At one point I thought perhaps controlling planets (and thus the systems that contain them) could give passive resource gains via structures built on said planets called "mantle extractors". The idea being that you can cut out some of the boring mining process by owning systems. You would also need to protect these structures since they'd be largely non-home based from undesirables.
In a multiplayer perspective this means player contact and conflict over planet rich systems encouraging their interaction rather than the solitary (and rather boring) act of mining might make the game more fun. It means that a faction needs multiple bases and if you do not own a system then that disallows the construction of them (as a config option.)
Of course if you want to avoid the heat then you can go to a system with higher FP costs and less planets, no one will bother you, but its not as profitable.
I think this is a step in the right direction far more reasonable than the original idea.
- Enslaving AI population is definitely not something I'd encourage to be in a more-less casual style sandbox game like Starmade.
- It is not clear how that population can be represented. Spawning lots of AI's on planets might become a pointless burden on a server.
- Giving money is not a viable model. Resources should be the goal, and credits must only work as exchange tool.
= As there's asteroids and planets, both has to be independent and unlikely method of getting resources.
= Asteroids could be the faster way to get a bulk of resources, but asteroids belts would deplete and has to be replenished using Faction Points, as it is probably planned. Alternatively all mining activity can be stopped for a given belt for a time being to let it "repopulate itself". Depleted asteroid belt would only spawn a single asteroid per sector. Asteroids types should be tied to the Star class and limited to 4 types per system, thus creating territories valuable for industrialists depending on their intended trade. The more belts there is, the more uniform each belt containment in regard to asteroid type. When planet is destroyed, the depleted version of and asteroid belt takes the place of planet's orbit.
= Planets might be utilized by placing Extractors on them. Extractors would work as factory/enchancer system, but instead would extract shards/ores that a particular planet segment contains per server-determined time periods, and put them into controller block's inventory. Same periods would be used to manage planet's mineral replenishment, and overmining the planet for several periods would cause it to become poor. This system would require protection, as extracted resources can be stolen, Extractors salvaged and planet destroyed. Planets would also be respawnable for a large quantity of FPs from a saturated ansteroid belt. Planets mined in regular fashion would get reduced replenishment as max amount of resources would depend on the amount of blocks a segment has.
= Abandoned stations would not respawn at all, making them also a somehow valuable resource and allowing to "clean-up" a system, while encouraging raids out of the faction's space. Pirates would repopulate systems statistically up to a cap if those systems aren't visited by players and spawn new pirate bases when someone visit them after a while.
= Another possible feature that would definitely spice up star systems are dust/gas clouds. Resources could be collected by placing Extractors on a station within such cloud. Per time amount of resources would be lower, as planets clouds would give a steady income for prolonged periods of time, but depleted permanently. Clouds also should be spawnable by FP, creating a cluster of sectors infused by a random color cloud. On one point that would make a space for some interesting mechanics like hiding from sensor scans or reducing ship stats within a cloud. On the contrary, it would require significant additions to game's resources to make those areas visible outside and inside the dust/gas cloud.
