Planetary Self Destruct (aka To Glass or Not to Glass, that is the Question)

An exploding planet destroying a whole system? That's a bit extreme, and can open a bic can of worms...

That almost sounds like rigging a nuclear bomb to a car and wiring it up to to a car alarm...

If you want to deter glassings, go for Wave Motion Guns, Massive Weapon Platform Mounts, and Large Weapon Platforms.
Plus some other Massive Mount Guns that can hit smaller targets, plus some, well, way to many PD weapons.

Massive Mount Wave Motion Gun has a range of 240ls, and enough firepower to oblitderate smaller ships, if luckly, before they even get close enough to fire off missile.

Other better things to add to deter glassing that don't involve Klingon thinking ("It's not suicide if you take out at least one enemy with you!").

Assorted things that could be added in, revolving around "Wrecking the planet".
That is, have all sorts of negative effects that can happen to a planet that's been bombed to bits.

Ruined environment.
The condition is temporarily deadly, slowly imrpoving at a rate of 1-5% per turn, so it takes time for it to 'recover', or simply be so damaged it is deadly until changed by the proper facilities.

Planet value takes a major hit, recovering by roughly 5% of the original value per turn (200% would restore 10% per turn, 100% would restore 5% per turn, 50% would restore 2% on odd turns and 3% on even turns, etc)
Or perhaps it needs to be restored with the proper facilities (which have to bring it back up to normal levels before they 'improve' the value past the pre-glassed values)

Rubble.
Destroyed facilities remain, and have to be cleared. Cannot simply be 'recycled' in one fell swoop, can only remove 1 per turn, or else possibly requiring the need to construct something called "clear rubble", in order to remove debris and free up facility space.

New atmosphere type, toxic.
Takes 10+ turns for the glassed planet to return to its 'original' atmosphere. Until then, a colony on it has to be domed, regardless of the atmosphere type so long as it is toxic.
Worst case scenerio, the atmosphere has to be changed with the one 'terraforming' facility.

"Time to shake, rattle and... oops, there goes the Kilrathi homeworld..."
For every set amount of damage the planet takes (10,000 * planet size?) there is a 1% chance the planet undergoes catostophic seismic activity that shakes the planet to bits (becomes asteroid field of proper size), and all ships, units, etc, in the sector have a random chance of being hit by chunks of planet, taking anything from minor damage (someone's mailbox) to " baseship pancake" levels of damage (remains of a mountain...)

You could make every weapon deal some infrastructure, value and planet conditions damage...

Here's an ideal, build a sun killer ship and cloak it near the sun. When the enemy over runs your system......BOOM!! ;D

Isn't there a fundamental problem with that "self-destruct" facility idea? If someone glasses the planet the facility will be gone (along with it's attributes) and nothing will happen. Unless you find a way to mod it in reverse perhaps - find a way to change it so that all colonies will naturally explode and then create a facility that stops them from exploding.

(giggles at the very thought...one possible situation follows)

Some guy (picture Homer Simpson) spills his beer on a control panel
at the planetary stabilization facility and the whole planet detonates

Or facility doesn't get built in time for some reason and your newly established colony explodes in a ball o death.

what fun!

People glass planets because it is easier than the alternative (capturing).

One of the reasons for this, is that there is little difficulty (in terms of time or resources) to build a planet back up. If there is a substantive reward for capturing a planet (such as saving the player a large amount of time and expense for rebuilding) then capturing becomes a more attractive option.

Also, perhaps you need technologies to prevent weapons fire from reaching your planet. Point defenses, planetary sheilds (requires ruins tech or modding), orbiting defenses, and fighters all help with this.

"Only by being constantly at war with evil in all things, including yourself, can you truely know peace."
Download my mod here: GidMod

Use different population bonuses, so small population = small CY rate and small production.
This means new colony takes long time to produce any facility and even longer before it starts contributing significantly (esp. if its domed).

I use sqrt(pop/1000) for SY rate and sqrt(sqrt(pop/200)) for production and it gives interesting resultss (bigger bonusess than standart for large&huge planets, but it does not go insanely high for realy big ones (ring/sphere), but it goes interestingly high for them.

With this, glassing = long time befero new colony produce anything, capture, you gain some facilities AND population. With standrd bonuses game population feels like its only important whether there is some pop or not, and as damage soaker. With modified, population is IMPORTANT asset so you does not want needlesly waste future subjects.

Here is an idea, build a facility on the planet. Then use the event turn to read the log for that turn and see if a planet with that facility was glassed or captured. If so have a event destory the planet.

He ponders the dangers inherent in the advantages, and advantages inherent in the dangers. - Ts'ao Ts'ao

Crimson