1) I see nothing wrong with the existing model from GC2 on cultural influence, which does expand influence according to the cultural output of the planet.
2) The city production tile system from Civ5 doesn't match well here, and as much as I like it for Civ5, I think it would be a mistake for GC3. We have the terraforming tech tree system instead, and I think that fits in better with the idea of improving a planet.
3) We'll get a tech tree view soon. Look at the bottom left for the button in the Research view - it's not currently available, but it's coming.
4) The stardust and nebula stuff is indeed interesting. I would argue that we don't want to go too overboard with it. After all, space *is* mostly empty.
5) It's a game tuning/balance issue. Frankly, I think it's a bit too early to start tweaking numbers yet.
6) NO WAY. One of the big strategies in GC2 is figuring out how to expand your empire, and the limits to exploration your ships have. If you haven't played GC2, go do so now. The logistics does scale with the map size, it's not just a fixed amount, though planet influence remains fixed without scaling to map size. Even then, I (and many other GC folks) feel that it shouldn't scale, and that one of the big challenges on a big map is figuring out how to manage the vast distances that have to be crossed, and thus the penalty in extra life-support systems that have to be paid when trying to cross vast gulfs of space.
This is NOT Civ-5-in-space. Please don't confuse it as such, and people don't want that. Taking some interesting ideas from Civ5 is really good, but we're not trying to emulate it (and, frankly, it would STINK if we did, because Civ is simply different in idea than GalCiv).