The problem is that this "retal option" can also be used as a "suicide option". I agree that it gives a bottomfed country 0 effective retal options, but without the change, the large country had 0 effective anti-suicide measures from getting 100k tech stolen a day. The tech stolen per turn is more than what most techers even tech per turn. The moment you retal twice, they blow up 10k buildings and 2m jets.