Hey @
Space Viking
So I tend to agree, and one of my goals in my contributions to GC3 has been to give Mars and space stations some love (maybe too much love in the case of space stations, lol).
I think the Moon is fine how it is, it's one of the very best features in Galacticraft. It looks like the Moon, it has the gravity just right, and there's plenty enough for players to do considering it's probably the first space dimension most players (in survival) will visit. Moon features: controllable lander, low gravity player movement, footprints, flags don't wave, oxygen setup is needed, cheese ore, meteors, Evolved mobs, villages with Alien Villagers, moon dungeon, moon buggy. The Moon has been hardly touched in GC3, only very minor tweaks to the boss. A frequent suggestion is to add more interaction with Alien Villagers. I've also posted about maybe adding some kind of meteor defence in future (which would perhaps auto-gather the meteoric iron). I don't think the Moon needs more. IRL there's probably not that much to do on the Moon!
Mars, though ... In GC2 there's not too much to do on Mars - the cavernous vines are pretty but I guess a lot of players never even stay long enough to see them, Slimelings are cute, but there's not really much reason to stay once you've gathered a quantity of Desh. In GC3 now, there's more reason to stay and mine, as players will be needing plenty of Desh to make a Tier 3 rocket, also that Tier 3 schematic of course. In GC3 we have added these Mars improvements: new Mars sky which I think looks fantastic, sub-surface ice, and the new gas machines will work differently on Mars because Mars atmosphere has different gases. The plan is for players with all 3 gas machines to be able to manufacture rocket fuel on Mars out of nothing more than electricity + water ice. This could pave the way for a large base on Mars (or in Mars orbit?) as a springboard to some of the destinations beyond. Definitely, Mars could do with more love ... but what? How about some surface features - maybe boulders, maybe also a Songspire as a hat tip to one of my favourite books,
Altered Carbon. Other ideas?
Asteroids, the adventure here is supposed to be in finding out what's inside, and generally figuring out new ways to get around in this dimension and deal with the lack of light. It's intentional that they all look much the same from the outside. I think a few more things are planned for this dimension.
I totally agree with you that the tiered model of spaceships won't last forever (otherwise we'd end up with 9 tiers or something crazy by the time we have all the planets). It's really up to micdoodle8 where we go with that after GC3, though I have some ideas of course.
The API is supposed to allow player-created planets.
* In GC3, micdoodle8 made it a whole lot easier for players to get started with making a new planet as it can be based on WorldProviderSpace:
https://github.com/micdoodle8/Galac.../api/prefab/world/gen/WorldProviderSpace.java
* However, the real skill is going to be in designing new blocks, liquids, terrain features and sky to give a new planet an "other worldly" feel. As anyone who has tried it has probably fairly quickly discovered, that's a fair amount of work, and like most things in game programming, it needs a combination of art skills and coding skills.
* Maybe I should write a tutorial some time on how to use the API to make a planet for GC3.