CUBE SHAPE:
Schema already tried cube shaped planets and decided they wouldnt work because they looked like this:
Notice that there are no edges and corners to the planet making it look ugly, This could be fixed by adding Wedges, Corners, Heptas, And Tetras as well as slabs and diagonal gravity to all the natural terrain blocks making it possible to slope over those edges making planets into rounded cubes, Now you might think this impossible considering the current roughness of planets, that could be fixed by making the planetary surfaces primarily minecraft style planes. And the diagonal gravity would make the edges and corners of the planet habitable as well, But the biggest advantage to this would be that planetary block grids would remain entirely uniform making separate plates on a core unnecessary and making the standard HP system applicable to planets, As well as reducing lag.
REMOVE COLOR ORBS AND FIX SCALING ISSUES:
You can see multiple errors with this feature, For one thing the glassy orb surrounding planets looks nothing like the planetary atmosphere, And you might also notice that the planet model is larger than the planet itself. When generating planets even from long range the first thing calculated should be size so the model can be scaled to it and the planet when generated so it all remains properly in sync.
MAKE CURRENT PLANET TYPES A MINORITY:
When a player discovers a Terran planet or any of the other kinds They should be happy to have found a rare resource rich planet rather than bored at another random green world, The solution to this would be to introduce a percentage to what kinds of planet are generated and add a new kind of planet. To replace the current classes of planet a Barren class would be introduced, it would be completely lacking in life of any sort or even atmosphere, its surface would compose of primarily rock and would have very few minerals or shards Basically like the moon. Also for ever 100 or so planets generated only one would be a terran (See graph below):
This would greatly reduce the abuse and over-exploitation that every planet of the original classes receive because of their rarity and beauty compared to the barren worlds they will be highly valued as faction bases and mining colonies and efforts may be taken to protect them rather than use them for target practice.
MOONS:
I know that the devs already intend to add moons to the game but my suggestion is slightly different, Moons would have the same single-entity cube shape that i suggested before and they will be generated from the same planet classes However they will be significantly smaller and the benefits of being a single entity is their mobility meaning that they will be attached to their mother planet with a wireless Rail like attachment system allowing them to orbit the planet itself.
RINGS:
These will sometimes show up in place of a moon, Basically a random block noise generator within a general ring shape, it would rotate around the planet in the same way as a moon, except it wouldn't have gravity.
MINOR FACTIONS:
This would probably be added with the fauna update, all planet classes with the exception of barren have the chance of generating small semi-tribal settlements, these would be very sometimes hostile and other times very friendly they make good trade partners because resources such as ship cores and other standard resources would be unavailable to them as they have no factory tech, so you will be able to trade these simple space items with them for large amounts of raw minerals and shards which they have very little idea what to do with, Militarily they would be very weak however each villager would be armed with its own laser pistol likely provided by the trading guild meaning that players early into the game without any sufficient shields or armor could be driven off, But even a simple isanth would still be enough to wipe out their settlements.
MILITARY OUTPOSTS:
AI faction would have military outposts on every planet within their territory, these heavily armed structures would ensure protection for the planet and anyone on it, Any players being pursued by pirates could escape by traveling to a Trade-Guild planet, And pirate planets would be also armed but very rare to find as pirates prefer hiding in void sectors.
ROGUE WORLDS:
In void sectors there woould be a 5% chance of finding a barren planet there, They would be very dark and would frequently contain pirate bases.
SELF HEALING PLANETS:
This is a very simple idea, all weapon damage that a planet (All except barren.) takes will slowly heal itself, this means that players will no longer come across worlds griefed beyond recognition, The Nerfing of build blocks that happened a long time ago combined with self healing would mean that all planets with the exception of barren worlds will heal and griefing will slowly become a thing of the past. As any veteran player will tell you, Planets are use for capital ship target practice, and while not removing the ability to shoot planets, The damage would not be permanant, Ensuring all worlds except barren (Whose damage would simply erode.) would remain pristine.
I hope you guys like my suggestions.
