1) I believe Yarlen stated that theory wise, there could be as many as 5000 colonizable type planets, so at a minimum that is about 1000 star systems....

2) From what I have seen, there are some differences although the big difference is early in games when your looking to colonize a world, in all the beta I have played only yellow type suns have planets that can be settled.

3) 10% production and research bonus as mentioned above.

4) 5 is the max I have seen.

5) Yes and Yes you can rename them after you colonize them or if you want to change some basic setting in your preferences.

6) Stick around, maybe in 3 billion years or so

7) You betcha, some quite similar to modern day happenings and some similar to historical happenings.

W/R
Suralle Straykat

1) I believe Yarlen stated that theory wise, there could be as many as 5000 colonizable type planets, so at a minimum that is about 1000 star systems....

What?!? A THOUSAND Star Systems MINIMUM??? That's really A LOT of stars, if it's true.

7) You betcha, some quite similar to modern day happenings and some similar to historical happenings.

Something more spacific?

Okay well to answer your question on Random Events more specificly...

There are events like the I-League. What happens is that a bunch of star systems (or in GC2's case, just planets) break away from all of the major empires and becomes a new minor race called the League of Independant Nations (I-League for short). But just like any minor civ, they can grow be just as, if not even more powerful than any of the major civilizations. Also, they're quite efficient at picking up unhappy planets from other civilizations.

There are also less dramatic situations where say you go to inhabit a new planet, and all of the sudden you discover there are two species of giant insect like aliens that are at war with eachother. Now you get to decide wether or not you want to exterminate these pests, let them work it out, or seperate them.

Keep in mind these are both two events from GC1 that I can think of off the top of my head. There are tons and tons more that I cant think of, and a lot I probably havent even come by yet. Im sure we will see some familiar ones in GC2, but I think there are a lot of new ones too.

Oh and no, there will never be that many star systems in a GC2 game. At max, you're looking at couple hundred I'd say. At minimum, about 2-3 (based on what I've seen from Brad's screen shots of the Human vs Drengin wars).

Hmm why do rings give Research? (just wondering...)
and can't they have both moons and rings? (it may be possible)and if not. why not? (physics not Imbalancement)

anyone wants some headcrabs for lunch? D: i just killed los o em (i played HL1 over and over recently and they just are a mess...so i cooked em there AWESOME!!! but so low in carbs )

Its not the CPU I would worry about, its the graphics trying to keep up with all the stuff going on. Even if the Green Reaper can put a string in that doesn't use the graphical interface so much as I was reading in the journals its still going to be a running "dawg" fight for showing you what your culture is doing.

W/R
Suralle Straykat

PS: Do you think I could get one of them extra hefty litter boxes to go... long journey coming.

Well, in theory it was 5,000 planets in a gigantic map with all settings to Abundant. That doesn't mean 5,000 habitable worlds, most would be class 0.

aw man. I hope when you are human that the in-game solar system is exactly like the real one, with mars, saturn, jupiter, etc. I hated that about GC1, how the planets in the starting solar system were random in number and in name. So lame

They won't, don't worry For a races home planet it is always the same PQ-Speaking of which
how does Custom racial Home planets system work?