Well if you really wanted boring you could play a space game on rails and only go to a star and not have free form control of where you go.....(looks at Endless Space).

  I think what the OP is getting at is that the map is largely uniform in terms of distribution. You can set the stars to form clusters, but every cluster tends to have the same distribution of resources, etc. There's nothing in the way of galactic regions that are significantly different except by fluke of the RNG.

  Likewise, there aren't any galactic features to be found. Many 4X games use this concept in some fashion, whether it's older ones like Alpha Centauri and its Uranium Flats/Garland Crater/Sargasso Sea/etc that have specific traits beyond the usual landscape (and often a story element attached to them as well), or a more recent Space 4X like StarDrive 2, where the region called the Grimdark Traverse (a sensor-void area that also speeds up ship travel to several times normal when passing through it) can have a significant strategic impact depending on where it shows up, as can with various other galactic features that have significant regional effects, open up unique tech research options, trigger story events, etc.

  (Those are just the two that come immediately to mind - they certainly aren't the only ones to use the idea.)

WHAT?! You need more reason than finding that class 17 bomb first among all the races?? I guess some people just don't feel the urge.

There's something to what you say though.  My biggest gripe, since I opened my very first game in GC2 in fact, is the way every player's so damn uniform.  So it's not the map that's undifferentiated, but rather the strategic layout.  The range technologies are particularly anticlimactic.  If your origin were identical with a species or two, then the extra 5 tiles might actually mean something.  As it stands, you have to have 4 levels more (which in this case sadly requires a tech "age" or two as well) before you even feel a difference.

Of course for that to change, this whole game needs to become a rather different game.  [begins talking about when GC3 was just an announcement] For example what if you could settle a world together, with another race.  So sharing star systems and sharing planets in some cases.  The role of influence on such planets would become to divert resources, so it's not a half-and-half planet, but gives more to one or the other owner.  There's 1000 ways to set this up, and every one is better than "race colony ship towards planet, lose or win by 1 turn, late colony ship turns around and flies onwards for 231894123809 miles."

I'm going to start on a mod right now that takes life support out of the trees altogether (I'll make speed techs provide the modules instead). J/k, I'm really lazy. But to sum up, XWerewolfX has a point. There is some need for spicing up here, and plenty of room as best as I can tell!

It is much harder to have an interesting map in space, because it is mostly empty. There are plenty of goodies to uncover, but the terrain is all pretty much the same. The main thing that I think might help with this would be to have a few really interesting/valuable spots on each map. Maybe a cluster of resource nodes, or a single one that gives much more than a normal one; maybe a giant nebula that has some kind of effect beyond the normal ones; maybe a solar system with multiple high-level extreme planets. A few of these on each map would serve as land marks and also create high-value targets to fight over.

I'd make nebulas larger and nearly impassable without tech.  It would make the map a lot less open, military starbases might actually become useful GC3 could really benefit from some sort of genuine "terrain" features.  I realize in reality space might be vast and empty but since when is most of the taken for granted features of Space 4X games limited by reality...

Yeah I get that feeling with Stardock a lot as well

The wikipedia article on nebulas states they can be 100's of light years in diameter, who's to say they couldn't be 1000's out there in the universe somewhere, so making them larger would satisfy realism.  There's plenty of Sci-Fi where nebulas are deadly to ship faring races.  Stardock could do more with them.

The galaxy being so open does have repercussions on gameplay most of them make it a less interesting game imo.  Think they were going to do stellar rifts don't know what happened to them, black holes in the game aren't especially exciting hardly interstellar.  On the bigger maps I don't see why permanent wormholes couldn't exist, well having said that the AI wouldn't know how to use them probably... they could do a lot more to make the map more engaging.

Funny thing - the bit arrays for the nebulas are HUGE. They're like 32x32 or something. But they're barely used. For example:

<TileArea>
<InternalName>LargeNebula1</InternalName>
<Width>10</Width>
<Height>11</Height>
<Layout>
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00111000000000000000000000000000
01111000000000000000000000000000
01111011000000000000000000000000
11111111100000000000000000000000
01100111100000000000000000000000
11100211100000000000000000000000
01110111000000000000000000000000
00111111000000000000000000000000
00011111110000000000000000000000
00001100110000000000000000000000
00000001110000000000000000000000
</Layout>
</TileArea>

This is the tile layout for the biggest nebulas. Anything with a 0 in it is empty space. I've not experimented with them much yet, but I don't see any real reason you couldn't use much, much more of that space to just mod in some cool nebulas. I think someone was going to attempt it a few months back, but we never really heard of any results.

I would like to see resources clumped up a bit more, instead of random resources being available everywhere. If there was only 3 or 4 areas on the map that had anti-matter (and there was 5 or 6 in each "clump") there would be a lot more conflict over said area. If you combine that with not letting people build starbases in "owned" territory then you can present an interesting dynamic with 3 or 4 factions each building military starbases in this area, trying to exert their sphere of influence to take over the lion's share of the deposits.

This also present's a lot more interesting opportunities for market monopolies, trading and diplomacy (allowing starbases in "owned" space could be a diplomatic option).

It would also force you to defend your claims to these resources, as an undefended starbase that gets easily wiped out results in your sphere of influence going bye bye and those resources being back up for grabs. It also gives multiple solutions to the problem of how to get those resources instead of the current one "just go find another deposit and plonk a starbase down". Military minded factions can war over the resource field, diplomatic ones can secure either trade and/or starbase rights, science minded factions can focus on influence tech's and just exert overwhelming influence pressure etc.

For a perfect example of what I am talking about, you only need 2 words: Crude Oil.

These are all really great ideas. Hope Stardock sees this. Easily among my most desired features for this one. Maps need help...