Haha, come on. So in the previously described scenario, 125 dreads could kill the planet in one round, but you would lose ~10 dreads in the process, not just 1.

Conversely, an undefended planet wipes out any attacking fleet of defense equal to 10 dreads in a single round (factoring in 2x DEF rating). That's ~470 destroyers, or 155 cruisers, for those of you following along at home. That's just to SURVIVE a SINGLE ROUND of combat against the "undefended" planet. Of course every subsequent round that many ships get wiped out again. If there are actually defenses in place, who knows.

So obviously planets are not meant to be attacked by conventional means. I admit, it's still early in the game, but I still don't see how anyone is going to amass those kind of fleets by the end of the game, and that's not even taking in to consideration that planets will be much more populated and well "defended" as the game progresses.

I'll reserve final judgement until I've played through a game or two, but this sounds crazy to me. Theoretically, it seems like this guarantees no meaningful early to mid-game interactions between players, since early to mid-game ships are not capable of being a threat to anyone. I suppose outposts are still relatively vulnerable (once the bugs there are fixed), but stealing someone's outpost is not going to have much of an effect at all in this game. To really hurt someone, you are going to have to take out their shipyards and colonies, which you simply won't be able to do conventionally. Fifty bucks says the guy who wins the games is the guy who played almost by himself until he hit the victory condition. Trader win seems most likely, but I can imagine a guy not having any conventional encounters with other players ultimately coming out of nowhere with a planet killer or solar tap and just quickly blowing up 15 worlds unopposed.