Pretty much. Steve is trying to encourage ground combat. That is why there are no dedicated kinetic kill weapons, chemical weapons or for that matter simple HE. Lasers should be effective orbital fire support but well since they are not allowed except against planets without much of an atmosphere for game balance I gather your choice is: a solid ground force or calling in Sgt. Nuke'm.
My personal feeling is that people have been declaring ground combat dead ever since not long after WW1 and strange but true it still seems to occur. Even with modern sensors, spy sats, drones, etc. Air superiourity is a force multiplier but 0x(whatever) = 0. And I see no real reason that orbital superiority will be significantly different. Admittedly saturation nuclear bombardment is something that does render ground combat null and void, but it does have a serious draw back in terms of ecological damage.
But the problem is you are basically dealing with a game balance type issue here for which I can see the arguments on all sides. It is not a problem with a simple easy solution.