This is my idea for a new planet known as an asteroid belt. When scanned (Which isn't rare but isn't extremely common either) it shows size as Asteroid Belt and all resources as average.

The size is 100 or so making it the largest one yet. But the planet comes with a few good and a few bad things.

Since we all love the good things let us start with that.

When you colonize the planet has a chance to get 1 of 3 of these effects;
Mineral, Artifact, or Research Rich (Makes the place rich in one of those 3 areas)

Ship Debris Field (While held the planet gives 15 hull and 2 space every 24 hours)

Planetoid (Upon closer inspection a planet was found in the asteroid field. The field gets the same resources as a random planet and gains a small amount of size)

Here are some bad things. For one the field takes 2 or 3 planets worth to take. So you have to have 2 or 3 open planet slots before you can colonize/invade.

There are a few colonize effects that have a chance to happen.
Enemy Trade Route (During every hour of the first 24 hours there is a .5% chance an NPC trade route will come through. This causes that once a week The place gets attacked and you will have to defend it from NPCs. The more of that race's NPCs you killed that week reduces the chance of their attack to succeed along with planetary defenses.)

Minefield (When building on the planet there is a 5% chance that a minefield will be discovered destroying the building you JUST built and consuming the resources. Note that this does not include artifact buildings because that would just make people whine)

Emergency beacon (This effect is extremely rare and is bad for the person who owns the planet but good for a few lucky people. There is a .1% chance that upon colonization a distress beacon will set off giving the position of the belt to 3 different people.)

Finally is a continuous effect. You cannot use planet buffs or debuffs. That includes Taraformers and crap.

So what do you guys think? I thought it was a pretty awesome idea.

+1 I like the idea of it and I wanna see what people come up with to improve this

Overall, I like the idea.
+1

I have to agree with Crow that the amount should simply be lowered to 5. I personally disagree with any sort of anything that you can have that gives you an increase to any of the ship statistics (hull, shields, decks, attack, defense, etc.) every day or two days. As an example, a slow ranker could play for 100 days, and so long as he found an Asteroid planet as one of his first, he could have 1,500 extra hull by say Rank 50. Not to mention said planet could be rich, etc. I feel that 5 hull is much better, and decks should never be given through any player-based ability, planet, or module.

Also, what if a player colonizes it, then abandons it, and recolonizes it? Would the permanent abilities disappear like they do currently, giving the player the option to recolonize it until they get the ability they desire?

Well, the planet counts as two planets for one. So say the larger bonuses do come in because of that. I guess that 5 hull is fine then. But about the planet effects. Only one beneficial one can be gotten at a time. And since the planet counts as 2 or 3 then it will cost 2 or 3 times the amount to uncolonize it. So yes you could drop it and re take it and hope to get an effect you want. Also remember though that you might not get any effects at all. It is not an absolute that you will get one.

So if you really want to optimize it than have some fun. But you will be wasting a good amount of your money to do so.

make it unable to be abandoned like one of the invincibles

That... Is a much better idea than mine...

I don't really like having unknown stats with a no abandon catch. Might make a mission to get an artifact (bad exp ratio) AND need 10 gp to abandon (takes 2 planet slots to colonize, takes 2 planets gp to abandon).

Also, might allow terraformers and similar, but due to the nature of the field it only raises 1 stat at a time... the worse stat.

Releasing the terraformer device in the open area of the field makes the device have to travel further, and by design the terraformer begins by improving the most barren areas first.

Race improving of planets (Like Mylari) work, but require two iterations of the ability (Again, two planet slots takes twice the effort). Dan may be able to work this in as each being a half step, or each use has double cooldown (Either would work).

Also, due to the nature of an asteroid field, I would be interested to see the resources actively fluctuate. Possibly like plus or minus 2 categories of change once a week, never exceeding 2 categories of the baseline from colonization plus any enhancements given.

Ex0

Colonized
MInerals: Rich
Artifacts: Abundant
Research: Sparse

Terraformed once

Colonized
MInerals: Rich
Artifacts: Abundant
Research: Average

Maximum fluctuation over time:

Colonized
MInerals: Extremely Rich
Artifacts: Extremely Abundant
Research: Very abundant

Minimum fluctuations over time:

Colonized
MInerals: Very abundant
Artifacts: Sparse
Research: Very Sparse

Just my thoughts and impressions

So it is stuck at rich permanently?
That is my only objection.

I'd think you could terreform it but it would cost 2x as much

Perhaps a new npc for it.

Crimson Driller - Matched Rare NPC

The Crimson Blades use these ships to scan for minerals in asteroid belts and extract them. Their drill is deadly when used against ships.
Ability: Drill - 20% damage to ship hull. Bypasses shields if shields are still up.
Drop: Crimson Drill - When used, increases Mining of asteroid belt by 1.

+1

Just to play the critic:

• Size 100, but consuming 2 or 3 planet slots <- makes it equivalent to 2 almost large planets or 3 tiny/very small planets. It would need to be awesome in some other way to be like taking 3 smaller than very small planets. The two larges is still iffy at best.
• Resources average, but 1 maybe being Rich. <- I would never take 2 large Rich worlds. I purge small ER planets upon scanning.
• Resources average, but size increase. <- even if the planetoid increased the size by 50, you're looking at only 2 colossal average planets, or 3 large average planets. Purging.
• adding 15 hull and 2 decks every 24 hours <- 1.5 durtanium brackets and 1 shipbot, equivalent to 5700 AP, but a guaranteed draw. Disregarding the guaranteed draw, for 2 planet slots this is like 120 AP/hr per slot, or 79 AP/hr for 3 slots. Taking into account the guarantee, you are getting two permanent ship buffs without the fear of probes, cages and what not, but without the chance for helmsmen, scientists, rescued prisoners, etc. Depending on play style and where a ship is at, this could be a positive or a negative. If it's a positive for the player, this might finally be break even on the cost/benefit. Maybe purging.
• Weekly invasions, loosing 600M Cr buildings on placement, or insta-scan by 3 other players would make this a loss even in the best case above. Purging.

Honestly, I like the basic idea, I just think the parameters need a lot of tweaking.

I have a problem with it having to take up 2 to 3 spaces. When it comes to our own Asteroid Belt, scientists believe that the gravitational forceas of Mars and Jupiter ripped the planet apart. So it was originally a SINGLE planet. Also I'm not really into your "planetary extras". For now, if Dan implements an Asteroid field, it should be like any other planet, except with a 5% decrease in invasion successes, mainly because it is harder to completely subdue a population that is circling a star. In fact, the larger it is the higher the decrease in invasion success. Let Dan figure out what those will be. Now when it comes to Analyzing the field, you could find a Dwarf Planet. We've actually got a few of those in both the Asteroid Belt and the Kuiper Belt. I believe this is all we should do as a basic Asteroid Field.

Difference this is a game. Ide say 2 or 3 Slots of planet space is a fair amount

15 hull/day is worth about 20k AP/day IMO. deck and cargo are both negilible(deck can even be bad) at high rank. each set of arti is about 90k AP worth and we got 1.5 brackets out of 1.5 set(135k) but missing andriods, xcharge and prisoners and ~10 CTP of assorted artifacts and a few others. so meh~ i would call that 1/6 of the set value so 20k AP ish worth.


anyway, considering that, this thing is producing an extra of almost 1k AP per hour, which is good enough for at least 1 planet spot for just about anybody

but i don't think the production itself is quite worth another, personally I might take it if it rolled on rich AP(almost equivalent of large 3-4x mega is nothing to complain about) but that's about it.

with that said, by orginal design this planet is only worthwhile to ppl if it rolls both the ship debris and AP rich effect, which is kinda hard. and even that it's not really top of the line

I think allowing it to get to at least 10x mega is kinda required to make it truely good
if 15x mega is allowed thou(even with increased "costs"), then this would have to be a really rare find, cause it would be almost as good as a natural dyson if it rolls ship debris.

+1 but if you have to defend it wont you get damage from astroids and things like that in the battles?

you made me think of an idea, why not able to scan a ring/belt? which could be used to ring around your planets? an attaching ring to planet concept, its size could be small, and cannot build production stuff on it, only defenses as a + for the planet ia the rings being mythical. Just an Idea "moan" im off to bed. Thanks for listening to an off-topic to this topic.

I want a large moon for my asteroid belt, and ill buy a name change to call my planet "ThoseRocksOverThere"