The convert-to-asteroids idea is interesting, but I guess I'm not much in favor of adding a tech for colonizing the "0's," for several reasons.

First, we already have a mechanism with Extreme Colonization for grabbing more planets in the mid to late game. I'm not sure what this idea adds, that you couldn't get just by bumping up the number of planets/habitables in the setup screen. For players like me who don't really enjoy micro-managing hundreds of planets, this would just add more micro to the game.

Also it doesn't seem very realistic (and yeah, I know realism isn't everything). It makes sense that even with advanced tech, some worlds are going to be easier to terraform than others. Mars would be easier than Venus, Venus easier than Mercury, and Pluto or Charon would be rough outposts, not planets you could "grow" into more tile sizes for improvements. We'll be colonizing moons in our system before we bother with Pluto.

And then there are the gas giants, which represent a lot of the type "0's" in the game. Those are not terraformable, in the usual sense. Colonizing a gas giant basically means putting bases on the moons, or artificial habitats in orbit. The game's tile system for improvements isn't set up for that.

Finally some planets are going to be in just impossible situations, like bathed in hard radiation from the primary star, or as part of a binary system where climates won't be stable. This is partially represented by the blue, orange, white, and green (green??) stars in the game, that tend not to have the prime planets. I like the idea that we can't colonize everything in the game's galaxy. It seems more realistic, and makes us appreciate the better planets.

P.S. I do think we should have a toggle for switching off the "0" planets, since it's just screen clutter after the first colonization phase.

Hmm. All good points, and I admit having an option to simply switch off class "0"'s would be just as good... unless you could asteroid them, of course . The fact that terror stars produce asteroids from planets already suggests that it should be fairly easy to build a smaller planet only destroying mechanic.

It would be nice to have 1 tile on 0 planets, like an outpost of some sort: reconnaissance, research, etc. Maybe even a Smuggler's Den .

More macman doesn't really enhance gameplay, true.

Since "0" planets are kind of decorating the map, they might as well be used for something else, though without being too intrusive towards the actual features.

This is where, i guess, what i suggested in the post "Optimal hexagon tiles" found here; WWW Link - may come in handy.

Complex, but there is a new layer for orbital-like tiles potential within such a design.

But, then again, even that "idea" also ADDS to micman processing.

There's another possibility too; a sort of lonely espionage-type outpost which would only need a single tile for operation (represented by satellites in orbit... one may think of Saturn's relatively large network of natural moons, Oberon, etc which are big enough to provide room for such an indirect base and/or kinda facility.

All theorized but worth considering, i hope, for later version (or expansions).

- Zyxpsilon.

I like the idea of putting resources on planets... seems a lot more logical than the abstract "power up" presentation they use now. OTOH, I can think of two potential problems with that idea (always looking for the downside, I guess):

Current resources use the starbase game mechanic for construction, upgrades, attack and defense. I don't know how that could be ported to a surface mine on a planet without a new UI, new combat animations, etc. Sounds like a lot of work for the devs, just to make it more logical than floating them out in open space.

Also, resources and anomalies are scattered more-or-less evenly across the map, so everyone has a fair shot at them, regardless of whether stars are widely distributed, tightly clustered, many stars or few stars. If resources are tied to star systems, then with some map setups there could be an unfair distribution for some factions (and a jackpot for others). I'm not sure how you'd get around that.