thank you thecw

I actually kinda the wide spacing, but agree that 2-3 is better with the star frequency bumped up a notch for huge galaxy, tight clusters, common stars makes a nice clustering witstars in the clusters about 6ish hexes apart from each other & individual clusters seem to be anywhere from 3-5 to more common 15-20ih hexes apart from each other  I think it will give a more interesting flavor to borders than just oh it's $GonnaStartWars on that border" but borders can still sometimes be close enough to make sharing those borders not so safe.  seeing the map is making me consider diving into the xml's and lowering engine speeds for a test run

Very nice, I changed the globalcombatmods section for huge to this:

<GlobalCombatMods>
<EffectType>ShipRange</EffectType>
<Target>
<TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType>
<Value>0.20</Value>
<EffectType>SensorRange</EffectType>
<Target>
<TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType>
<Value>1.5</Value>
<EffectType>MovesCap</EffectType>
<Target>
<TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Multiplier</BonusType>
<Value>0.5</Value>
</GlobalCombatMods>

but it seems like Shiprange is the only allowed option .  Cutting the value in half for shiprange alone from 0.4 to 0.2 affects how far you can move from planets & things (from ~36>~26 hexes for terran scout from start on huge), but I'm not sure what exactly it's doing & went with editing shipcomponentdefs.xml to give half strength engines/life support & 150% sensor strength. oddly enough, the initial terran scout ship has 3/3 moves & 26 hex range from start.  sensoors, Engines, & life support in the designer definitely seem to reflect the changes though