Very interesting, can't wait for the patch. I do have a few ideas:
1) Map exploration could be expanded dramatically by simply playing around with the map itself, with example such as:
1-a) Stars show the real colour unless the player has the star charts for that planetary system. Otherwise the player has to manually explore and scan the star and planets within the system. Charts can be gained from missions, hacked out of beacons/buoys, loot from fleet fights, etc...
1-b) Brown Dwarves or Rogue Planets could be discovered by gaining secret star charts from special loot/rewards, these are normally undetectable and can be a great way to procedurally generate "dungeons" with secret bases/fleets inside
1-c) Perhaps allow it as a mod: restrict hypertravel to point-to-point only, no free-flight within it and to unlock new systems you need those star charts (and getting them is part of the effort/challenge).
2) Introduce fog-of-war into the map, perhaps a fancy line-of-sight-based "scan-flavoured" exploration of it, players wouldn't know where they are going and they have to properly explore the map. Lore-wise this would be explained as "astronomical observation is restricted to the major factions and is otherwise illegal".
3) Hyperspace Wind - occasionally some wind would blow your fleet out of the way into the unknown, beware! This is a new hazzard.
4) Would it be possible for mods to massively expand the map into a much larger collection of planetary systems?
