Oh and as for being "fair" to the AI. . . hehe, I'm planning to play humans, which are the only decent opponants I'm likely to find. The AI's reaction is too clumsy to really tell me how this is going to work when I deploy it against humans in PBW
And on the topic of diplomatic relations. . . well MOOII had a severe negative diplomatic penalty for using biological warfare. . . personally, I found it ridiculous that you could use Stellar Converters to slag every planet(but one) in a system, kill every living soul on the Last one, and reprocess the resulting asteroid rings into much better planets. . . with no diplomatic penalties, other than making the defeated empire even more angry.
At the very least, it'd be nice if SE:IV/G would at least
INFORM players when a solar system has been. . . heh. . . radically altered. That should be shot heard 'round the galaxy, unless your Empire is composed of people with very heavy sacks over their heads