There are a number of factors to consider. Relative hardness, velocity of the cue, mass of the cue and contact area are the major ones.
Not all phenolics are made the same. Often plastics like this are reinforced with glass or mixed with other plastics, so you can have mismatches between cue tip hardness and phenolic ball hardness that may result in scratching the cue ball surface. For a polyester ball that is much softer, it just becomes almost a certainty. I suspect that is what might be going on with the G10. The last time I tried an experiment to find if there were non-organics in a product I tried burning it and weighing the results. It just made a mess and didn't resolve anything, but I would almost guess that the G10 is glass reinforced.
Scratching or dinging the surface is not the only way to damage the cue ball. If you have a very high velocity and high mass, hence a large kinetic energy transfer, a slight miscue where a sharp corner of the tip impacts the cue ball on a flaw, you may very well chip the cue ball. The kinetic energy transfer at that point will be converted to heat and a shock wave, so you may have momentary local temperatures of several hundred or a couple thousand degrees, enough to deform the plastic locally or maybe chipping it, depending on if you happened to hit a micro crack just right and fracture a piece (local stress is inversely proportional to square of the crack or defect diameter, basic fracture mechanics). For local temperature effects, note all the burn marks near the head line from cue ball acceleration on breaking.
Can you shatter a cue ball with a tip of equal or lower hardness? Think lead bullet and hard pool ball, so yes, but it is unlikely that any human can achieve those velocities. If there is a flaw in the ball, maybe, but I sure can't hit that hard. Might be an interesting experiment to do with old balls, an air gun, and some semi controlled condition. I've got boxes of those I would willingly donate to the advancement of science.