in January I made a reply to a post on the forum about a Gas Giant... After reading your mod description I thought my ideas/suggestions could be useful to you

I have been thinking of this recently and with Star Wars Empire Strikes Back as the starting point I kinda came up with a nice solution:

• Use a similar platform lifted by balloons that functions exactly as the Glass Dome in the mod Maraxsis... so, no proper foundation tiles, but a base will be composed by a bunch of "nests" or in this case platforms lifted by balloons.

• Like in Maraxsis, transportation use the "Spidetron Patrols" mod with a new vehicle (no trains), the Airship (and there is even a airship model from Industrial Revolution 3.. that perhaps could be used if the author is ok with it)

• On the matter of resources:
  --- Gases: Hydrogen, Helium and Helium-3 (Fusion Thruster?) could be the best options, maybe even Petroleum Gas could be extracted from the atmosphere...
  --- Liquids: Water could be collected from Rain Collector? Atmosphere De-Humidification...
  --- Solids: Detritus could be collected from the atmosphere (asteroids crashing in the atmosphere leaves solids ground into powder), and by combining a certain quantity, you can form Ores (random) or Asteroid Chunks?... also a type of lightweight solid material should probably be added, maybe graphene (requiring carbon fiber in the recipe?).
  --- Other options: Metallic Hydrogen?

• On the matter of energy: Wind Turbines would be the main source (or hydrogen power generators?) and we could also have Lightning Collectors from Gleba as secondary power source.

• On the rewards: Integrate one of the mods that add a air scrubber building to remove pollution/spores from the air... some vehicles like the Airship and Aircrafts... maybe a Advanced Centrifuge that allows to process Helium into Helium-3 and uranium recipes with +50 base productivity... plasma turret? plasma rifle?

Well, if anyone want to pick this as a starting point to make a mod out of it, be my guest.

Pollution Air Scrubbers honestly sounds like one of the best rewards for this planet! And spore collectors too!

As far as using anything from IR3, that is a big no, the author has 0 intention of allowing his assets to be used elsewhere and that should be respected.

Your balloon idea sounds really neat, but it also sounds like a lot of work to have implemented. I think using the platforms is fine since they have their own recipes.