Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28172712-20160410032410/@comment-24863355-20160803222002

The developers have considered adding "crystal" biomes (note the plural.) Evidence.

I'm not sure if they've deprecated this entire bundle of spreadsheets as it's from their previous Trello page, but I find this interesting. The sheet notes that regular fauna will spawn in those biomes should they be added, except that they'll be presumably lined with crystals.

At the same time, having a biome full of crystals presents some interesting challenges and applications. For example, there could be stuff like crystals that actually pose a threat to the player in the form of toxicity, and perhaps a new division of technology that could be constructed from said crystals.

Speaking of which, there are some other neat details there like which DNA is going to do what, and the fact that the devs might actually be considering lethal weaponry - it's just that the game hasn't advanced enough to support it.