[Mzyxptlk]

You don't have to page me, I read everything. :P

In my mind, there have always been 4 distinct categories of ways to interact with other planets in Planetarion. Scanning to gather information, attacking to improve your planet, defending to protect your friends, and cov opping to hurt your enemies. The last few years, the waters have gotten a bit muddier, with Warp Core Sabotage stealing ships for a while, and Security and Network Defection stealing guards and agents, respectively. In addition to those, Bank-System Hacking and Structure Killers have always been the odd ones out, but by and large the interaction types I outlined above hold.

Given that, I think roid destruction is a fine cov op, in principle.

That said, I agree that destroying roids is not as good for your planet as stealing them: the amounts involved are negligible and the alert cooldown period stops repeated attempts, so not even a dedicated cov op team could seriously harm another alliance. Considering the general dislike of cov ops, though, I don't really see how we could improve the situation: either it's good enough to use, and everyone will hate it, or it isn't, and no one will use it.