"OK, here are my thoughts after trying the template out and seeing the code. However, let me start with the list of issues you have on your user page. Incidentally, I don't think any one of them warrants a complete re-design, as they can be dealt with just as well within the existing template. So, my question still stands—if you can elaborate further, I'd greatly appreciate it. 

 #it includes many informations not normally found in infoboxes, and are probably better presented in the lede 
 #:I won't comment on this one in depth, since I need to first know which fields you mean. However, most of this infobox's fields not found in other infoboxes are way too specific to be placed into a lede (which is supposed to be a summary of the article, not an infobox substitute). 
 ##""Administrative center of"", is probably already specified in the first few words of the article 
 ##:When it's a straightforward situation (such as for a town which is the administrative center of a district), then yes, it often is. However, it's all too often not straightforward at all, as sometimes a place is the administrative center of several entities; often both municipal and administrative—putting it all in the lede will result in an awful clunky lede, and placing it in a standalone section often makes it hard to find and eyeball. 
 #automatically transcludes a large amount of 'citation needed' tags for facts that are either trivial or unlikely to be challenged 
 #:We've been through this already. Facts which are truly trivial, supereasy to verify, or unlikely to be challenged (such as the values in the website or federal subject field, or the coordinates) do not generate these tags. Everything else need verification and, sadly, often lacks it in the body of the text. How is municipal jurisdiction, for example, ""trivial""? My standard reply to this concern is that if you don't like seeing the ""citation needed"" tags, go spend fifteen minutes on finding and adding sources to suppress them. If that's too much to ask, I assure you that I fully intend to personally hunt down and eliminate each and every ""citation needed"" tag in these infoboxes. And although overall it will, of course, take me a while to do, I am always willing to take requests to ref an individual article someone has a problem with. 
 #references are also used quite liberally, Vladivostok provides an example of this: the location of the city within the Primorsky Krai is made self-evident by the location map. This extensive use of references to verify patently accurate informations only contributes to the visual clutter. 
 #:I think you are confusing location with jurisdiction. With Vladivostok, location of the city is made self-evident by just having the city's coordinates—technically, you don't even need a location map! Jurisdiction, however, is not the same as location. First, there are two jurisdictional aspects for any inhabited locality (administrative and municipal). Second, while it's extremely rare for a location to change, jurisdiction may change quite often. In fact, in Russia it may change so often, that it is useful not only to provide a reference, but to also tell the readers as of which date the reference for the jurisdictional information is current! There is nothing ""patently accurate"" about the fact that Vladivostok is administratively incorporated as a city under krai jurisdiction and municipally—as an urban okrug. These facts are entirely non-obvious and need verification. 
 #it's too complex considering that it handles just over 1,000 articles. the main template is 25k in size and it calls another 30kb template just to determine the correct location map 
 #:It handles just over 1,000 articles now, but it belongs in 150,000+ articles (the number of inhabited localities in Russia as of now, all of which will eventually need to be created and use this infobox). The template for the location maps actually does more than just pulling the location map, but I fully agree that it is not optimal at all and could use a re-design. For one, it includes a large number of spelling variants for each federal subject—it was very useful to have when the work on these articles (which were then a complete mess) just started, but it is not nearly as useful now. I'd estimate that template can be cut in size by three-quarters by just eliminating the spelling variants which are no longer likely to be encountered. It can be further optimized by splitting it into the parts responsible for different things.As for the main template being ""too complex"", I'd say it is much less complex than what you've just created (which is basically a hack wrapped around an unwieldy monster )) 
 #the commons category shouldn't be included in the infobox (Wikipedia:Sister_projects#Where_to_place_links) 
 #:It was someone else's idea to put it there. I personally think it'