I regularly feel that the generation of the galaxy is just too much smoothed, I rarely have the feeling of discovering a "OMG MUST HAVE" sort of system. IMHO, the source of the problem is: not enough systems. 


The global idea behind this would be to change the "scale" of the galaxy, to aim for something way bigger. To that end, I made another suggestion, linked below. The 2 suggestions are, in my mind, necessarily coupled. I think it would give the devs the opportunity to implement a system of grouping, with "capital" and "suburb" systems, it would feel quite natural if there are some very good systems which stand out among the rest. It would also mitigate the painful problem of micromanagement of all those systems (from midgame to the end) if those are indeed more numerous.

But it is not the same idea suggestion, so I'll make another thread for this, here is the link:

grouping systems


Ok so back to this idea. What I mean is that there are just too many good systems, with 4 or 5 planets, and many positive anomalies. I understand that it is a bit mitigated with the terraforming: a system of 5 planets with 2 barren, 1 ice and a gas giant will have a difficult start. But that is only true up to mid game, after that it's always possible to give every new system a good kick just after colonization.


So I never thought I'd ask this, but I would be quite interested in having more.. well, crappy systems. Not total crap, but mediocre, with maybe 3 planets, and not too many huge ones. I think it would give the player the opportunity to be mindblown with great systems, which is not really the case right now, since many systems are equivalently good (apart, maybe, for unique planets, which -by the way- can also be quite anti-climatic when it is alone and tiny...). I also think having mainly medium systems would give a more "natural" feeling to the galaxy.


From my experience, I have been way happier with the system quality distribution in exceptional size galaxies, and/or when I increase system density. To put it simply, I think the more systems there are, the better the representation of the stats involved in the generation algorithm, and it leads to exactly what I'm asking for: more "normal" systems, some very crappy ones, and a few very good ones. 

(I know I can just increase system density, but when I do that, the galaxy loses quite a lot its feeling of supersize...)


The way I'd do it would be simply by increasing the number of systems, and make the systems with 4 and (especially) 5 planets less frequent. (I could even speculate about extremely rare 6 planets systems? Like 1 or 2 max per galaxy, who knows?) I think it would also require to increase the allowed number of controlled systems per empire, as the players will probably need to colonize more medium systems to compensate. 

If I were to give a rough number, I'd say: 

-systems with 3 planets:       ~ 65%

-systems with less than 3 :   ~ 20%

-systems with more than 3:  ~ 15% (4 = 10% and 5 = 5%)


On the tactical perspective, I say it would be quite interesting: if there are more "normal"/medium systems, the goal at first would probably be to rush close systems, with the highest output of food, even if they have only 2 or 3 planets. Then, those exceptionnal systems will be sniped by everybody around it, so the players would need to sort of rush it, and to defend it properly afterwards. But there's a good chance that those systems are far away, so not easy to catch.

It would make players consider colonizing small systems, which is absolutely not the case right now. I just never think about going in such a system today because there always is a bigger system just behind...



If you managed to read up to there, well, congrats, I hope I did not lose my train of thoughts too many times!