The Importance of Planets

[TungstenWall]

As much as I would like to see planets expanded on, I think the best direction would be to add more interesting objects to space.

Intractable Nebula made of voxels would be great IMO. Unlike a planet that only fills in a point in space, a Nebula could envelop multiple (forming) solar-systems. Depending on the species, they could offer a range of resources, hazards, restricted movement (warp), and concealment to the game.
They could become the equivalent of Mountains and Mineshafts, but would still be explored using the focus of the game, Spaceships.

I think time and effort would be better there, than using on a part of the game most players would seek to escape as quickly as possible to reach the space endgame.

In the long run: I would love an alternative option for resource collection. Exploring a procedural generated world, looking for rare materials, on a vehicles the size of a small aircraft carrier. A bit specialized, but I could see the fun.

 

[Nosajimiki]

While I agree more "space-things" to explore would be cool, planets are a core element to that. Right now there is just nothing that planets produce that asteroids dont produce better (unless you need a giant heap of rock to make some mass-decoys). If planets were the origin point for credits and/or other unique resources, they would become more of tactical assets and worthy of exploration. Their lack of scale is also a bit of a problem. A planet that can be mined up in 5-10 minutes is not as neat as one that would be prohibitively large to stripe mine.

Another approach would be if planets had macro-veins of resources. Right now a vein of resources is a tiny cluster of ore blocks, and it is only a few blocks over from the next vein, but if planets had asteroid sized veins of solid ore blocks, but they were really spread out so that they'd have a lower total density than asteroids, then going down to a planet to prospect it first would be able to yield great returns, and passive planet eaters would be less encouraged.