of damage to the planet that it's just not worth it when you do the math. Plus, I'd make Planetary arms pretty darn expensive.