The environmental parameters reminds me a little of the old space 4x, Stars!.
Cute game. I break it out a couple times a year. There's been some great seed shop books (Watts's Freeze Frame Revolution, KSR's Aurora, Noumenon, Children of Time), and this is pretty different but has the spirit.
I've often felt that an updated version of Stars! would be very well received. So many current 4x games are hyper-micro-management and Stars! had a perfect balance (IMHO) between management and overall strategy.
Alas, Planets.nu has no source code available. That's OK if you just want to play, but I really always wanted to make some changes, and to self-host (like you kinda could in the original vga planets)
The UI and server are relatively simple though, so it should be a fun exercise to vibe-code a clone based on phost and openplanets.
Cute game. I break it out a couple times a year. There's been some great seed shop books (Watts's Freeze Frame Revolution, KSR's Aurora, Noumenon, Children of Time), and this is pretty different but has the spirit.