I've been reading people's comments and I'd like to throw out an idea with regard to the "jump star-chain" restriction issue.

Personally, I like both ideas: A <-> B <-> C
1) The idea of having a series of star systems be connected by "jump-pathways", whereas ships with jump go from A to B, but can't go from A to C.

2) The idea of having "special jump-drive" ships be able to go from A to C without hitting B. These ships would of course be more expensive, off-jump-lane travel could be slower, you could take damage while moving off-jump-lane, etc.

My question becomes, why can't we have the best of both worlds? The first step to this would be to create a galaxy with more than one "jump-pathway chain". An example would be a galaxy where half the star-systems are in one "jump-chain" and half are in another. Of course, with larger galaxies we could have 3+ jump-chains.

With a galaxy built this way, your empire would contain "Jump-Chain-restricted" ships and the more-expensive "Jump-chain-free" ships. This would of course give an advantage to an empire that is defending one "jump chain" with "restricted" ships against an invader with "free" ships. Then again, too many "restricted" ships would cripple your attack-capabilities. This would make it important for the invader to gain a "toe-hold" in a jump-chain, where he can create the much-cheaper "restricted" type ships.

It is my belief that this would add quite a bit to the "galaxy-wide" gameplay. of course, determiniting the actual costs for "restricted" and "free" ships would take testing to make it balanced...What do you guys think?