Within SFB there is a concept of "high warp".  Combat in SFB is said to occur at warp speeds of 3.2 or below.  Anything faster than that is called "high warp" a speed too great for weapons to be used.  This same concept could be applied to the quasi and hyperspace transit maps.  Select destination by auto pilot, travel a short distance where the proximity of mass (planet, moon, ship, etc) will prevent entering high warp, enter high warp after being able to travel normally without any intefrence from mass... zoom across the map in seconds to the targeted destination.

How big is too big?  That really depends on how you look at it.  I will join the chorus in saying that large for the sake of large is not really a bonus.  If you're looking at thousands of stars and more planets, and if I assume exploring a system takes even as little as a minute on average (probably not the case), then some thousands of stars is pretty clearly setting things up that you don't expect the players to explore the whole map.  That's cool; I'm a completionist type of gamer, but if you make it clear by having a huge scope then players like me won't get drawn in to the impossible task.  So that's my first point: if you go big, make sure to make it big enough not to mislead the completionist crowd.

So once you've gotten a reasonably enormous galaxy map, I suppose the next aspect is what do you do with it?  I like the discussion points of having a randomized starting location, and juggling the positions of key worlds around.  How cool would that be if I don't always start next to the Zok-Fot-Piq?  On the other hand, that could be nightmarish to write if the story is meant to unfold as I explore outward from my starting system in a certain way.  From that standpoint, I'd prefer a rock solid story over a series of disjointed plot elements that can be retold in whatever order.  So... on that point, I'd probably prefer fixed locations of key story-related content.

Back to the question at hand, I think you can do a lot with a ginormous galaxy map.  For example, as a potential online component, what if the player-base explores the galaxy in a semi-online fashion.  Each player plays their adventure locally, but what they explore can be uploaded to a Stardock server and contributes to filling in the map online.  Or maybe there's a hidden message from the precursors spread out over the whole map, and the map is so large that it takes the entire player community a year to find all the components, and eventually work together to decipher it?  Elite Dangerous has a map the size of the known galaxy (billions of stars), and after 2 years the player base has only mapped less than 1%.  That's probably too big for Star Control, but I think the idea that size can bring an online community together is one worth exploring.

In closing, I'd vote for huge; big enough that nobody would think to visit every system, but that everyone together might come close some day.

and what is that number or amount of time to complete for you? :) 

Fair question.  I hesitate to give a hard and fast number, because it so much depends on the game as a whole.  Maybe as a rule-of-thumb, if the length of the story/adventure part of the game clocks in at (t) hours with no particular extra effort by the player, then I may find the extra content cross into grinding territory when extra time (tx) approaches (t).  In other words, doubling the time of a play through in order to achieve all content - in a story-driven game like Star Control - may start to feel like it drags on.

Of course, if the extra content (in this case, map size) is so tremendously huge I won't even try to achieve it all.  If the gameplay takes place in galaxy of size (g), then the full galaxy size (G) being >5 * (g) is probably enough to give me the hint  If it's 2 or 3 * (g), I might try, and the resulting grind may diminish my experience of the game.  But again, the time factor comes into play.  If the game takes place in 1 system, 5 other systems to explore isn't a big deal, so really these numbers are just pulled out of my proverbial posterior.

I'm not a game designer, and truthfully I'm just giving you my uneducated guesses.  Largely, I want to complete things, and I don't mind some grinding, but if it gets too long and too disjointed from the main adventure, I'll either give up, or (probably worse) actually accomplish it and be left with a sour taste with regards to the game.

**Edited to remove some weird font effect...

At the same time, there's people like me who would REALLY appreciate 500+ hours of content, even if the main story only lasts 20-40 hours, just because there's so many things hidden to find out there. Like, realistically, I'll probably finish the main story as quickly and efficiently as I can the first time, then spend the rest of my time with the game picking at it bite by bite over the course of many weeks, months, or even years. That's just what happens with this genre for me.

But who knows, maybe I'll be convinced to actually take my time with the main campaign. So yeah, my number would be large enough for several hundred hours of content.

You can finish the main game, and then come play my universe!! That'll be the beauty! Maybe then you can play the one Hunam creates, he's got some crazy good ideas! Then, I'm sure Kavik Kang will get all up in there with his own universe and he's a pro! Awkbird will make one, and I'm sure it'll be awesome because his posts are excellent, and Lone_Utwig is definitely going to make his own universe as well!!! And Volusanius has some very cool ideas so he'll make one t-... oh wait! That's you! Start brainstorming, my friend!

Before you know it, you'll have plunked down about 1,200 hours into just this one game and lived through all your space fantasies!

I would rather have a smaller, well-curated universe in the main game and do this rather than have a huge vacant/carbon-copy universe to explore.

I'd be more likely to form a little group that would be capable of making a simple version of space hockey if that winds up being possible:-)

I agree with this. I don't think it needs to be much bigger than SC2's. Maybe double at most. SC2 actually had a lot of planets.

For me, anything that would require for me to spend over 1000 hours of gameplay beyond what the average player would normally spend to "complete" the game.

1000 hours is 4 hours of relentless exploration every day, 5 days a week, every week straight for a year.  

SC2 had a lot of planets BUT (BIIIIIG BUT) the only reason I couldn't explore them all in the same game is because of the timer.  What I actually did, in SC2, is rushed to upgrade the ship as much as possible and build a huge credit reserve, saved the game, then started exploring. Every planet I went to, I noted the resources, bio, etc.

Yes. Even the ones in the Ur-Quan territory.

So, in effect, I explored every single planet, every single moon. Just had to reload a couple times to push the timer back 2.5 years.  So SC2-sized or even double that will probably not be enough for me.

Are we really asking Stardock to make a 1000 hour game??? Come on. Let's be reasonable here. I mean, I assume that's WHY they're including the editor - to extend the game out past 100 hours or so. Let's not increase our expectation of the scope THAT much on them.

The game DOES have a budget of $5,000,000 - Destiny supposedly cost 100x that, for about 30 hours of content. Call of Duty games regularly cost 40x-50x the Star Control budget, for only 8 hours of game! So, let's be reasonable here, folks.

I read the Kotaku review for Offworld Trading Company, and while they praised it very, very highly, the only negative was: It got repetitive after a short while, because it didn't have "the budget" to make a bigger game. Whether that's true or not, it's a good thing to keep in mind - SCOPE = $$$$, and Stardock is not a mega-conglomerate with pockets in the hundreds-of-millions. So let's set our sights on something fathomable.

And put that Universe-creator to good use!!! I know I will.

Cuorebrave, come off your high horses, please.

The question was to the effect of what would be the scope the game would need to have so the completionist kind of gamer would find it too big to complete.  In my case, 1000 hours, give or take a few hundreds. It means that if the game has about 100 hours of very meaningful content, plus an extra 400 that I can do but that will be of limited significance or even just grind/rote exploration, I will complete it and visit every star, every planet, every moon, every asteroid, every speck of dust.

As to the player-created universe, I might also play them as well. But when talking strictly about the company-issued campaign/storyline/universe, it will have to be freaking big, if Stardock wants to make it so that I give up before reaching the real borders, so I never get to see them and so they can improve the impression of verisimilitude.

When I test software, I do (what we call) TUF. Test Until Failure.  In sci-fi, you'd say I like to boldly go where no geek has gone before. And if I reach the borders of the universe, three things will happen: 1- I will feel slightly disappointed that I'm not REALLY in a spaceship without real boundaries beyond what my fuel tank can yield, 2- I will explore everything within the confines of the borders, 3- I will try to breach the borders, even if it is to discover a BSOD/Error message that no one has found before. Or maybe I find a hidden wormhole that will bring me to a very small area that no one has found before and that has a single planet with a single monolith on it that, once the Universal Translator has been used on it, I gleefully learn that it says: "You're one obstinate SOB. You now have bragging rights. -Stardock"

"How great of an effect does Quasispace have?  I would think the more it shortens the trip the bigger the map can be without players being overwhelmed.

Quasispace can be thought of as a magnifying glass in this regard."

I made this post earlier in the thread and, now that I have my life back (Haha...), I can take the time to explain what I meant by this in more detail.  One of the things Star Control II already has that is very useful is the concept of different magnitudes of speed through the Quasispace, Hyperspace, and Solar System transit maps.  And in another thread I had added an even slower, "sublight", Planet transit map to get around the solar system map gravity wells that they have mentioned.  This can be used to much greater effect than it was in SC2, as I was hinting at with the original post from above.

The idea of the higher level maps acting like a magnifying glass of the lower level maps can be used across all four types as a general concept.  This feels just like SC2, but in reality has a HUGE effect.  The "main map" can be absolutely HUGE without overwhelming the player because of the 4 levels of successively "more powerful magnication" that each levels transit/informational maps possess.

This is especially true of a 2D environment, which the SFU has a very good explanation for that is equally applicable to other strategic-level space games as well...  When viewing the entire galaxy from a top down view, the relative thickness of the galactic disk, from that far away of a perspective, is so thin as to essentially be in 2 dimensions.

Doesn't it defeat the purpose of a big map? If I can get from one corner of the galaxy to another in a matter of seconds, why bother making a big galaxy?..

It really just enlarges what you can do if you want to.  It is also a good way to think of it conceptually.  This idea is only hinted at from SFU knowledge, it is more of an idea I have inspired by Star Control, so I don't know exactly how big of an impact you might get out of it.  But I imagine with "4 levels of zoom" you could have a huge galaxy that was still simple for the player to understand and move around quickly.  It seems like it would more than work well, it would really awesome.

This is really just taking the original Star Control 2 concept to the next level.

EDIT: And who says you can always use the different levels?  In SC you didn't have access to quasi space at first.  Or, you might also have to choose which drive to use, which you can change at base each visit (modules).  Then the hyperspace and quasispace drives also have different performance on the solar system and planet maps, and you pick between them based on a balance decision of how far you need to go v what you need to do when you get there.  That would be a really cool way for it to work, just throwing stuff out there...

But why cannot Quasi space or whatever space has its own Solar systems in it to explore? So that besides pure cut-the-corner thing it also has more exploration. That is what i wanted to stress in my +2/0/-2 levels concept. Basically quasi space can be the same as hyper space (in terms of size too btw) just with some additional properties.

Quasispace, or any level of maps, could have their own places to explore, by using the "hyerspace rifts" (at least what I called them) we mentioned before, like HoMM.  "Subspace Rifts" in Star Control.  I wouldn't put them in quasispace because in my mind that should be the "always clear of terrain" map, but they could be there as well.

I should also add that after thinking of the idea I had in the edit note I've realized there their is only one way that actually works.  So if the different drives were going to have very different properties and make the choice of travel affect the ship, the only relevant way of doing that would be for the Hyperspace drive system to allow the mothership to arm as a battleship and the quasispace drive forces the player to arm as a carrier.  So with the hyperspace drive installed you have the speed, thrust, maneuver, health of a pure fighter combat ship.  But the quasispace drive would have poor stats in all those areas and little excess power from the reactor so the Quasispace drive configuration would force the player to trade weapon modules for extra hangar modules to carry more satellite ships.  This way, whenever the player wants to travel a long far distance from his current base or area of operations he must become a weaker carrier (but with extra SatShips) to go there.  It's just an idea that might not fit with what they are doing, but it would work.

One of the tools that we are working on is a random galaxy generator for you guys. This tool is the same one we are using to build our galaxies internally for Star Control. One of the challenges that comes with building the galaxy is distances between stars and the mechanics involved in travelling between them. While people will be able to hand author their own galaxies there are some constants that we are going to keep under control and not let people mod, otherwise it throws the game's mechanics out the window. 

^ Sounds reasonable.

It shouldn't be completely random. Otherwise the "urquans" (big bads) we come up with may pop in right next to SOL!!!

Can we please establish like, a general distance away that a star must be, in parsecs or something? Like if we create an Urquan like bad guys, establish that they must "spawn" 150 light years away, and THEN let the random generator do its job?

Is it going to work something like that?

I assumed that was covered in "(...) there are some constants that we are going to keep under control and not let people mod (...)"

Plus, if we can "hand author", I would assume that we procedurally generate the stars, then modify the properties of those stars, rather than set generic properties for stars and then generate them.  One of the properties, in my mind, is the presence/absence of life, and its evolution level.  

So my assumption is that we use the random galaxy generator to create 5 000 stars. Once that's done, we choose where we put our baddies, allies, secret (whatever), races, artefacts, resources (if we want to modify that), etc.

I thought it was saying more that every individual player would get a new galaxy when they booted up SCR. Maybe I'm off-base about that?

It seems to me that Vaelzad was saying that part of what they are going to make available for modders to make their own galaxies is the random map generator they are using to create their map.  The easiest way to "create a galaxy" is to randomly generate something decent, and then choose the locations where you "hand craft" locations, everything else is already done... whatever the random generator had done for them.

Like that artist's saying, I can't remember which one, about how the sculptures he created were already there and he just needed to remove the un-needed bits.  I don't know art, I only know that because Dr. Soong says it on Star Trek, haha.

When asked how he made something as beautiful as The David, Michelangelo supposedly replied:

"It's easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David."

Did he actually say that? Who knows? But that's the legend you're referring to!