I totally agree with this proposal, since I as i earlier said isn't too fond of how it work as of now.

yup yup yup Love it. Hopefully open solar systems would help stave off the boredom im allready feeling at invading a planet, every time its exactly the same!!!

EDIT: sorry Yarlen i didnt see your reply, as far as im concerned this isn't a realism issue its a really big gameplay concern as I said in Rhaws thread about this at the moment invading planets feels just like island hopping and gets very very samey.

Theres no real excitement when i invade a planet, even if i havnt scouted it, I know there are going to be gaus guns, maybe fighters and if im LUCKY, theyll be some ships to steamroller. I know its early and the ais fleet building will improve but still what the game at the moment comes down to is a series of identical mini games where i move a fleet (usually an identi-kit size and composition fleet because theres no need for anything more special) round a planet blowing things up. That might seem a bit dramatic but I'm rapidly getting concerned about the longevity especially when a lot of the fleet combat is automated anyway ::

Making open starsystems would allow a lot more in the way of strategy and tactics imo

We have considered removing them and we have played without them (remember phase lanes were introduced AFTER we tried it the other way). As Yarlen said, it is a game and both Stardock and Ironclad feel the current system is superior in gameplay to the old way (we were playing it almost a year ago). I made a large post on this issue in the original phase lane thread if you want more details. I don't want this to repeat everything that is already there as we've already taken pages of notes on those comments. However, if someone does proprose a superior system (that is not already in the original Phase Lane thread) we will give it serious consideration - we are always open to ideas. 

As of right now you can easily mod the game for more stars and less planets by tweaking a very simple text file and it's a bit more complicated to tweak the phase lanes but it is possible and will be easier in the future when we focus a bit more on mod support.

I would very much enjoy open solar systems if there's more of them but less planets in them.

Still the game needs choke points, more interesting.

Hey
Well its been discussed for a long time. You can read the "Phase Highways in space is a bad game concept!" thread.
They said, they will not change it, but are open for ideas, in the corrent system.

such choke points would be so heavily defended , they would be impossible to penetrate....

As I've said before we aren't support modding right now because we have too much higher priority development to do and much of the modding stuff may be obsolete in short order because we are constantly changing things.

However, if you want to play with more stars/less planets you want to mess with values in galaxysetup.setup. If you want to play with phase lanes, you need to modify the connections in a save game. If you want to play with gravity you need to play with gameplayconstants.constants (though I don't think the variables to allow multiple planets per well is accessible, but at least you can try playing in a large gravity well). Closer to release we will make it easier to make these changes and we'll provide some online help.

I would love to give everyone 1 on 1 tutorials on modding but I just don't have the time at the moment with all the things we are including in Sins However, the AI per star distribution bug is fixed in the upcoming patch which is almost done  I also dug up the gravity size value for you: its called FarOrbitOffsetRadius and its in the entity files of each star/planet type.

This issue is almost like beating a dead horse, but i have faith in IC. Plus it was said that the lanes will be modable in the final game. So i can live with that.

i played a game a long time ago that (very old game, can't remember the name... on Atari computer... there was such a thing) had harmonised the 2 concept of phase and non phased lane in a very basic game.

The game started with only phase lane (jump gate really) between star system and free travel within star system (but slow. You where playing with Icons basically). As the game progressed, you could uncover technology to make the lane basically portable (equip jump gate on your ships) and there was restriction on which ship and range to ensure that there was no way you could actually just jump anywere at anytime. It worked quite well.

In addition as a bonus, if you add to this your "intelligence" network like in Moo2 where you can have a idea of the level of technology of the other players, you could potentially guess which stars / planets are at risk.

another way to mitigate inter-planetary "jump" without lane would symply be to have 2 travel engine. A inside the system engine (sub light) and a system to system jump engine. You could require to have a entry point at the edge of the solar system (call it safety due to gravity) and make it far enough that the incoming fleet must switch to sub-light speed to let the owner(s) of the system react without to have to build massive forces all around the system which would be near impossible.

Combine this with limited range of inter-system travel and you can develop some pretty interesting choke point without having to resort to jump lane which i must admit are quite frustrating. basically find a system with 1 incoming lane, build it up with gauss and hanger and park a defense fleet and no one pass no matter what. Build another rampage fleet and a few hrs later, the game is over.

with this said, i am amazed at the effort and quality of this game so far. It will surely win award.
Add 3 d movement "a la homeworld", fleet management "a la SE4/5" and this would be unbeatable. Makes me think of a the old "Ascendancy" game in RTS format (with way better graphic obviously). Continue the amazing work IC.

Why... I'm I only finding out about this now?! Are you utterly sure that actually works?

it works for everyone but you...