My next question is orbital bombardment and ground combat collateral damage. I can't seem to find a post (either because it is lost or my search skills are terrible) for the orbital bombardment mechanics (population damage, dust/radiation, and installation damage). Additionally, the Ground Combat rules post(s) do not include information about collateral damage.
Could I get some information on those mechanics for posterity?
Planetary bombardment causes 100,000 deaths per point of damage, creates one point of dust per point of damage, creates radiation damage equal to the radiation damage rating of the missile and inflicts infrastructure damage equal to (Pop Death in millions * 20). It also damage installations according to the following process.
A planetary 'damage allocation chart' is created for each attack. This is similar to the DACs for ship classes. Each installation has a target size so each line on the DAC is equal to the target size of each type of installation (e.g. construction factories) multiplied by the number of those installations on the planet. So if all you have on the planet is 100 construction factories, 90 fighter factories and 10 ordnance factories, the chance for each type to be hit is 50%, 45% and 5% respectively. Some installations are larger and therefore are more likely to be hit. For example, Research Labs, Genetic Modification Centres, Military Academies, Sector Command and GFTF are all size 20, Spaceports are size 40, Civilian Mining Complexes are size 10, Terraforming Installation are size 6 and Deep Space Tracking Stations are size 2. Everything else is size 1.
Collateral damage is a little complex and based on the readiness losses taken by both sides. Here is the pseudo code for when damage to attacking units is checked
Base Destruction Chance = (10 / Combat Ratio) * 10
Destruction Chance = Base Destruction Chance / (Current Morale / 100)
Readiness Loss Modifier = 1
If Destruction Chance > 1000 Then Readiness Loss Modifier = Destruction Chance / 1000
If RandomNumber(1000) <= DestructionChance Then Readiness Loss = (RandomNumber(50) / (Current Morale / 100)) * Readiness Loss Modifier
Collateral Damage = (Readiness Loss / Readiness Loss Modifier)
For damage to defenders, the code is the same except for the first line which is now:
Base Destruction Chance = Combat Ratio * 100
All the collateral damage is added together and then a planetary bombardment attack is carried out with a strength equal to Collateral Damage / 50. However, in this case the population casulaties are lower than a standard planetary bombardment and are equal to 25,000 x damage. There is also no radiation damage.
Steve