FreeOrion

It would be cool if the asteroid belts also came in the same array of sizes that planets have.
Thus a tiny planet could be blown up into a tiny asteroid belt, and a huge asteroid belt could be gathered together to create a huge planet.

Or even better when a planet is smashed with super-planet busting weapons, it creates an asteroid belt one size smaller than the original planet, thus accounting for mass lost/consumed in the explosion. It can't be rebuilt, "good as new," but as a smaller planet. This is i think a reasonable balance between destruction and construction.

With the loss idea, there would need to be an asteroid belt size smaller than "tiny" for the result of the destruction of a tiny planet— "negligible", "trivial" or "insignificant"? These belts couldn't be built into a planet.

Of course, all this would require a change in the engine so that planet type (habitable, asteroid, or gas) and planet size become distinct concepts, but that would be nice anyway. I'd like to be able to have Gas Giants with some size variation as well.

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I support this idea. It also makes some astorid mines more valuable than others.

I like the idea of neglible asteroid belts too.

I brought up something like this previously. I think the response was "come back later", or something to that effect.

More or less it's something for a later version to possibly implement.

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I was thinking about the idea of asteroid belts but I don't think they need more depth than they already have. What I was thinking was that in later stages of a game (Say; turn 500 on v0.6 or higher) Terraforming will allow most players to eventually turn all of their planets into Gaia.

So I thought of Asteroids as a way of balancing this out. When any planet is destroyed by a doomsday device or something (ie stellar converter) it becomes an asteroid belt. Then a player who has a settlement in that system (including an asteroid base) can reform the asteroid belt (an item in the production queue) into a tiny size barren planet.

This way although it means you would only get tiny planets from the belts, it would still offer a level of loss to players. They've lost a large Gaia world to their wars, the closest they can get to getting it back is a much smaller version.

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Captain? What does the big shiny red button do?

Thats a very nice idea!
I think this would make great effect on the game.

What is also important (maybe doesnt fit perfectly here) is that a player should be able
to form artificial planets even in systems that are uninhabitable. so differently like MoO2.
Perhaps when all habitable planets are destroyed by war there should be a possibility to
recreate planets without having a colony in the system....perhaps in ship form?

How about "Planet Module"

It could be like a "Colony Module" attatchment in MoO3, except it would need a Leviathan sized ship to carry it. Sure it's a little "out there" it would probably be towards the end of the tech tree, but it would be a pretty cool idea!

"You there!" yelled the Archon "This galaxy is getting thin on worlds, get the Sol system and make me a new homeworld!"
"Yes my lord, right away." answered the blighted captain before stumbling out of the throne room.

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Captain? What does the big shiny red button do?

I don't really like the idea of restricting it to only tiny worlds. It'd be kinda pointless...

Now another thought has occured to me. A mine-ish facility that you built at an asteroid field (or place in empty planet zone) to increase it's size. Not something that would work immediately, but something that would take time and considerable resources to do it's job.

Also, for spawning worlds created from asteroids. I'd make it use the standard chart for determining what planet type to spawn. It'd be extremely imbalanced if certain races always got worlds they liked, while the others never did. In MoO2 it was balanced because nobody preferred to live on barren worlds. But this game is planned to have your planet type of choice be part of your race.

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I think that maybe if barren worlds are more common, and EP preference of barren would be worth more picks to balance it.

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True, that is one planned addition when races are actually added into the game. Of course the other extreme is toxic. Toxic would give you a crapload of points to spend simply by virtue of you not getting many planets.

Regardless of this, it'd still be horribly imbalance to have planet creation tech automatically create planets that are barren. :/ Making the barren pick even more expensive to compensate is a poor solution.

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Computer programming is fun.

Asteriod belts could contain lots of rock, and some ice. Creating ocean, swamp or terran worlds from icy asteriods seems reasonable (to me ... and I'm quite reasonable ). Rocky asteriod belts could create barren, radiated or inferno. Then less icy asteroids could create desert or tundra. Toxic is a problem though .

My idea is that the composition of the asteriod belt could determine what kinds of planets could be built from them - along with size determining size (obviously). Some leeway should be allowed, since you don't need to use all the ingredients. I think controlling the temperature - i.e. choosing inferno over barren is fine since if you can build a planet out of asteriods I'm sure you can move it a bit closer or further from the star! Maybe 'potential ocean' asteriods could make smaller terran or swamp worlds.

As an aside;
The different types of planets are a bit random. Desert/tundra is a difference in temperature, but swamp/ocean/terran could just be a difference in layout - maybe ocean has more water, maybe it's just more shallow. Toxic and swamp have different atmospheres to other types. Radiated could be anything, with lots of radiation (like an extreme solid core special).