The best easiest ways to make the game look better

that's just unit to mountain comparison that's giving you that impression.

The planets still look like "The Little Prince" planets.

so one untransgressible rule if you want to break that impression is to make the mountains smaller.

and them make the units even smaller when compared to it then they are now. this will make the mountains "bigger".

do you get how scale works?

the fact that you would choose to size UP the planet or size DOWN the units and CSG bear the same result : increase in scale.

the planet is neither "bigger" nor "smaller for it.

size in a virtual world only makes sense as a concept when comparing one object to another.

so the planet can only be "bigger" or "smaller" if the sun it's orbiting around of stays the same size, for example.

If you scale the textures proportionately so that they look good in both the case of sizing UP the planet or sizing DOWN the units and CSG, then both cases will have the same RAM imprint.

can you tell me why?

I'd like it is they update the resolution so that I can't count the pixels on the stars without squinting.

something i want are propper resolutionoptions .. no idea what the thing is with native resolution scaling

Because the same number of polys, I know, but the planets themselves would Still stay the same size, they wouldn't magically become more of a resource hog.

Here, as an example.. Make a size 8000 grid planet and then a size 300 grid planet, neither have csg, unit pathing data, etc... when in the system editor anyway.

Which loads faster?

Also when I day you need to scale up CSG I'm talking about on scale 1000 planets- there are no long giant mountain ranges currently, only tall ranges of two mountains next to eachother.

I think you'd have to go really really small to fix the extreme curvature issue. I agree we also need things like much taller mountains. Probably a combination of bigger planets and smaller units would be best. What happened to the mountains and forested areas on the homepage image of PA?

I actually really enjoyed Papers Please but not so much for its 8 bit graphics but it's innovation. Supermeatboy I thought was pretty meh for a platformer. Raymond Legends is much better with amazing visuals, hand painted art, and great animation. I'd argue yes, those things do make a game better. That doesn't mean I can't appreciate games in 8 or 16 bit style. But that's the thing, they are stylized like that for a retro feel and nostalgia. PA isn't going for that... I dont really know what PA is going for because the graphics leave a lot to be desired.

that's what I mean.
Technically if they don't have csg, textures, unit pathing or anything then their both a plain ball caontaining the same amount of data, and just one line that differs : the number saying what size to make it.

they would take the same time to load in that case.

PS : above there you got off easy, I forgot about the atmosphere which largely participates in the impression of scale. Does atmosphere count as a prop ?

Um.. No a larger grid planet takes longer to load than a smaller grid planet. Neither have csg, unit pathing, etc... Not sure what you're on about?

oh i thought you meant if they didn't have textures or shapes other then being a perfect sphere.

They are not even spheres, they are cubes bent into spherical shape whereby the number of polygons scales in square with the planet size to achieve the same resolution of planet geometry in relation to unit size regardless of the planets size.

And even if you use the sandbox biome, it's still performing all the expensive calculations it would normally do in order to compute the surface elevation and to give a base for computing the biome distribution - even when you have set the range of possible values to zero.

On the positive side: Not using any CSG still saves you a lot of generation time, RAM and VRAM usage.

readability and low cost ... similar in style to what airmech is like

No. For now just make the star part of the skybox and play on single planetary systems. The game will be able to handle month long games in 1.5-2 years and then travel times of a few hours between will be fine. When that happens, just add strategic icons for planets.