I know it's been a while since this thread was last active, so it's kind of a necro. But this topic right here is literally what I made the forum account for. Hyperspace storms are, in my opinion, not fun the way they are currently implemented.
Hyperspace travel consists of dragging your mouse cursor across the screen. It's not terribly interesting.
The only thing hyperspace storms add to that is that the game sometimes randomly says "Hey, I just decided I'm going to take some of your money away, and maybe also strand you in the middle of nowhere to be sucked into a black hole." That's if you go through clouds in the first place, of course. But what is the alternative? Taking an insanely circuitous route and prolonging a part of the game that is, as we have established, just dragging your mouse cursor across the screen. There is no thinking or planning or challenge involved in any of this.
I see several things that could be implemented which would keep some semblance of "terrain" in deep space, because having a completely flat map without additional features wouldn't be a great solution either.
1) This is mandatory in my opinion: have the sector map show the actual, correct locations of cloud formations, so that if you don't want or currently can't afford the CR hit, you can plan your route to avoid clouds (and therefore storms) entirely before you are right in front of them. The current implementation is unimmersive on top of everything else, because the cloud formations are static - mapping them out seems like an incredibly obvious thing to do in-universe.
1.1) Waypoints. A large chunk of game time consists of navigating hyperspace, how is there no navigational waypoint system on the sector map? I. e. go to system X along set waypoints a, b, c and d. Combined with 1), this would allow players to properly plan their routes across the sector. Of course, you can still decide that it's better for you to take the direct route, environmental hazards be damned.
2) Instead of activating in short, semi-random intervals, have hyperspace storms activate as a cascading wave across a cloud formation. I. e. there is a small random chance for any eligible terrain tile (the denser, brighter cloud sections) to trigger a hyperspace storm. When it does trigger, it then causes a cascading chain reaction in adjacent eligible terrain. The "thinner", darker cloud sections don't transmit the storm's energy as well, they don't spawn storms themselves and a storm wave will slowly ebb down when traveling across these tiles.
This would make storms far more predictable since most times, you won't be on or very near the tile that starts the storm "wave". There still is a certain chance that a storm will trigger right on top of you, but it's small. Instead, most of the time, you will see a storm wave heading towards you. Then you can decide whether you're in a position to break through, at a decent cost of supply, fuel and CR. It's not just the Warp randomly farting a free engine boost at you, it's erratic energy spikes interfering with your drive bubble and overloading systems across the ship. But if you're short on time, it might still be worth it to brace for impact and go right through. Or maybe you reckon it will die down enough before you reach it.
Anyway, that's my two cents.