I'm currently testing a minor tweak to extra planets that makes moons and planets a bit further away than they currently are, in a configurable manner. I'm not entirely satisfied with the result, though. What bugs me is the system is not "believable" in general. The moons are way too close to the planets, and the extra planets are way too close to the main planet. However I understand the drawbacks of making them further away. I came up with a bunch of ideas:spara wrote:It's a bit shame all the worlds are a bit samey. I love extra planets, povray textures and distant suns, system features and such as they create variable systems. There's a lot of space for improvement here. Ideas are much welcomed.
- for big main planets, the moons could be inhabited (+station), orbiting at a "believable" distance (perhaps a bit closer than where extra planets are currently).
- small main planets could be moons of a gas giant. One can then have a second inhabited moon (+station) on the other side of the planet for instance.
- binary planet systems are also an option, for mid-size planets.
- For systems with sun-Witchpoint-main planet nearly aligned, a second planet near the sun and mostly aligned with the rest would be "cinematic".
I'm biased towards 1 or 2 extra bodies only because I believe it's what one would normally be able to see with the naked eye, and I believe that just one extra station is enough for in-system trading (and taxi?) purposes.
This requires a lot more hacking than what I previously did, but that's something I'd like to see so it is definitely on my todo list. As for when...