Actually, if you stop and think about it, the number of people that suffer violent deaths in this game is pretty staggering. Frigate / cruiser crews, capital crews, colonizer capital crews, civvie structures, tactical structures, starbases, vasari colony starbases. Death of planet-bound colonists by slow poisoning from high-yield nuclear warheads, being sucked into space by the Egg, or slaughtering friends and family in a Revelation-induced panic.
It's not called 'Charitable Acts of a Solar Empire'
Well, that's not as if i have not been thinking about it and having a look at the crew figure in the manual.
I know it's not really rationnal but civilians are civilians, military are military even if sins is a game and planet population are just some data.
Nevertheless, i can't be totally ok with that. Don't imagine things, i play the game and bomb planets but if there was a way to play less evil, i would just be happier. That's why i bring the idea of invading planet instead of burning them.
I don't want to be moralistic either, see it the way you want, it just annoyed me enough to write that post.