Finally, I just want to say that I don't think that having the planets revolve around the sun is a very good idea. If you kept phase lanes for travel, you would end up with a horribly convoluted mess around every star. The only way to keep the phase lanes in order would be to have all the planets move together, which would be unrealistic. If you got rid of the phase lanes all together, at let people jump from any planet to any other, players would have to have a fleet at every one of their planets to defend it. Plus, it would probably take some serious reworking of the game engine to implement moving planets.
I actually figured out a way that planets revolving around the sun is possible without being convoluted. Yes I do agree that it would take a serious rework with the game engine for moving planets. You can jump from any planet to another and you would not have to need a fleet at every planet to defend your empire.
Basicly, a star systems would include about 7-12 planets with about 3-4 asteroid belts that goes all the way around the star. The asteroid fields seperate th system in sections so that one cannot jump from the first planet to the last. To get out of the star system you would need to be at the star or the asteroid belt at the edge of the star system. Each planet has a different orbital speed, so one planet may travel around faster than another.
Phase lanes would be everchanging, it would follow the basic rules:
1) You can travel from one planet to another unless another planet or asteroid field is in the way.
2) When traveling in phase space, your ships will slowly curve towards that planet you want to go to and arive there. The reason why the ships will curve in phase space because the planets are moving at the same time and the ships need to change there phase flight path.
3) While traveling in phase space, if the target destination is blocked by another planet, the ships will stop at that planet. This will only happen if the ships are at the very edge of the planets occupation gravity well, before that planet passes by the target planet. If the blocking planet passes by before the ships get to it, the ships will continue on to the destination target.
The only place I would not use this is online multiplayer because most people will not have a computer to run it correctly and would crash it. So basicly it would be and option for single player mode.
You can already have ring planets
Yes I do know that but I have created a 500 planet single star system and only seen 2 planets have rings. So right now I see it as 1 per 250 planets. I would like to have it occur 1 per 20 planets.
I just thought of a great structure for producing unit faster. It would be a ship drive yard kind of like the Kuat Drive Yards.
1) It will take up 12 logistical and 8 tactical slots
2) It can produce 6 frigates at once, 4 cruisers at once, and 2 cap at once.
3) It will have 10% cost reduction bonus plus a 12% speed production bonus, improves resource extraxtion rate.
4) Houses 5 squadrons
5) And holds a couple of defense platforms(the gaus, missil, beam defense)
