Problem: Too many small planets, people like bigger planets, not enough ways to make them bigger.

Proposal:

Part 1: Have an artifact or ability or something, probably with a significant cooldown and costing tons of energy, deconstruct an unoccupied planet for its mass. This process gives artifacts (described below) equal in number to the planet's size, beginning with 1 for Very Tiny, 2 for Tiny, and so forth. This cannot be done with Gas or Plasma planets (or possibly a -2 yield penalty). The planet is destroyed.

Part 2: The artifacts produced can be used to add matter to a planet, each enlarging it in size by one, up to Very Massive. However, doing so ruins the surface, since you're covering it with giant chunks of planet rubble. The climate is changed to Cratered, and all three resources are set to zero, requiring enrichment to begin from scratch. Cannot be used on Gas or Plasma planets.

So basically you're destroying the smaller planets and building bigger planets with them.

+1, but I would suggest a tweak to the idea.

Terraformers are relatively easy to come by, so the set-back isnt a huge disadvantage.
Ive retweaked my idea to favour the smaller planets. This will target your original idea of reducing the number of those in the galaxy. Heres my suggestion of the idea, and hoping something more likely Dan could implement.

VS/S = 1
T = 2
VT = 3

It doesnt really make much sense for a VT to increase a M to a VM anyways. and adding a volcanic VM to something would automatically boost a VT to VM based on the original list...they shouldnt be equal tradeoff.

The artifact should not be an ability, because this has way too much power. This way, you could easily max out the sizes of almost all your better planets within a few months (40h timer would be traditional, which allows you to max 18 planets a month. Overpowered huh).

It could be made as part of a new LM or something, kind of a niche artifact, like the Morphogenic Enhancer was. Same type of multipurpose artifact, but more powerful. The cratered effect should remain. All that causes is the use of about 2x more terraformers to max out than usual, which really isnt that much a con if you think about it.

Used at its best, you are trading 3 QSEs for something around the loss of 12 terraformers. But most people dont need +3 size, nor will most VMs be bad enough to be worth destroying. Gas and Plasmas should straight up be not eligible, cant really get close enough to a gas planet to fracture the core. A reuseable, unique, typically +2 size arti seems good enough. It can still act as +3 if you need it for a rare gem that has crap size.

An EM cost should definitely factor in, along with a cost of something like 5000 energy per use of artifact, so that you wont see low ranks running around with this kind of stuff. This means a T will yield 2, costing 10k E + EM to use all. And it doesnt include the initial E cost to destroy a planet. Meant to be rewarding for more dedicated players.

I dont see the point of not allowing Planetary Mass to be used on gas/plasma planets, since there is already a limitation of a max VM size anyways. I did add another restriction of only using the PM on unocuupied planets, since it goes well with logic. Your basically bombarding a planet with asteroids, it shouldnt be colonized at that time.

Based on the above opinion, Ive drafted up what the arti may sound like:

I like your additions. However, I was also aiming at a way to get rid of those really small planets so we don't keep scanning and purging them over and over again. Can you think of a simple way to give partial credit for those planets? Maybe a new material?

Maybe something like this. The planet destroying mechanism gives an amount of Planetary Debris (special material) dependent on size. Then the debris can be spent on creating the size increasing artifact, which is then used on the planet to make it bigger. This way we can scale size to debris any way we like, like 5, 8, 11, etc. and the size improver taking 10 debris to create, among other things.

Eh, not sure if you read my whole post in time before I finished everything.
Destroying a planet yields Planetary Mass artifacts, quantity depending on the size of the destroyed planet
The destroyed planet is removed from the database.

Wont most people use the detonator on larger planets anyways, since theres a better benefit?
I could set a restriction on the largest size planet they can use the detonator on?

EDIT: I edited it to favour smaller planets with different restrictions. Also changed it back to using detonator only on unoc planets....which actually seems more logical. VT planets actually seem quite rare, so I gave them the +3 quantity.

As with it preferably being an LM artifact, its already relatively hard to gain useage, and this doesnt even include the requirements for the task that would provide the detonator. Creating another special material should warrant another market, because it seems relatively pointless for a material to have only one craftable item.

If this isnt for LM, its plausible, but I cant think of where else you could logically get the arti.

Interesting how you have the mass created reduced with increasing size. I would instead increase the costs to destroy the planet with increasing size, since you're fighting against greater gravity. So something like 1000 E for VT, 2000 E for T, 3000 E for VS, etc. That way you can have both higher cost and higher yield with bigger planets. Either way, I really like your idea that for each planet size destroyed gives less than the amount required to increase a planet's size, otherwise you could just shuffle planet mass around. I want to encourage breaking up the small ones to make the medium ones into large ones. You don't want to break up your large planets, because you get less out than if you broke up small planets and added it to the large planet to make it bigger. In other words, you want to have to move as little mass as possible due to cost and losses.

I'm afraid I rambled a bit there, but sometimes ideas just do that sometimes.

I kind of based it off how the detonator had a fixed strength and only had the capacity to fully fragment a VT, most of a T and only somewhat a VS or S.

But we could also make it scale like your suggestion. Honestly I dont know which method would turn out better.

I still like the idea of using a special material as an intermediary, since not only would there be more freedom to balance things appropriately, but we could also use the mass for other things. For example, it could be used to make an entire artificial planet, or sifted through for minerals.

I'm thinking something like the Tejiar and Uldrinian chains, where the ultimate reward is unlocking a new currency and things to buy with it. So maybe a good big mission chain involving a really advanced civilization that tears apart entire planets and builds megastructures.

aha that sounds like a great idea, but a chain takes much longer to make than even just an LM, which is already a lot of work. Look where the suggestions took us already lol.

Well I'll let the man with the canon ball worry about how to fit it in. The plot doesn't really matter in the long run, does it?

if all the tiny planets are destroyed .. how will anyone be able to complete task1 of this legion mission: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=40706&start=103 ??

i think Dan making tiny planets useful for something is better than watching the galactic planetary count slowly dwindle. there could be some kind of structure that produces based on the number of structures on the planet.

size 21: resource choice 63/x where x is the number of structures on the planet.

Never seen that before. Let's just say this is one proposal for making use of tiny planets - as scrap!

Solution: QSE. Dan does need to pay his bills.

Short and to the point, Plurv. QSE are most likely in the top 3 money makers (Transfusers and Storage being the other 2). Granted we now have that Pseudo-Quasiformer hickyjigger, but that's going to be a fairly uncommon item.

1021 - bob-the-builder demolish duplo house lego by space88blue, on Flickr

Seriously this entire idea -1. Why mash planets up small as they are ? The more small ones you have the extra special you feel when you find something more worth-while. That's just my take on it. Unless of course if you wanted to mash planets (not exactly possible with current sciences?) and create new ones... you'd have to include some sort of reference to a drug that creates mysterious delusions and makes it a trip; a magic carpet ride with Alladin. Make it a GP item and limit accounts to buying # of these. Perhaps make it so.... when someone destroys a football (not that I'm against footballs or entirely supportive of it either....) allow them to brag with before and after photos on how they made bangers & mash with your chew-toy. Then I'd +1 this idea.