Just a note on small solar systems as the norm - there are quite a number of objects at asteroid size or larger orbiting the Sun, and its only a medium sized star. I'm not an astrophysicist, but if I had to guess I would bet this game errs on the side of TOO FEW objects in orbit of a single star - not too many. The number of terran worlds in the game is EXTREMELY high, however. The number should be much closer to - well, one, probably, considering the games scale. But that just wouldn't work very well I suppose!
Well, the Trade Order used to control those Terran worlds for the past millennium, before the formation of the Trader Emergency Coalition. Those planets are still using the non-coordinated planetary fleets('neutrals' or 'militia') which the Vasari so much enjoyed killing before the TEC and it's new Kols stopped them. For some obscure reason, the independent planets even fight the TEC, the military branch of the Trade Order whose part they once were. But then, Insurgency rebels also fight the TEC, so that entire aspect is ridiculously messed up.
But the fact that people managed to find so many inhabitable/terraformable worlds is an even more ridiculous thing. There should be maybe one Terran world for every 4 stars, 1 Desert world for every 3 stars, 1 Ice or Volcanic world for every 2 stars, and at least 5 large 'inhabitable' Asteroids and 20 dead asteroid fields for every star. And at least 10 stars. That would be a better tiny region of the galaxy to represent.
Even the Vasari Empire in it's heyday must have expanded from the galactic central region(where the Vasari homeworld was) to only a fraction of one ring of the Milky Way. Only by running frantically for 10000 years has the Vasari Exodus Fleet been able to reach the end of that arm where the trade order had existed for the past 1000 years.
Galactic Civilizations 2's Hyperdrive seems to be a MUCH faster spacecraft propulsion system than Sins' Phase Drive since the galactic civilizations managed to carve out the entire galaxy among them. In GalCiv 2: Dark Avatar's pre-canned Milky Way map, the Arceans, Drengin and Torians share one arm and the Yor and Iconians share an arm, but the rest of the civilizations seem to be alone in their arms of the galaxy. And that map has >200 stars, but only about 30-40 inhabitable planets, and another 20-30 hostile worlds that need research effort and new technology to colonize. The rest of the millions of stars in the galaxy form the graphical backdrop.
