A ghost planet: When you're dead, you're a ghost that has just spawned on that planet. Then, as a ghost, you run to an ethereal NPC, for example something like a Spirit Healer from World of Warcraft, and the NPC would then send you back to the planet that you died on, still as a ghost, and you run to your corpse and resurrect. However, you do not NEED to do so directly on top of your corpse, but perhaps also a few meters away from both sides (left and right of the corpse) When you're alive, you can visit that planet and bury any fallen pets there. Also, there would be spirits of past enemies that you killed, including bosses that can engage you in combat randomly (however they would be extremely weakened) also the ghosts could drop some sort of ghostly substances like ghost dust or ethereal coins for dealings with passive ghost merchants, or even sulfur or ectoplasm. The planet could also provide certain ores like ghost iron or celestial bedrock or something of the sorts. The theme of the planet would be a not-so-solid white, and black, and shades of grey (no pun intended.) Also, a rare ghost pet that you can catch! Or it could be a planet where you go to resurrect dead pets or allies, which requires a butt-ton of rare materials like stuff that only bosses drop or something that barely spawns underground or something. Just a suggestion.
Thousands of man-hours poured into the sciences to get us away from spirituality and towards the stars, and we're right back at square one. This, in addition to any thematic and logical issues, creates a lot of time between death and respawn without necessarily clearing away whatever caused the death in the first place (have fun with that cave-in or lava ocean). A ghost pet, though? My Starbound character isn't complete without one and I will die as many times as it takes to get it.
You as a ghost will have improved jumping range and speed of course, you're a ghost. Maybe even flying! I don't know though, I honestly think this would be a good idea. Maybe the planet can exist just NOT as a respawn point, but as long as you're on it you're a ghost and to... become a non-ghost, you need to return to your body on your ship. Nice, eh? (y)
Well there'd need to be some rational reasoning behind a ghost planet you visit between death and re-life. Like perhaps your mind is stored somewhere when a new body is being generated, or something along those lines. The only issue I'd have with this is the extensive time between death and respawn. I mean it'd work okay in a purely single player game, of sorts, but with multi player it might become a bit of an annoyance to have to go through a little quest, or anything at all before you can get back in the game and assist your friends with whatever danger might be killing everyone, is a downside. There's potential, but I see it might be more useful as a story setpiece, perhaps your mind gets seperated from your body by an ancient technology, and you have to try to find your body again while in an form of energy and thought. -shrug -
I do realize that it would make re-spawning harder, that's why I changed that and put in new ideas. (Look at post before yours) Also that'd be VERY nice for a quest, or even a whole questline
Your idea for ghost planet is good, but it has the wrong idea. I think it would be better to talk about having a "paranormal science" and technology to see non-interactive NPCs with machines or special glasses.
