JetJaguar2000 : You bring up good points. While I am not totally against saying ships can only fly a certain distance from a world, or a ship has a certain amount of fuel for distance it can travel it might make the game a little restrictive. I'm not sure how that would play out. While I personally don't have a major issue, I think it might cause some fundamental problems. We would have to give it some thought.

I like the PCC thoughts.. We would have to go through some universe big bangs and try to determine proximity for systems. Either we create more planets or have to change the algorithm for the way the big bang generates a universe. Some good thoughts though.

You certainly bring up some interesting points about the space travel. If ships were give a limited range for how far they could travel it would make things a lot more interesting. You would have to slowly acquire planetary hops to get somewhere. I would think a few things would have to happen for this though...

1 - We would probably undo the fog of war. So you would see all the stars. If you want to travel somewhere you would "jump to a system". Once you were in warp you are locked in to the time it takes to travel to that system. How far you can jump depends on the type of ship/fleet.

2 - How would people encounter a black hole? If you are warping along and go past a hidden black hole does the black hole expose and you lose your ship, or are they visible and destroy everything passing by in a given radius?

3 - Using a jump gate to jump to a beacon, would this still allow you instant travel to a planet you control with a beacon bypassing single jumping from system to system?

Obviously waypoints would have to be introduced to the game to allow that kind of navigation.

Just some thoughts about the future of the game, not something we are currently planning.. If input is enough for it, they are certainly things we would consider implementing in the future.