Just so you know, that's not a Star Wars thing. Earth is a very odd planet in the grand scheme of the universe. Most solid planets are theorized to have mostly single biomes.
True, but most solid worlds are lifeless husks. We've only really seen the most of the moons and the rocky planets of our system, but they're all (as far as we know, some of jupiter/saturn's moons are promising) lifeless. Life seriously affects the biomes of a world. Without rainforests, most of those areas on Earth would just be deserts. Actually, pretty much all of Earth would be desert. Lifeless worlds seem to all be deserts, molten balls, or ice coated.
Yep, most worlds are completely lifeless. Many exoplanets are theorized to be rocky and inexplicably hot or cold compared to Earth. I don't expect all of Star Made's planets to have life on them either. Not saying that the desert or ice planets need to be devoid of life though. Life could come in many forms, or you can go the post disaster approach and have well adapted fauna/flora for a very hostile planet.
I think that based on one of Tomino's videos, planet sizes might be able to be changed, maybe as a startup or server side option.
An ice coated planet is highly likely to be a desert also, as the ice means a lack of liquid and therefore moisture. No moisture and you have something incredibly dry, aka a desert.
This is true. Planets are too small to have varied biomes (and they aren't really that realistic, Earth is an exception). If they were made larger, it would definitely be a possibility, but it comes with the downside of more lag (probably). If biomes varied very minimally, e.g. maximum two similar-climate biomes per planet, it could work with the current sizes.
Actually, mixing purple and ice planets would look fine... you could even have tendrils covered in ice on the borders if you wanted. Things like Ice and Lava, or Purple and Desert, etc. shouldn't mix though; yeah. :P
But now that planets are a collection of largeish plates as opposed to one single jumbo plate, biome variations could be much more doable. If we were still talking about disc worlds, I'd agree, but we aren't.
Now this would be cool. Ammonia based atmospheres are probably something possible too, for a corrosive type of planet.
It wouldn't have to be different biomes on the same plate. You could have an earth like planet, for example, with a section of ice plates near the north pole, forest most everywhere else, and a spattering of desert plates.
