What happened to the Planet Bombardment weapons?

So I remembered this cause I'm reading one of the SC novels at the moment... in the beginning, the Protoss completely wipe out Chau Sara (or was it Mar Sara?) with planet bombardment weapons to annihilate the zerg infestation. Then they stop because they don't want to hurt anymore Terrans.

But what happened to those weapons? Why can't they use them on a planet like Char? That seems to make far more sense than landing and engaging the zerg forces directly.

 

I'm not sure if this is canon, but I seem to recall reading that it takes quite a few ships, and those ships are completely defenseless during the glassing process, needing all the power that their cores make. No engines, no shields, and no guns. There's simply not enough ships in the Protoss fleet to protect a few dozen greatships scattered around in orbit.

 

Like Fenix mentioned, they simply don't have enough ships to do it anymore. It wasn't used in starcraft 1 because Tassadar, on his first visit, did not know that it was the zerg base of operations and the Dark Templar never had that kind of firepower.

 

Timing.

According to Queen of Blades and Twilight, after the debacle at Tarsonis, Tassadar told his followers to leave. He would take one ship (Gantrithor) to the planet that Kerrigan was broadcasting her plea from ... Char. Zeratul had one ship there too.

Two ships wouldn't be enough to purify a planet. Afterward the zerg learned the location of Char from Zeratul's mind and almost immediately launched an attack on Aiur. By that point, the protoss needed their forces to defend their homeworld, and purifying their own world wasn't a good idea.

Artanis and Aldaris later came to Char to arrest Tassadar. It's doubtful they brought a large enough force to burn Char. (In fact, given their desperate fight back on Aiur, they wouldn't have been able to spare those forces.)

The protoss won the Great War, but they lost the protection of their fleets. I take that to mean they lost most of their ships. Since the Brood War ended, the protoss have purified a few planets and tried to purify Haven, too. They can pull this off again, but it's doubtful they could tackle a well-defended zerg planet to do so. (The purifier mothership was vulnerable enough that Raynor's Raiders could take it out.)

 

Balance-wise, it would be pretty OP if 1 mothership and 20+ carrier could wipe out an entire map.

Secondly, in the mission haven's fall, ONE mothership can purify a whole map if left unattended (maybe whole planet). So why couldn't they have done the same to the other planets??? Also, they don't need any ships to protect the mothership. All they need is 3-4 nexus in the planet to protect the ship. So basically this thing dosen't make sense -.-

 

well, most of that is thanks to something called story and gameplay segregation. It's one of the main reasons why it is so hard to argue lore behind pc games without books to support it.

 

IF is a big word.

All Raynor had to do was destroy three or four "nexii" (as they were called in that mission). He could do it even though the Purifier was summoning carriers and other ships to defend itself.

The protoss couldn't do that to Char, due to the massive number of zerg flying around. Where would you warp in those "nexii"? The Dominion fleet found this out the hard way.