[Puke]

lowering the mineral or radioactive value of a planet would require lowering its mass. its not enough to glass the surface, and pound it to mush. you have to physically REMOVE MASS. Sure, you should be able to pre-infest planets with plagues, or drop their conditions to deadly. Maybe even reduce their organics value, if that was codeable. but reducing the raw ammount of minerals that can be mined? how? its a planet. its made of minerals. its made of radioactives too, just less of them, and closer to the core.

which reminds me, did anyone read the hypothesis about the center of the earth being a large, naturally occuring, breeder-reactor (due to dense radioactives settling at the center of gravity)? It went a long way towards explaining lots of previously inexplicable phenominon with the planets magnetic field.