Considering I've wanted to do this thing for quite a while, I decided to try making an artificial ring by making a large "station", instead of adding it to the planet's texture itself as my previous ancient attempt.
The ring itself is a very early WIP, made just to see if the idea was feasible. The sprite is a direct render from 3ds max, so no post processing was done, actually it is a simple set of grouped boxes around a thin torus repeated 72 times at regular angle intervals... It's not even textured. Yet I think it would look nice if done properly.
Also, please ignore the circular indicator, I forgot to remove it, and the red line across the planet's surface which is meant to be the equator and done to align the render's shadow with it, but I set the planet's tilt to the right when it should have been left.
I'm not sure if I should go for a more realistic look, with a much thinner ring, or just keep it as thick as it currently is, after all the game doesn't have a precise scaling, angled rings or megastructures, anyway I would like some feedback in that respect. Or maybe I should just go for a flat ring, like the natural rings in some systems.
Also I'll ask a question, is there any way to animate a station sprite (giving it multiple frames)?, I doubt it is actually possible, but I would surely exploit this if doable.