one other idea I had - what if the first planet a new player gets also has a moon?

this would not be given to every player who logs in once and never again, it could be a reward for completing a certain objective or for reaching a certain score, but this would help newer players, and ESPECIALLY any new alliances that form without help from established alliances.

otherwise, well, only a few people in most servers are capable of successfully giving moons to anyone, so a new player will struggle otherwise.

Place some ships on your planet, people don't need to be your alliance mate to take it out !

yes, and a lot of people can do that, what I notice though is that new player have much more trouble accumulating resources for repeated attempts, and If they don't already have a moon more established players will happily take their material formerly earmarked for moon making :/

In massacre I've once played semi actively and just left small cargoes around for moonshots, i got a handful of decent sized moons.

This is more applicable to standard i'd guess.
Outside SWinds and VN there are few players capable of moonshots, although at the same time few players aren't recruited to one of those if they are intending to stick around.

still, i'd agree, new players would benefit from a small moon over their home planet.