How does Orbital Bombardment work?

[Kytuzian (OP)]

I know that you can shoot missiles (or beam weapons if the atmosphere is less than 1 atm, or mesons at any planet) at planets and make them surrender. I'm looking for the formulas/exact information about how much bombardment it takes to make a planet surrender.

[Sheb]

You can't shoot beam weapons at population, so it has to be nukes if you want to force their surrender that way.

[AL]

I've gotten population surrenders from shooting lasers before. I think technically I shot at the ground forces contact and the overkill amount of lasers I had caused the population to surrender too, but still...

[Sheb]

Really? I don't think you can target ground units with lasers either (you can target PDC though methink). I need to test this.

[AL]

I've done it in my recent game in 7.10 so it is definitely a thing.

[Sheb]

Ooooh, that's good to know. Does it work with other beam weapons?

[AL]

I think yes to particle beams and railguns, no to mesons and microwaves (for obvious reasons). I believe I tested both others at some distant time in the past but not in the current version (probably 6.3 or so).