Looking at you, No Man's Sky

Lol "my opinion is actually objective fact, gentlesir"

Well yeah, procedurally generated worlds were basically what I expected. The game was pretty explicit about that. And it was still fun. Elite's no different in that regard when it comes to exploration and I also have fun with that

They are more subtle, but they are there. And it does have an atmosphere. It's substantial enough that communication to the surface can be lost for months due to planet-spanning dust storms. Yes, it's only 1% the pressure of Earth's at the surface, but that's enough, especially when you allow forces to act over geological time scales.

And yes, they can be as varied as those on Earth. Life doesn't actually increase the biome variety as much as you think it does. The kind of life you get in any given biome on Earth is a direct function of the geology and climate in the area. Input a given altitude, rainfall, temperature, and soil conditions, and you'll get a similar biome anywhere on Earth. Yes, there are different individual species in the rain forests of South America vs the rain forests of Africa, but they're both rain forests. They work as biomes in similar ways. Wherever the local climate and geology support rain forests, rain forests sprout up. The only exception is isolated islands that can't be reached by certain species.

This is why Mars can have the same biome diversity as Earth. The living components of Earth's biomes are a direct mapping to the nonliving components. Earth's living biomes are no more diverse than the underlying geology and climate.

And this is before we even consider Martian life forms, which almost certainly exist. We know of bacteria that exist deep in the Earth's crust that, if you transported them to deep under the Martian surface, would be able to survive and thrive just fine with zero modification. We know Mars used to have vast oceans and all the ingredients necessary to get life started. And we've seen numerous bits of circumstantial evidence of bacterial life present in some capacity on Mars today. While scientists are loathe to affirmatively proclaim life on Mars. The extant existence of bacterial life on Mars today really isn't that an unusual claim. If life could get started on Earth, there's no reason to believe it couldn't have started on Mars. And that's before you consider pansperia. If nothing else, we know life can comfortably exist deep in the planet's crust. And who knows how such life might affect conditions on the surface.

Literally not at all what I said. Put that shit back in your ass where it belongs.

Some Sci-Fi planet types are reasonable.

The Kepler program found a lot of exoplanets and has categorized them generally as Hot Jupiters, Cold Gas Giants, Ocean Worlds & Ice Giants, Rocky Planets and Lava Worlds.

If you ignore the gas giants because there's no surface to land on, rocky planets (and maybe desert planets) would be extremely common. Water or ice planets would also be incredibly common. And, if you're really unlucky, you might end up on a lava planet -- one that's small and very close to its sun.

What wouldn't be common are things like an entire planet that's a swamp, or an entire planet that's a forest of Earth-style trees. I'm sure it's entirely possible that on some planet there's a life-form that becomes the dominant form and that looks vaguely like Earth-style trees, but not the kind you see on a typical SciFi show filmed near Vancouver.

Thanks, this will be a fun one

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And in case of a whole alien species, by pure probability, they would likely be used to a red sky and black plants (red dwarfs (more infrared) being the most numerous among the stable stars). Or even find a free sky horrendous and feel similar about rolling green hills like we feel about Nausicaa's fungal forests.

But Avatar (the Pandora one) did a good job at imagining a different but similiar kind of nature.

Honestly, by the numbers, Earth is mostly an ocean/forest planet with some desert. Desert and ice planets are believable, too, given those are more temperature-based, and city planets seem like they'd be inevitable in a sci-fi setting just due to population sizes.

It sounded like it was from something, but I couldn't find it from a quick search!

To say otherwise would be to admit your story has no need for aliens.

Well, look, the show has a budget. And the game also a gameplay.

They've added to Troopers over the years with an animated series and a new live action one, if anyone's missed it

Which is why I've purchased it twice. Love that game and want to support great devs.

Well, not exactly biomes. That one it doesn't have.

Star Wars even have a city covering an entire planet

Yes, they copied it from Foundation. Trantor has a perfectly fine reason for being the way it is, that would apply to Corusant too.

That is, if physics actually allowed them to be that way. Apparently Asimov didn't run the numbers on that one.

My guess is that a rocky planet that is 5% - 95% covered with ocean is probably pretty rare. You probably mostly either get water / ice planets or rock planets.

Another thing that makes Earth unique is the liquid iron core. Without that you don't get a magnetic field. Without a magnetic field, it's hard to keep the atmosphere intact. That means that water vapour gets blown off over time, which eventually results on a dry planet like Mars.

As for all 3 states of water, as long as you're in the range to have a wet surface, you'll probably get all 3 states of water. The poles will get a lot less solar radiation than the equator, so if the equator is wet it's pretty likely that you'll get at least a bit of ice at the poles. If there's a lot of water then it's easy to get water vapour. Even Europa which has an average surface temperature of -171C (102K) has a liquid water ocean under the icy surface, and although its atmosphere is extremely thin, part of it is water vapour.

Oh man, in general, people be raving about aliens, but never give two looks to the ants in their garden. Or you know, the entirety of Australia. Or the deep sea. We have so much life that's alien buzzing around us. Hell, we even have the Scottish – humanoids that speak an entirely cryptic language. It's so much more compelling story-telling, too, if they don't arrive here in a spaceship, but rather have been living among us all this time.

Trantor is Rome and the galaxy is the empire.

It can be relatively justified for NMS too, considering that its setting seems to explicitly be some sort of simulation in-universe, the rules it operates on don't have to match physical reality

I mean, not really? There's lots of reasons to use aliens in a story and I'm struggling to think of one that only works if you assume low-diversity planets