Planet (Lava)

So-called "lava planets" (properly "magmatic planets") fall into one of three groups: solar magmatics, which orbit sufficiently close to their star that the surface never cools enough to solidify; gravitational magmatics, which experience gravitational shifts sufficiently strong to regularly and significantly fracture cooling crusts; and magmatoids, which are for largely-unexplained reasons simply incapable of cooling and forming a persistent crust. All three types generally exhibit the same external phenomena - huge red-orange lava fields being a defining feature - but the latter two types are sometimes capable of briefly solidifying for a period measured in years or perhaps decades.