Increasing the population limit?

[Ed Kolis]

But you can only build Ringworlds around stars... what are you going to do, make all the gas giants into stars?

[capnq]

You could just imagine that colonies "on" a gas giant are actually orbiting it, without changing anything. That's what the Gas Giant Colony component's descriptive text actually says, anyway.

[Suicide Junkie]

I imagine Gas giant colonies as floating cities... The colony module pics look a bit like balloons, and it explains the domed/undomed distinction better than orbital colonies.

[capnq]

SJ, that's how I always interpreted them, too. I didn't notice the slighty different wording in the description until this thread made me think to look.

One could alternately imagine that the picture has you looking down at an orbital facility with the planet behind it.