As of now, we can improvement a planet at a basic level, but what if we could go deeper? We know we have a civilization on the planet, so let’s utilize it and put it to the effort (more than just Tax income).

Introduction:

            When you first colonize a planet, you’re given a beginning number of population (let’s assume this number is in thousands, for a nice number). While you can up-grade the planet on basic level, this only increases what you can do on the surface of the planet. But when you select a planet, you can go to the surface of the planet to build upon it, increasing the input/output of that planet. When a planet is first colonized (a neutral planet) your empire will add a Senate, a massive building (different based on the terrain of the planet, and each race has a unique style to their surface structures) that houses the “government” and population. At first, this will only produce Tax Revenue, but upon expanding, Tax Revenue and productivity will allow the planet to have certain bonuses that affects that planet. Now to explain this in-depth (to a point):

Structures:

• Senate (houses the government and basic population)
• Housing (spreads the population out, increasing productivity)
• Factory (Frigate, Cruiser, Capital, and Titan) (Increase the speed at which those are produced at that planet by shipping parts to the orbital factory)
• Orbital Elevator (increases Factory build increase bonus by decreasing time to deliver resources to Orbital Factories)
• Orbital Transport (Distribute population to orbital structures (doesn’t work for Orbital Factories, only for not factory structures).
• Weapons Lab (Provide benefits to tactical structures (except super weapon) ranging from damage to firing rate)
• Planetary defense (the planets ground defense against bombing ships)

Now this is just a very basically list, obviously there is more to add, but these surface structures would provide benefits to the orbital structures (while not large, this would allow the empire’s planets to reflect what they are met to represent in terms of advantages/disadvantages). But the new question; what about bombing the planet?

 Attacking/Defending

            Normally, you’d bomb a planet, capture it, and move on. Well now you have to destroy the bomb shelters, which when you capture, the planet will gain 2 bomb shelters (increase to 3 for all planets except asteroid and dwarf planets as they increase in health) that are built on the planet (you place them). Also, you would be able to construct planetary defense to counter the ships that bomb the planet, resulting in some damage to the ships while they bomb. The defense would fire upon a ship that’s in bombing state (However, long range planetary defense will be able to target ships that are simply close enough to the planet) and will target the ship that strikes first. While these won’t be able to stop a fleet (to still emphasize on space combat) they will act as another defense for the planet.