Is bombardment too powerful?

[Grotius]

I know bombardment carries a stiff reputation penalty, but I still wonder if it’s overpowered. It seems one can completely destroy an enemy garrison if one bombards long enough. Yes, militia survive, but they’re weaker. Shouldn’t enemy regular troops survive but in a weakened state?

Or is the idea that militia represent this outcome already? Or that the defender should be researching planetary defense sooner? I’m still learning the game, but I notice that Scott raised the issue in his recent video on extreme difficulty. Thoughts?

[Scott2933]

Yes - it's OP in my opinion. I too would like to see some limit on how much you can bombard troops (to 15% or something) or perhaps some buildings you could create (bunkers, etc.) that could protect troops to a certain level. Right now all I do is destroy all of their troops and then just fight the militia. Too easy IMHO.

[Grotius]

Thanks for your reply. Those suggestions sound sensible to me.

Also, I enjoyed your extreme-difficulty video; I watched most of the second half. In fact I've now watched all three of your videos. That deep dive into point defense systems was awesome. I hope you keep them coming!

[gravyten]

I don’t think it’s too powerful because you destroy infrastructure on planet and population that would have been economically useful. I ended up destroying ruins on a planet and brought development down to 0 before conquering a planet

[EnDSchultz]

Against some Xenos, eradication is the only viable outcome.

Boskaro delenda est.

[Shogouki]

Realistically it makes sense that it would be super powerful. There's not a whole lot you can do to defend against bombardment unless you have very deep underground bunkers or you're an underwater civilization which could provide a lot of mitigation. If bombardment is too good against the AI perhaps they should be adjusted to make planetary shields a higher priority in a patch?

[baldamundo]

Massively overpowered at the moment. Even the lowest level specialist bombardment weapons can devestate a defending army in a matter of seconds basically. And since their ratio of military-damage to civilian-damage is higher than the later weapons, it really feels like there's really no point investing in the higher tech bombardment weapons. Although I guess it might be different if the AI ever builds planetary shield generators.

And relatedly reputation is really underpowered at the moment. Negative reputation fades away super quickly and doesn't seem to have particularly harsh consequences anyway.