traveling through phase lanes should cost something, cash definatly and maybe crystals. i see it working like this, jumps to and from your homeworld will be free. the farther from your hw you get the more expensive it is to travel(cost is based on ship type and ship #'s)also your support capital ships should be able to negate the travel expense of a number of ships equivelent to a support ability. it should cost double the travel expense to travel to enemy or unaligned factions planets. i envision there to be a diplomatic option to allow ships to travel in your space, for a percentage of the travel fee, or for free(no tax but at base cost indicated by the distance from your hw) if you are allies. this is where it gets intersting, with all these travel expenses you should be able to focus on where you send your ships. to that end i suggest you impliment "phaseways" similar to what the zuul from sword of stars born of blood use to maintain nodelines. on the civvy tech tree there could be a phaseway tech that increases to the number of phaseways fo your faction. what do phaseways do? well for one they connect any three astral bodies together to decrease (up to 75%) the cost of travel. as you research phase tech your ships travel faster and cheaper, with every other tech level adding a phaseway. these can be used to link your rim world to production centers or to make a defensive area where your ships can travel in and out quickly and cheaply. im not sure yet but after you research it you can link your phaseways to enemy worlds. another aspect of phaseways is their ability to slowdown and increase the travel cost for unaligned and especially enemy ships. these penelties can be increased by research. i know these changes will not make it into the retail version but maybe in a patch/mod. the whole point is to limit expansion and early scouting, and forces you to choose where to focus the bulk of you resources. it aslo seems more logical this way. as far as phaseway managment goes you could put a small icon(maybe two tiny planets connected by a phase lane) with a number indicating your number of phaseways. as you scroll over the icon a tooltip dropdown list will display the planets that each of your phaseways pass through. clicking the button will make all phaseway connected planets and phase lanes glow a color(purple i think works well,like the jump cursor lines from homeworld). you can start with one phaseway and to set it up you click the icon and select 1 from the tool tip menu and simply select a starting location which must be a planetoid, and then select two additional locals, which may be anything. to add variation amongst the factions you could have TEC travel cheaper through phaseways but vasari travel faster. the cost and speed of travel will have to be very carefully balanced but i think that with the above mechanic the game will be alot better and more managable. im really looking forward to peoples thoughts and suggestions regarding my idea, thanks!