After the last patch it seems the 'Long range jumps' research topic isn't needed anymore to travel to other stars. In a game with three computer opponents I saw scouts from all of them fly around my planets and when one of those opponents offered me an intelligence pact, I saw that that opponent was based in another star system (This was very early game by the way).

So, thinking 'What the heck...' I tried sending my fleet to another star without having researched 'Long range jumps' and it worked without a problem.

Is this intentional or a bug? If this is intentional, the research option should be removed or changed to something else (Faster long range jumps?).