I'm having trouble seeing what it is about this scenario that would make it look so different from a star with planets (which is still very hard for us to detec

I'm having trouble seeing what it is about this scenario that would make it look so different from a star with planets (which is still very hard for us to detect) or surrounded by clouds of smaller debris. Is the idea that the habitats would be much larger than planets or that there would be far more of them for a given total volume of matter ?