I guess I'll add my 2 cents worth.
While I have no HUGE problems with it, I would be mildly opposed to any re-distribution of planets that was intended to balance things based on race, for the following reasone:
1. The lesser of my reasons is this: There is often talk of which race is better in which situation. Admit it, we all engage in it. (Spoken as someone who is constantly being told that their race of choice to play is inferior
) Simple equalization of immediate stellar neighborhoods (without balancing per se), so that each player has the same stuff to start with, will force players with potentially different races to have to deal with the same situations. I think that would be a good thing. Skill of play would become a larger variable in the outcome of a game.
2. Speaking pragmatically, I don't see how an algorithm for rating planets based on race can be arrived at without leaving a lot of holes. Demo, uni, dict, lith, tol, sub, aqua, +production, +research, +farming...against planet type, size, minerals, artifacts (yes, artifacts would have to be included), and possibly system planet count. That's a fair number of variables to have to balance without devaluing one or more race picks in the process. This is what was behind my question in my earlier post ("how?").
I guess an example situation, though just a tad extreme, that might be useful to discuss is this: Let's assume that a map has nothing but barren abundant planets, except for one large terran world (also abundant). If balancing were attempted, and only one player gets the terran world, it's likely then that whoever gets that diamond in the rough planet wins the game on the first turn. This could reasonably be said to not be an improvement over the random placement of this planet that existed at the start.
-Gusset