Re: A thought on killing planets
I've been thinking along the same lines as Apache. I'm working on a somewhat lengthy write-up of proposed changes to the troop & related portions of the game, that I plan to post over in the boarding topic. Part of the intent is to make troops more important in the overall scheme. My proposals include pretty much the same stuff:
1) Separate weapon damages for population and "everything else". Specialized weapons would be required to attack population, bevcause normal ones would be pretty bad at it.
2) The ability to set (via the options in tactical combat or the fleet strategy in strategic) how your ships fire at planets. You should be able to aim at WP's, aim at facilities or aim at population. For strategic, you would be able to specify more than one of those and it would do them in order. There would be severe penalties for aiming at population, though (diplomatic, happiness of your own people unless you are a xenophobe, reaction of the planet's population if you eventually conquer it).
3) You would not be able to reduce the planet's population below 5% of the planetary maximum via bombardment, even with plague bombs. This is for the reasons Apache stated. However, I'm assuming that even on domed planets there will be folks in small outlying facilities, caves, etc... so the rule applies even to domed planets (although 5% of planetary maximum population is still a much lower number on a domed planet). Not being able to wipe them out via plague bombs is because people living in small isolated Groups are pretty protected from the spread of disease. All of the above "reasons" are really justifications - the real reason is that I want to make it impossible to take a planet away from another empire without engaging in ground combat.
4) Bombing facilities would create "collateral damage" and kill some population as well, but this would neither carry the penalties or be able to reduce population below 5% of planetary maximum. It might make sense to have a third damage ability just for facilities, so that weapons designed to kill facilities could be given small population damages and no "everything else" damages.
5) Conquered planets have to be "assimilated" like in MOO2. However, they won't start that process until you make peace with (or eliminate) the empire dominated by the majority species on the planet, and the rate of assimilation is proportional to the attitude of that empire towards you (rate = 0 as long as they are "murderous"). They will never assimilate if you targeted the population. Until you assimilate the planet (or exterminate the population), you can't load or drop population there. You also have to keep a garrison proportional to the population of the unassimilated planet. Insufficient garrison = rioting.
6) Unassimilated planets rebel if the garrison is small enough (lower than the level at which they riot). Rebellion stops all production like rioting. If you have a garrison, you additionally incur troop loses proportional to the population as long as it is in rebellion. If there is no garrison (including the case where the above loses wipe it out), they are liberated and return to the empire dominated by the majority species on the planet. If that empire has been eliminated, they revive it.
7) If you are a Xenophobe (but only if your empire has that trait), after you conquer a planet you can use your troops to kill off the population. It would take a lot of troop firepower to kill a population point, though. Once you do this, they go into permanent rebellion regardless of your garrison size. You also get the same diplomatic penalties as for bombing the population (or maybe worse). If you kill them all, then it is like a planet you colonized but forgot to load population on the colony ship, and you can import population from elsewhere.
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