it doesn't really cause GFFP, because all it does it kill off civilians. It does little to deal with extant PDCs or - in particular - ground forces. Those are what stop you from freely seizing infrastructure. (Or would if NPRs used PDCs... :^)
Good point on the ground forces. Maybe that's why more people aren't using it.
That being said, I just went back and re-read the original (I think) article:
http://www.cfar.umd.edu/~keverill/Games/Starfire/Genocide.html and it reminded me of a few things I'd forgotten. I also found this link on Matt Wadwell's old (archived) geocities site:
http://www.geocities.ws/mwadwell/Playaids.html It has a link to what looks like a later/longer analysis.
First, for those that don't speak Starfire:
PU/PTU = population
IU = industry (construction factories etc., but it's abstracted into income and can be sold off)
PU facilities = kind of like emplaced infrastructure, but it's required even for habitable worlds
PI/I1/I2 = pre-TN tech levels (primitive, industrial1/2)
HT = TN tech level
PCFn = ground forces at tech level n
SEC = security troops
CFN = Civilian Freight Network; effect similar to contracts with civies, except ships are abstracted out and not tracked directly.
So (my understanding of) what the GFFP article says is (roughly):
1) Build big ground forces
2) For PI and I1 NPR simply invade and quickly crush their ground forces with your ground forces.
3) For I2 (or higher?), nuke their ground forces to the point where your ground forces can quickly crush them, then invade.
4) If/when they rebel, use "active reprisals" by ground forces to kill off the population. I would argue that this is the equivalent of the terraforming trick in Aurora, except it's even worse in Aurora than in SF since in SF you need to kill off all their ground forces first, while in Aurora you can start killing population from the start. In addition, I think that the conquered population needs to be in rebellion in order to apply active reprisals, which again makes it more difficult to kill population in SF.
That being said, I think Aurora has a MUCH lower motivation for actually killing off the population once you've conquered them - nothing stops you from planting your own colony on their world, you can already steal their factories, and they won't have any infrastructure (assuming it's their home world) for you to steal. Note that this is what the 2nd article says - to solve GFFP the game needs to make enemy populations more valuable alive than dead. I think that the terraforming trick still goes against this, since it at least keeps the enemy from building more ground forces etc. once they're dead.
John