Actually there are a lot of "none" planets out there you just call them moons
. A no atmosphere start isn't that much of a handicap really. I started doing it for that reason but the time you save with atmosphere converters in the mid game makes up for a little worse start. And almost every system with worlds will have at least one moon and usually 4 or 5. Thats more than most atmosphere types. Sure they are tiny but they are all over. Great for advance military bases and resupply depots. The biggest handicap is that you will get no Gas giant planets with your atmosphere. That is only a problem untill you conquer your first other empire then you will have other atmosphere types to breathe. The Neutral expansion pack from Universal shipyards includes a neutral player with "none" as its atmosphere type and you can easily mod the atmosphere type that any AI has. I changed quite a few default atmosphere types in my game because the overwelming majority of downloadable races have oxygen/rock as their HW type. It seems to balance out the races somewhat if all of them aren't competing for the same planets at he beginning.
[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 17 February 2001).]