Was there ever any resolution on the idea of large scale "random" events? I have tried searching the forums, and there seemed to be some interest but never anything definite mentioned.

I saw several people complaining about how it favors lucky players, or increases micro, but I still think that there could be room for solar system wide events from time to time.

Take a passing comet. It could have the effect of dusting the system with crystal fragments, increasing crystal mining by some small % for the 5 or 10 minutes it is passing. Not a visitable location, no gravity well or anything, just a comet graphic which scrolls by over the plane of the system for the next few minutes and increases crystal mining.

Or a solar wind, which could decrease phase jump speed by some small % (as the computers have to include compensation calculations or whatever) for ships in the system.

Meteor storms would be awesome, but I cannot think of a realistic yet nonrandom way to include universal damage. Maybe all unshielded planets in the system could take a slight population hit every few minutes while the storm passes perhaps.

I am not suggesting planet specific randomness in all this (as it could really affect people with just one planet that gets hit/missed), but per solar system doesn't seem out of the question. And so long as the effects are minor and unilateral they would seem balanced enough.

Maybe this was shot down for good reason earlier, but if so I missed it, and it seems worth bringing up for future possibilities.