Some questions and feedback about planets.

How CPU-intensive are planets?  They seem pretty simple at the moment . . . so I had some thoughts on how to make them more complex.

I have noticed planets can be pretty boring.  They're big irregular balls, with sometimes some green that's hard to drill through and worth money.  I'd like to see larger worlds, formations of various worthless mineral patterns underground that are harder to drill through, or easier, or burn.  Larger caves or tunnels would be nifty, as would physics on parts of the world that you 'cut loose'.

I'd like to see dynamic structures.  Terrain that grows from a seed, so if you damage it, it will grow back until you damage the seed.  Entire worlds that grow from the core hives, and can trap you underground if you start digging.  Units that build armor around themselves.  You could have trees grow from those seeds, or crystals, composed of damageable terrain.

I'd also like to be able to turn on terrain in the testing area that regenerates damage, so you can test how a ship navigates unusual terrain,

Some liquid physics would be nice.  Particles that are affected by gravity and repel each other.  Water might effectively absorb weapons fire, burning off slowly.  Oil could be trapped underground and erupt when released, and destroy itself while spawning fire, if it's not under a certain amount of pressure from other oil particles (So only the surface burns)

Liquid effects would also open the way for acid weapons.

I'm going to stop now, or else my speculation would start getting a little wild (Waterworlds!  Fish units!  Meteors!  Ice comets!  Elemental interactions!  Yeah, if I had my way you'd have to get a whole damn physics sandbox running.)

Great Ideas We sure want to make the planets more dynamic and allow more interesting gameplay.

Regeneration or creation of landscape should already be possible with the current technology, same goes for different minerals with different strengths and properties.

Some missions could be related to planet types.  Loose meteor fields with no gravity could be devoid of missions, but have chunks rich in resources.  Random encounters in transit could require you to keep up with your mothership, while also fighting aliens trying to chase it. 

It would be interesting to have recurring events - every week or so, have a different event type (that rotate and repeat,) that you only get one shot to complete with a fully autonomous drone.  Zero gravity survival, search and destroy, dig to the core and dig out again.