there are plenty of ways to boost richness. that does NOT need to be addressed.

the issue is tiny and small planets that are very common but that there is nothing to do with but purge.

heck, i would even like to see occupied very tiny planets become unscannable ... perfect 27 space for storage. planet gets taken out of the scanning pool, and the owner is encouraged to buy more storage buildings for GP. no more empty planet slots ...

Some type of ship mod (Mylarai Planetary Destroyer) that can blow up very small planets and the resulting debris is analyzed for rare and ancient artifacts, that increase planetary def, attack or cloak... It would only be usable monthly and it would take a week to analyze all the debris.. During analyzing random amount of MP will be added to the ships cargo..( Since its entire propose was for extracting minerals) Of course the games planet generator would replace it with a random planet..

The mod could be a mission based chain.. The Mylarai have grown weary of the multitudes of random small and useless planets. They have started conducting research on how to the small planets to good use and turn a profit. For the good of the universe they must be stopped and etc etc..

Mylarai Mother Lode arti - drops from rare Mylarai npc

size:2, [choice production] = 12/x, cloak +1000, limit 2

where x is the nominal planet size (production automatically changes if size changes):

VT = 1
T = 2
VS = 3
S = 4
A = 5
L = 6
VL = 7
M = 8
VM = 9
C = 10
MC = 11

rationale - it is easy to find the rich mining veins in a small area, much harder in a bigger area ... and once you find it ... you want to keep it hidden