This game is begging for more variety in its non-colonizable gravity wells. You could have everything from the old burned-out remains of massive star ships to very dense asteroid belts to massively-sized, hundred-year-old abandoned Trade Order research labs. Those are just examples - I mean, it's set in space and it's sci-fi, and the game already has enough lore to come up with all sorts of other things. Regardless, new additions would provide refreshing visuals given that we've been looking at the same-old gas clouds and mini-asteroids for a few years. I guess as someone that's played Sins for this long, anything that gets added to refresh the visuals is a welcome plus.

Creative implementation of this feature might allow players to use "terrain" to their advantage. A really big space wreck might act as a barrier that small, nimble strike craft could fly through but that larger ships couldn't (they'd need to find some way around it, instead of through it). Or, instead of being impassible, these objects might cause the ships to move at 25% or 50% speed. Like a small but dense asteroid cluster, which would realistically impede movement.

Perhaps instead of being solid objects, these new additions would be gas clouds that alter some property of the ships. And there could be different types of clouds that have different properties.

If the developers were to do this in such a way that the "barriers" created by the junk/wrecks/asteroids weren't simply centered in the gravity well but had differing properties and shapes, it could add a new tactical dimension to how players fight and defend these sorts of areas. Perhaps these areas, instead of being dead zones as they are now, could become powerful defensive zones - or, depending on various factors, serious defensive weak points. Imagine a gravity well that's difficult to traverse due to some sort of asteroid belt or space junk; you jump in with your fleet of ships and realize the enemy has a fleet of carriers on the other side of the obstacles. Normally you'd just rush to the carriers and wipe them out, or force them to flee, but the "terrain" makes that hard in this case. By the time you make it to the carriers, their bombers have already taken a huge toll on you, and you haven't even touched them. Instead of heading straight for the enemy like you always do, you have to re-think your approach in such a situation.

List of ideas for wrecks/junks:

• Very large, abandoned space habitation system. Perhaps broken into many pieces and spread throughout the well. 
• Old Trade Order research labs. Some might be for civilian research, others for defense or military.
• Old, pre-Trade Order (now abandoned) fleet headquarters
• A huge, thousand year-old Trade Order wreck. Could be a gigantic freighter or old warship.
• Gigantic debris field full of destroyed ships from some long-forgotten battle.
• Super-dense asteroid cluster.

List of ideas for gas clouds:

• Explosive gas clouds, where ships in the cloud take additional (10%? 25%?) damage when attacked
• Corrosive gases, which slowly damage ships' hulls
• Ion/magnetic storms that cripple shields
• Dense gas clouds that hinder ship movement and turn rate
• A gas cloud that increases the speeds at which a ship travels through it
• A gas cloud that makes anything in it invisible to sensors, a perfect spot to hide a scout frigate or conduct an ambush. (In this scenario, sensors would only pick up enemy ships that were within weapon range.)

Now, nothing says one cannot combine the gas cloud effects with the other space junk properties. Maybe that gravity well has an abandoned research lab, but it *also* has a magnetic storm that disables shields. Or it's a dense asteroid belt that is tricky to get through, and also has some gas in it that, at various points, blocks sensors. Imagine the ambush opportunities there, especially with carriers, or a hidden star base.

Finally, nothing says that some of these abandoned things aren't intact and cannot be captured. What if you found some unique, but very old, very massive, and now-abandoned, defensive fortification in one of these gravity wells? Each faction has one or more ships that can be used to capture structures, so they'd be ideal for capturing these items. With some time and money, a faction could bring that structure back on-line. So maybe instead of an abandoned, wrecked research lab that acts as an obstacle to movement, you instead find a working Trade Order military lab that you can capture, and which speeds up all your military research. Or an old Trade Order fleet outpost that you can upgrade into a real defensive powerhouse. These structures should ideally look unique and be very big - of course, they'd have to be big to have their own gravity well.

Combine everything together, and we'd have additional variety for these types of gravity wells that is currently lacking. Some additional variety might be thrown into combat encounters that occur in these spots too. We'd also have a new element of randomness to add to random map games.

Anyway, just some thoughts.