Does it really even need that many planets? I'd rather have 15 interesting planets than a 100 random locales.
There is an interview where they discussed this with the producers. It's a huge challenge trying to come up with compelling locales. If you look at real life for an example a locale is made special by its surroundings. Sometimes you see a picture and you know instantly where that is in the world if it's a wide enough shot even if there are no obvious major landmarks. That's what they are doing. Supposedly they have done that with some 50+ planets now including coming up with unique landmarks so people instantly know which planet is which just based on that one major landmark. In some cases it's a huge crater in the center of the city, another is a massive sign and yet another it's the tallest building in the known galaxy. The rest they haven't talked about because mostly it exists on paper. They are only actively working on 5 planets right now and only two are mostly built up.
Also at the start there is only going to be three major types of architecture. However by next year there should be sub groups within those major ones and we should see 6-12 different ones. Don't expect 12 types used by the time the game launches. If we are lucky we will get 6 (3 major, 1 sub type each). The more they have the more variety we will get.
Tuco mentioned that he is disappointed with the lack of more procedural generation. In fact by the time the assets are complete they hope to have the tools also built to pre-make entire star systems and cities at the click of a button. Once that's done the artists go in and spend time actually adjusting things to suit the need of the locale. That's how procedural generation will be used in SC. That's the only way they can build 100-150 planets and some 300 landing locations across them and in space. Yup it's not one city per planet. Some larger planets may have 3 or even 4 landing locations such as Terra III or a major industrial world. Others may have none or just one. You should be able to land at virtually all of them except maybe gas giants unless there is a space station in orbit and that has actually been discussed as a likely refinery location to land and refuel/trade from.
Also they will need procedural generation for the asteroids. Since they are building a 1/10 scale or whatever crazy sized scale star system everywhere they need a shit ton of asteroids. Those will not be done by hand. The assets are built by hand and a tool will be used to randomly generate asteroids of various sizes and compositions and seed an asteroid belt with them. Procedural generation will also be used to find new locations like that in space but everything will be touched by hand first so what you see was generated through procedural generation but only inside a dev tool. Then someone reviews it and adds it to the asset database the game uses to reveal a new location for players to travel to and explore. A similar tool will be used to create missions but those will be much more hands on.
Why?
Because they don't think it would be fun and I agree. People would get lost and bored way too quick and you have no control over what happens. Depending on the tool it could be pretty shit so I think it's a good idea to put eyes on it before its released to the player base and have some control over the content to ensure it's going to be fun. The other side of that is you need a shit ton of assets to make that work. Which is why I still don't think they can pull this off by 2017. I don't care how good their tool devs are, and they are pretty fucking good from the interviews I watched, since the amount of assets that need review is just astronomical. ED didn't need that because they built a tool and released it into their game. Done. SC needs more hands on time and that's more dev time and effort to ensure there is real quality there.
One last thing. Too many people want EVE's level of completeness at release date. Fuck... that. I don't care what dev is involved nobody can live up to that expectation no matter how much money you throw into the fire. Some things just need to sit and stew for years to get good and no amount of money or effort can replace that.
