I’m reviewing some discussions from the last year and wanted to highlight this one. There is some work going on that heavily improves (and automates) how the game creates galaxies, systems, and planets.
The primary purpose is to revise the round setup and join processes, but this also sets the stage for the game to finally support the creation and destruction of systems and planets, and also in the middle of the round.
Both ideas described above could then become viable, as a galaxy could be set to expand or shrink or even both. Additional work will be needed, but the technical barriers will soon be significantly lower.