i see players that have planets occupied that i've scaned and i can see the players name when i leave the mouse over the words "enemy occupied" and i see the play has no legion either so rather than just invade the planet and take it by force i'd like the option to search this play and post on his comm wall to join my legion before i just dtroy his planet. so in short i'd like the ability to search for random players by name. we have a friend search it couldn't be too hard to add this could it?.... anyone else think this is a good idea?

If this would be allowed then by simply name you could attack/hack anyone at any time. This would effectively make alert limitations useless. So No.

I've already taken one planet whose owner had no legion. It took me two days to invade; the first attempt was a critical fail (lost an engineer). No one showed up to defend the planet in that 24 hours. I'm waiting a week to see if the original owner tries to get it back before building anything expensive on it (just left it with his/her stuff).

If you're worried about being too aggressive, then sit on the planet for about a week and see if the player levels. If not, they aren't around anyway. And if they aren't around, they'd never get your alert message either even if one existed.

I've got another one of those I plan to invade as soon as I save up the cash.

Well how about instead of that, giving planets their own comm channel? Anyone who has the planet scanned gets informed that someone has done the whole 'V mothership' thing to the colonists living there and can go find out what was said.

Perfect idea. and since the poster is either:
a friend you shared it with, or
an enemy who is exposing themselves,
I would like the planet comm to have no energy cost.