[Loser]

You could have warp point connectiing most all your systems, but your opponents would, likely, be able to use them as well.

Keep in mind that you can only have ten warp points in a system, and that you can only choose when one end of the warp point will be.

In a vs. AI game I wanted to leave the Last remaining AI alone for a while to give it a chance to grow up and give me what for. I cut off the warp point access between us so he could stew. While he went about whatever he was doing, I redid the warp points on my side of the map. All systems were connected to three barren hub systems, which, in turn, connected to the hub with the least systems.

A hub could only connect to nine planet-populated systems, and then had one warp-point left to connect to another hub. All the warp points were created from the start sector of the hub, which had a couple of defending star bases and one to be packed fighters. The hub with only five planetary systems also connected to the other two hubs. It was a trinary system in which I planed to build three Sphere Worlds. (and the warp points would all have been sitting on one of them...)

The other end of each warp point, including the ones connecting the secondary hubs to the main hub, appear at the edges of the system. So travel is not quite instantainous, but you need only get to the edge of one system, warp twice, and you are on the edge of another system of hte same hub. For defensive purposes, it was best to station fleets in the hubs, that way they could get to any planetary system.

(Unfortunately, even though I left the AI to seek its ultimate fulfillment, to better itself as much as it wished, with most of the huge quadrant to itself, it was still pretty pitifull...)