A thought on killing planets

[Sinapus]

I was just remembering a quote from one of the Starfire novels where an admiral (Antonov, if you're familiar with those books) remarks that it is impossible to completely annihilate a planetary population without rendering the planet uninhabitable.

Perhaps there -should- be a few survivors left after a battle, but make the planet like a colony with no people on it like after those cosmic storm events. There are still people on the planet, just not enough to run the facilities left (if they weren't all destroyed) and any reproduction won't reach the 1 million point for thousands of turns.

Rendering the planet uninhabitable should be something that takes several attacks that might as well be done outside of tactical combat if no defending units (or rushed in reinforcements) are available to oppose it. After that, the conditions should become Deadly, value should be 0% for all three and maybe a new atmosphere type should be installed that can't be selected as an empire's native atmosphere. Call it 'Radiated' or something like it.

So, if anyone -does- recolonize the planet, they'll have to build a lot of terraforming facilities first, just to make the atmosphere and conditions breathable. Maybe there's a way to set the values for planet conditions and the number to change an atmosphere to higher than normal so it takes even longer to make the planet remotely habitable again.

At this point, I think most players would rather blow up the planet and reform it again. So maybe the stats for the planet should stay the same even if you do that so you -have- to do some massive terraforming to get it back. Just to be as sadistic as possible both to the victim and victor.



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"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough
to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a
pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors
come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless
eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your
associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"