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[NephilimNexus]

As far as I can tell, under the current system the malus of high and/or low gravity seems to be assigned to worlds at random.  This does not strike me as realistic.

Without going into a bunch of physics that I'm sure everyone here is already familiar with anyway, the gravity factor of a world should be based on its size and density.  Size is obvious - gas giants, for example, should have a high probability of the high gravity penalty.  Glorified moons should be more likely to get low gravity.

Also, the mineral wealth of a planet should also factor in.  For example, despite being almost the same size, Mars has less than half the gravity that the Earth does.  This is because Earth's core is made of iron - a dense metal.  Mars... not so much.  Therefore I suggest that worlds with high mineral wealth be more likely to have high gravity and those with poor mineral wealth more likely to have low gravity. 

Thus I propose that combining these two factors (planet size & mineral wealth) into a new math formula to determine the probability of a planet having high or low gravity penalties would be more realistic.

[Alex]

Hah, interesting - currently, the chance to get low/high gravity is based on the planet's size, and high gravity planets are considerably more likely to have better ore deposits, while low gravity planets are less likely to.

So, it basically already works like you're suggesting I suspect that because it *is* random, you might be seeing a few outliers (e.g. a small-ish high-G world without rich minerals) and that makes it look like it doesn't...

[Ishman]

Funnily enough, from my recent understanding of current extra-solar planetary modeling - those values are actually reversed, so long as we're discussing 'super earths' which are within 5 earth masses and 3(?) surface G's.

The denser the planet is, and thus the higher the surface gravity is - the more similar in size it is going to be to earth, whereas low density planets are going to be relatively enormous in comparison to earth (largely liquid/solid water, low metal content rocks, etc).

This is only my reading from astrophysicists chiming in on discussion threads, but if you know any currently working at a university, they should probably be able to expand more upon this and link some relevant papers/modeling.