I guess we have to agree to disagree on there being no incentive to protect an empire ' s worlds . Empires consist of planets , not navies , so to sacrifice the former would be to not only allow an enemy to strike a devastating blow against your morale , but bleed out your industry on top of it . Allow an enemy to enter orbit unchallenged and you are inviting a level of destruction that may take decades to fix , all because you didn ' t see fit to provide protection against even small flotillas . Let the enemy repeat this pattern a few times and soon there will be no more empire , only a collection of burning worlds . You may be left with a fleet unhindered by a need to protect civilian targets , and one that has not suffered casualties in valiant defense of your nation ' s worlds but everything these crews have fought for will be gone . Their homes in ruin , their families dead , the very Imperial court reduced to rubble . All that ' s left is a Nomad Fleet . I would also expect that a ruler who neglects the defense of his or her planets invites betrayal , for they demonstrate a lack of concern for that which they are supposed to protect . Democratically elected regimes will be subject to even more pressure , and that is before we entertain the possibility that the ruler actually is an idealist who believes in protecting their people . And yes , the patriotic defense of Stalingrad was tacked on , but that is exactly what I was referring to earlier pride . Politicians , including emperors , generally relish the power and responsibilities they were given as part of their station , to the point where they regard their nation and its people as their personal belongings , including taking offense if someone else does something to them . With the blockade I was referring more to the planet ' s industrial capacities . As long as its factories keep churning out munitions and materiel , the planet will remain a valuable asset to the war effort . The product just needs to reach the military , so it has to be transported offworld and to a staging area for distribution to the fleet . You don ' t use warships to run a blockade , you use fast transport ships . Blockade runners . To stop these you ' d have to cast a net that is both far enough from the planet to evade its own defenses creating another reason for them to be constructed in the first place , yet close enough that no transport will be able to slip through . With space being threedimensional , that means a lot of ships . The transports in Stellaris do not appear to have a poor mobility to me . On a sidenote , you do not know how much it would cost to build a generator capable of shielding a planet . The only real value we actually have here is the one the game provides , and though I would not necessarily argue this to be a realistic assessment , 350 minerals certainly is not the equivalent of millions of ships . I also contest the idea of shield generators adding at most a week to planetary bombardment , for this would mean that any and all bombardments in Stellaris are over within 7 days max . That simply is nowhere near what actually happens in the game , unless you ' re using some kind of mod . The only point where I agree with you would be that it ' d be nice for Stellaris to model supply lines , perhaps a la Hearts of Iron IV , if that ' s what you were implying in the last paragraph . Although I should point out that during bombardment , Pops cease generating resources , so in a very abstracted way the blockade of resources is already part of the game . On a sidenote , I would expect any assault on an orbiting spaceport to also involve planetbound defense batteries , just like it works in other games such as Master of Orion II , or scifi in general .