Destroying Planets

There are no terror stars, if thats what you are asking. The closest you can get is the Korath super ability, spore weapons, which poisons a planet's atmosphere, killing all life.

You might be able to destroy it's quality with mass drivers and other invasion tactics.

No you cannot eliminate a planet like in Galciv1. Mebe George lucas complained??

Hmm what about a tech that would allo smaller planets to be destroyed and becoming asteroid belts. I can see my Industrial Capital pumping ships like a mad man alrdy

Actually, I found a way. I conquered a planet, but had only 100 million people left. It was in contested space, so the AI was going to recover it in about 2 turns. In the planet summary screen there is a button labelled destroy planet. I thought it would allow me to abandon it and recolonize later. No, it reduced the planet to Class 0.

As far as I know, there is no way of destroying a planet short of conquering it.

Galen

Reducing it to Class 0 would serve the same purpose I guess. I like to micromanage so once I've got a few planets I don't really want very many more so would rather conquer then destroy permanently instead of keeping planets .

So the destroy colony button is simply replaced with destroy planet in dark avatar ?

You would have been better off giving it to a minor race. Minor races can hold planets under severe influence

Yah, but then whoever he doesnt' want to have it can take it from them and have it built up somewhat. This way, it's worth nothing now. Though I cant understand why you would ever want to destroy one of your own planets. You can always use it form something, even a money maker.

put 8 scrap ships around the planet and no one who isn't at war with you can take it.

You carn't use it for a money maker if it is going to influence flip.