I scatter the stars in a circle around the home star. From memory, its not completely random, I believe I make and array of angles, and an array of distances, then randomly pick and angle and distance and place the star.
So for example if the stars per player was 12 the angles array would look like [0, 30, 60, 90, etc ect]. The distance array would be a range between some small distance and I think 2x home star distance.
Each players stars actually “overlap” quite a lot.
Ahh, okay, so we can make maps like I’m thinking of just by placing the home stars in the right places. That’s good to know, thanks!
My Excel Coordinates spreadsheet
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55181087/NP2%20Coordinates.xlsx
Sorry for taking my time, but my version of the editor can be found at:
Please download your local copy from the File / Download. No warranty of any kind given. 
First pass of this is in and working.
Dysp’s 16 player Spiral
At the moment, each player start should be 1 unit apart. Dysps maps work well but Dave yours are a little too spread out.
It does occur to me now that one unit apart doesn’t offer much flexibility, my question to you guys, what scale should I use?
In a medium random hex galaxy each player start is 12 light years? Should we use that?
Jay.
Spiral isn’t the first thing that comes to my mind with that…
I will revisit my designs.
I suggest we stick with the name spiral for that design.
I also thought, since I was messing around with this stuff I should add a symmetrical distribution of stars you can use if you want to.
This is 32 stars per player in circle map.
Those are cool. How about a fractal snowflake pattern. A circle made up of branching Ys out from the center, so until you get extended levels of range, you have to follow your branch into the center.
Oh man - this is pretty cool! I don’t know much about programming/json - but I’m going to learn so I can do some! 
I’d be even better if you’re able to control the resources on each star - like give the centre star in Jay’s example above SUPER good resources, making it a rush to the middle.
For clarification, in the initial posting you mention that the designs need to be scaled to allow space between the home systems. (depending on the home star distances)
Does this need to be done manually or is this something which is done automatically when the map is created?
In other words if I am creating a new custom map do I need to scale it myself or is this done in the code?
I drew myself a map on graph paper, and to simplify it, I used small numbers. When I put them in, they were right on top of each other even with it set to Far. So I tripled my numbers and got a much better design. See it in my other post:
I have been working on a Dark game with a random star layout and can now offer you my first live game
8 Player
Premium Only
Dark
Turn Based
$1000 Star cash
I have no idea what the exact layout of the home stars is in this game, so am just as in the dark as the other players.
Jay, what was the settings you used to get that map? I tried:
[[3,0],[2,1],[2,2],[5,2],[6,2],[3,3],[4,3],[7,3],[0,4],[3,4],[4,4],[1,5],[2,5],[5,5],[5,6],[4,7]]
and it spat out a very tiny map with each homeworld being less than 2 light years apart (settings were 24 stars/player and ‘far’). You can see it here> Neptune's Pride
Any thoughts on what I’m doing wrong?
Double or triple all of your numbers and try it again. The Far impacts the distance of the random scatter not the home world positions.
I did map mine out on graph paper, then ended up having to triple the numbers. I think Jay said you should aim for about 12 points between home worlds.
Yep.
I multiplied by 12 to get what I wanted for my game. You may want to take your coordinates and multiply each number by 12.
I just thought of a way you could have stars branch out, where each player is at an arm. You choose the center to be a fill-in area or blank area. Then you can select other fill in spots on the map for stars. Each player is at the end of a branch of stars. Doing this, you are able to curve the spiral without requiring a certain amount of players.
If you only want an 8 player game that has a spiral, each player would be at the tip of a spiral. You select maybe 2 or 3 fill in points on the branches that make a curve then the middle is a fill in point. Each fill in point you would add a random star scatter to. Maybe 1 fill in point can have a bigger random star scatter to it. For the spiral map, this would be the center. I am sure there will be some more neat designs a player will be able to make too.
I’ve already requested Jay add a second set of coordinate entry for ‘filler’ points, that do not place a starting point. The system would multiply starting star values with actual players, but then divide that out by the total number of coordinates needed. I don’t recall where Jay and I discussed that. He responded that is shouldn’t be that hard to add now that he has the coordinate system in place for the custom maps.
Edit: it is in the thread New Map Types
Thanks guys, that looks much better now.
Just a comment on the “starting distance” setting - the help in Triton says it affects the homeworld position: “The starting distance controls how far player home stars start from one another” - so is there anyway to change the scatter distance, or does it affect both?
From my testing, it seems more like the distance setting impacts the scatter now, and not the starting distances. I’d have to test more to be sure, or Jay could tell you if this changed when using the Custom coordinates.