If we have terrain, shouldn't we have it everywhere? Rather then one big simple plain, with a few tiles of water or granite peaks (in basic civ style jargon)? Tacticly speaking, terrain is only interesting if it gains or looses advantages in combat. IE, defend while on a black hole tile, and suffer -50% due to having to divert so much of your ships concentration and motor power to not falling into the black hole. Attack out of a nebula, and gain a +25% bonus, because your opponent cannot isolate your ship on their scanners as easily as when both ships are in open space.
If you don't have any combat effects, that only leaves movement effects, and strategic resources. Le'ts examine movement effects. The automatic path finding will just "go around" slow or damaging tiles. Where you can go diagonally 1 over for the same movement cost to go around a tile of asteriods, say, then they do not matter on the main map, do they? Unless you are going to create large regions that are minus movement (some huge nebula that prevents your ship from going more then 50% speed for whatever reason). Any fast move bonus, your path finding will utilize where appropriate. But unless it allows for going in at Sector 1,1 and popping out at Sector 5,5 then a whole tile gained isn't going to be significant. So, that makes me go, why bother? Unless you make large regions... like sector sized or bigger, they won't matter for movement.
What's the last matter? Ah yes. Strategic Resources. These can matter, even if their is only one such item out of nine or more sectors! Build a starbase on a black hole, get a +5% research bonus. Find a spun down neutron star that is pure carbon (diamond)? Build a starbase one it, get a +5% to production (all that cheap, diamond tipped equipment you can make out of material you harvest from the spun down star). I've always envisioned that the strategic resources in GC1 are these sorts of things... terrain that when "processed" appropriately yield some bonus that improves your empire, rather then just generate some extra shields or a bit of extra cash.
Honestly, I think we already have "terrain" in the game. Instead of us being shown a stellar black hole, it's the research bonus icon. Instead of a spun down neutron star, it's a production bonus icon. Instead of a rogue world where some freaky exotic chemistry is going on, it's a morale bonus icon, etc etc etc.
So, do we need move and combat modifying terrain? If we do, then it really needs to be regions, and not just one tile. Otherwise, those type of effects will be meaningless so often, that I don't see why Star Dock should bother wasting time implementing it. Just my opinion, your mileage may very, etc etc etc.
And Spazzle, it's only by scale. Stars too far off the galactic plane, will and do get kicked, one way or the other. We are a bit thicker then the average spiral galaxy, at the moment, because the Milky Way is actively cannabilizing at least one dwarf galaxy. But once its done eating that, the main disk plane should slowly settle (thin). Unless you are talking about the galactice halo stars at the center of the galaxy? What they are doing, is trying not to fall into the black holes, and going to slow to escape our galaxy. But gravatic interaction will eventually slow them the vast majority of them, or get them kicked into a different path, last I was able to see modelled. They aren't well known though, because they aren't as easily observed as there is so much dust, coreward. Although we are always learning.
