Planetary bombardment(genocide)

[KillerManJaro]

Changing that stat would make it harder to kill pop with both standard and specialized wheapons. You'd have to up damage done by the planet-only wheapons as well to compansate.

So. Damage to kill 1 pop = 500 Damage done by Planetary Naplam I = 10000. That would keep the ratio of specialized wheapons the same (1 bomb kills 20 pop), while making normal wheapons quite useless. Then, you have to convince the AI, somehow, not to keep sending normally-armed ships against your planets....

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KMJ

[Kev]

Yes you can increase a population's resilience to weapons, but one only wonders if the AI can alter its strategy and tactics to accommodate this - it might continue to stupidly bomb planets to almost no effect, which is the result I've gotten after trying it.

This is a major flaw in the game. You can invade AI colonies but they must take the slower route of bLast\colonize. It's not much fun to play like this, either.

It was the same in SE3. I had been hoping this gameply issue had been fixed in SE4. Aaron, if you're reading this, can you plan and implement some ways to address this weakness?

[Jubala]

Killermanjaro,

If you tweak it like that taking out weapon platforms will suddenly become a walk in the park. A few of those overpowered planetary napalm bombers and weapon platforms are just a memory.

[Seawolf]

Kev,

Why is this a flaw?

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Seawolf on the prowl

[General Hawkwing]

I agree that a population should be harder to destroy from space with beams/direct fire weapons. One can wipe out a 1000 mil planet with platforms with 3-4 LC's (armed w beams)in one combat. Maybe the game could be set to wipe out all but the Last 1 million pop with beams, bombs or tropps would be needed to defeat the Last scattering of people. I'm not sure how hard that would be to program though.
I also agree that it is a waste to clear a planet with pop that breathes another atmosphere. What should be used is weapons to destroy facilities only (selectively would be best) and clear a few of the people if need to make troop take over more likely.

[rdouglass]

I've found that if you try to kill off all pop on a full planet, you severely reduce it's conditions. I guess if you want to colonize a planet with deadly conditions (after you kill off 4 Billion people) you're welcome to it.

I remember SE3 being very easy to just wipe out the pop with no repercusions. It is a LOT harder IMO to 'purge' a pop. To begin with, you need a LOT more firepower - A LOT MORE. Those of you who have SE3, load it and compare - you'll see what I mean.

All that said, I do agree that the whole issue still need "tweaking". If any of you play SMAC, maybe it should be treated like a "Planet Buster". In SMAC (Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri), if you use a 'planet buster' missle, all the other players almost immediately declare war on you (in SMAC its called vendetta). Maybe that might work and may be a relatively simple (programming wise) solution.

Thoughts????

[LintMan]

I also prefer to capture an enemy world rather than destroy it. But the AI doesn't...

Has anyone ever been invaded with troops by the AI?

I had thought it would be a fairly simple code change to adjust some weapons to do less damage to population, but I guess that if it was made harder to destroy a planet with direct fire weapons, the AI would have to be tweaked to know that and use alternate methods.