I looked around and didn't find what I was looking for. Why are so many players short on planets owned. We had a new player ranked 500+ and he only had 40 planets. He was saying he was having constant credit problems. after checking his planet count, we started loading him up with planets, suddenly his credit problems went away. I have checked out several other ships in passing, mostly from battle tab. I asked a couple ships about their planet shortage with no reply so I bring it here.
Why are so many players so short on planets, not just 3-10 but 20-30planets they could use to beef up their ships and new planets?

Is there a player vs player reason? Is it that we need to teach our newer players about their future needs? What do you all think is the reason?

I did notice several were very high number of missions, combat reps were kind of low, some had elevated hacking numbers.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

One reason is that colonization/invade costs increase with more planets and it quickly becomes unaffordable.
Another reason is that people may be waiting until they get the 3 year reward so they can colonize and level it quickly.
Another reason is that they get poor scans and have a hard time finding quality planets to take.
Another reason is that as they get higher in level the quality of planet they desire increases and so there are less that meet their requirements.

Just to name a few.

Often some people play very casualy and colonizing planets may become a part of the game they neglect, instead focusing on missions and their story lines.

Look at their NPC count as well as planets owned. Low NPC kills will likly mean they have few max toxic's. And in turn very low income.

Another thing is to look at their scan numbers. If those numbers are low, they don't have a new pool of planets to choose from. I'd rather have a few good planets than a bunch of crappy planets just to fill those slots.

Of course, the better course of action is to scan more often, and get more AP to get more purgers to scan more, and so on.

FYI: I have over 60 planet slots available, but over 160K AP/hr.

meh.... the one stated in the OP is rather unusual IMO. It's normal to be unable to fill (or even come close) once you are higher, but the first 70-100 at least should be fairly fast and affordable.... He must be doing something wrong.

I would consider it either just a difference in play style. Personally, I feel that there isn't a need to teach anyone anything since most of the information they need can be found either on the forum or wiki.

You would be surprised how many people don't look at either the forums or the wiki. Some 4 year players with very strong ships never know what the new content is all about unless another person in their legion spoon feeds them the info.

Just ask the people in your own legion if they look at the forums or wiki regularly. I'm sure you'd be surprised at the results.

I've been pretty good with colonising planets, and have never had issues with not enough credits or research. Obviously artifact production is another thing.

Also, it's not that hard to acquire a Very Large Toxic planet (any resource). If you NPC a lot, you'll build up a sizeable amount of Toxic Purifiers, which in turn means you can make yourself a few 15x and 16x Mega Rich mining planets. It ain't difficult. I have ten 15x/15x mega rich toxics, which I'm sure isn't a lot compared to some players.

I never run out of credits, and I'm not even a Builder... and I have plenty of spare change to donate to my legion base.

So really, I think it's probably the case that a lot of players are just casual gamers. They like the NPC/story/PVP side of the game, but they don't care about the maintenance side of things.

Regarding getting great planets... I think at some point, you really do have to make a call and say, "I'll just take a few half-decent planets". If you hang on for something better, before you know it, you'll end up with 100 free planet slots. All that time, you've been missing out on resource production for no reason other than you're "hoping to get lots of great planets". Face it, statistically speaking, you will not end up with hundreds of Very Massive Gaia planets lol!