What is the benefit of becoming a neutron star?

In my first playthrough, I rather ignored the missions (or failed all the ones I attempted...), and just tried to get as big as possible. I was surprised to find that when I "upgraded" to a neutron star, I lost 6 of my planets and my capacity was reduced to 4.

Are there any benefits to becoming a neutron star, short of it just being another step on the way to black hole?

Solution 1:

There are benefits to being a neutron star:

• One step closer to being a black hole
• You deal more damage when you ram other objects
• You are smaller and can therefore dodge through smaller gaps (I've never seen this benefit in practice but I've seen others claim it)

There are also disadvantages:

• You can die more easily than a large star since you will explode rather than revert to a smaller star
• You cannot have as many planets as large stars can

I have not seen a clearly stated description of the advantages of a neutron star from an official source, but the developer of the game has replied to the following steam forum discussion with some implications that the 'deal more damage' claim is true: Is a neutron star worse than a large one?

Here are the developers comments from that discussion quoted. The context of the full discussion is helpful for interpreting them.

• Murudai: Neutron star has it's weaknesses and it's stengths too. So, it is easily destroyed, but have a think about it. How can you fix that problem.
• Murudai: (in response to "In other words, a neutron star with an evolution level of over 6 in planets around it can deal huge amounts of damage every time its shield comes up.") This. Come on guys, think harder! It's a cleverer game than you think, and if you sit back and plan things you can tackle things much easier.