Preface: This idea came to me while thinking about how to better give planets a sense of distinctiveness, while at the same time reducing workload.

Basically, the idea would be to procedurally generate up to four distinct plant species per planet by mixing and matching attributes found in plants on Earth. These species could then be saved with a minimum of overhead and rendered on any map taking place on that planet. That would give each planet a unique ecology without the need to tie up an art team for five years thinking up alien grasses.

So, each plant species would have several attributes:

1. Size 1-4 (Ground Cover, Bush, Small Tree, large Tree)
2. Branching model (use existing earth plants as models:Grass, Bamboo, Pine, Oak, Cactus, Rose, etc) this determines the basic structure of the plant
3. Trunk Texture (Barbed-Rose, Bark-tree, Scale-palm tree, Bamboo, etc)
4. Trunk Color
5. Leaf Model (Palm frond, oak leaf, lilly pad, pine needle, fern frond, etc)
6. Leaf Size
7 Leaf Color

Each planet could randomly generate one plant species of each size and store the attributes. So for example, you could have a tree sized cactus-like plant with a palm-tree-like skin in pale yellow covered with tiny purple fern-type leaves.

Then when the planet is rendered for a battle, the unique species of that planet are rendered and slotted into the maps. This could be further modified by biome (desert maps would maybe only render bush sized planets, or grasslands just large trees and ground cover, for example), lattitude, or whatever.

Basically, this system could produce a uniqueness to each planet that would be easily recognizable without a lot of overhead in the art department.

On a related note, I would love to fight on a planet with very giant plant-like organisms (not necessarily plants by our definition) that look like huge mushrooms, or other cool fungus.

Tres cool. That would be awesome. The Disney movie "Treasure Planet" has some good art of a planet like that.

The thing about making something look and feel "alien" is that it needs to feel familiar. If you make something truly foreign to your experience, you don't get a strong feeling about it. But if you make something that's familiar, and yet at the same time, completely wrong, you get a strong "alien" feeling.

Star wars does this fairly well. Every planet, every monster has a familiarity. Hoth, Dagobah, the Wampah, the creature in the garbage dump, the creatures in the Geonosian Arena all of them are familiar, but just different enough to be alien.

Avatar (the James Cameron one) is another example. All of the flora and fauna are very familiar looking, and yet when you look closely, they're completely different from anything on Earth.

So for vegetation, it make sense to use terrestrial plants as a basis. There's such a huge variety of plants on Earth that we get that alien feeling just going to a different continent. We don't actually need to invent something new when we could have:

Red Brocolli shrubs, growing in the shade of giant yellow mushrooms covered in blue flowers, and tiny green pine trees underfoot.

or

Giant leafy cactus trees as far as the eyes can see over fields of knee-high oakleaf ferns.

The familarity makes the differences more stark, and increase the "alien" feeling

+1
I was going to make a thread on this when vegetation is added. I want the plants to be more than just green generic Earth-like plants. Presence of fruit along with color, shape, size would be nice as well.
On a related note, I would love to fight on a planet with very giant plant-like organisms (not necessarily plants by our definition) that look like huge mushrooms, or other cool fungus.

Preface: This idea came to me while thinking about how to better give planets a sense of distinctiveness, while at the same time reducing workload.

Basically, the idea would be to procedurally generate up to four distinct plant species per planet by mixing and matching attributes found in plants on Earth. These species could then be saved with a minimum of overhead and rendered on any map taking place on that planet. That would give each planet a unique ecology without the need to tie up an art team for five years thinking up alien grasses.

So, each plant species would have several attributes:

1. Size 1-4 (Ground Cover, Bush, Small Tree, large Tree)
2. Branching model (use existing earth plants as models:Grass, Bamboo, Pine, Oak, Cactus, Rose, etc) this determines the basic structure of the plant
3. Trunk Texture (Barbed-Rose, Bark-tree, Scale-palm tree, Bamboo, etc)
4. Trunk Color
5. Leaf Model (Palm frond, oak leaf, lilly pad, pine needle, fern frond, etc)
6. Leaf Size
7 Leaf Color

Each planet could randomly generate one plant species of each size and store the attributes. So for example, you could have a tree sized cactus-like plant with a palm-tree-like skin in pale yellow covered with tiny purple fern-type leaves.

Then when the planet is rendered for a battle, the unique species of that planet are rendered and slotted into the maps. This could be further modified by biome (desert maps would maybe only render bush sized planets, or grasslands just large trees and ground cover, for example), lattitude, or whatever.

Basically, this system could produce a uniqueness to each planet that would be easily recognizable without a lot of overhead in the art department.