If it was my comment your referring to Gregstrom, I was thinking more along the lines of having the option to play on a huge map, or a wee map.
But then a couple days ago I stumbled across
Aurora, and i'm blown away by just how amazingly detailed it is. It been described as the Dwarf Fortress of 4x and its true i'm loving it so far. Its incredibly difficult to get to grips with but persevering is paying off, if you haven't heard of it then i highly suggest you take a look.
In Aurora it seems you can scale up the map as you go along, spawn new enemies and increase the map size on the go. It seems to work well with that and its an option i hadn't really considered myself.
I think that to have scaling up you would be better off in a SE/Starfire/Aurora method of space travel - systems linked by warp points and all interstellar travel is via these, I'm not sure if this is the road your taking (or something along the lines of lost empires/Distant worlds that simulates the entire galaxy and you travel by more conventional means, you see all the stars at the start and you can get there (eventually).
I'd prefer the SE way tbh, also id prefer that we don't get to see what links where and all the systems laid out on the map at the start etc - adds to the sense of exploration - I could go on but probably it's better in a seperate post).
Banging on again about the officers post I made above, Aurora also has a well developed officer system (very much as I suggested above, only with the additions of traits and bonuses, also Officer roles for civilian, army, navy and special project teams (not quite sure what they do yet).
The thing that stands out the most tho is your promoting or watching getting promoted) officers and governers of your own race, unlike the very similar moo system where its a mash of weird races turning up on your doorstep offering their services (its so deep he even has a political system in there to simulate useless officers with good political contacts getting promoted above better officers without the political clout).