This may sound like a noobish question but....

Just like traffic and roads. You and the AI can only travel from system to system via the phase lanes (roads). So look where they all might narrow down to just one or two planets before branching back out into your home planets.

And not every map *has* a chokepoint, or your empire might expand past a chokepoint, leaving multiple avenues for your opponents to attack.

This is why scouting is so important, to know where the planets are in relation to one another so that you can plan your overall development.

I've never had a game that had just one chokepoint. More often there are two or three. Think about your territory in terms of where your 'front line' is. Which planets border with my enemies? Once you've got those, pump the defences into those planets - you want about 15-20 gaus turrets, 2 repair stations and 2 hangar defences. That way, if your fleet is off somewhere else, and an enemy fleet jumps in, they'll be kept busy enough taking out your defences while you bring your fleet back.

I have only played single player games so far but, I like the Random maps the most. On those I have yet to see any of the choke points that a lot of the pregenerated maps have. there are almost always more than one lane coming into each planet.
I have been setting up fighter defence on every planet. From the reading I'm doing tonight I think that may be hitting my economy pretty hard but I'm not sure about that.

I'm having trouble figuring out the logistics. even after I have a planet fully developed I still show a loss to wasted income and I have no idea why. Would sure love some helps on this.

Well, you always have a little wasted income if the planet isn't your homeworld. Less than 100% allegiance results in some corruption.

Thanks Hiriako I had totally forgotten about the distance from home world thing. For some reason I had it in my head that Broadcasting towers countered that.

Broadcasting towers help against the "distance from home world" thing, but they don't counter it. When your planet is under the affect of friendly culture--like when you have a broadcast tower near it--you can boost its allegiance by up to 10% (which is about as much allegiance as one jump away from the homeworld loses you.) You can also raise your capital's allegiance to 110% using culture in this manner.

So, no, while they help reduce corruption they don't eliminate it entirely.

In multi-star maps remember to consider the star as a point of entry. And sometimes the AI gets clever with wormhole attacks behind your lines as well, but those are pretty hard to counter.

Generally, on a 3-star large random map vs. AI I try to have only 2 planets defended in the early-mid game. Sometimes this means expanding in certain directions and skipping others till later. Its worth it.

I hinted at this in my earlyer post but didn't directly ask, Does setting up a good defence on every planet hurt my economy? What I usually set up is 4-5 fighter defence hangers, 4-7 turrets, 1-2 repair bays (I try to get all my defence items in repair coverage), later in the game Ill set up a shield defence on key planets.

Any constructive feed back would really be appreciated

It hurts your economy directly. But there is no ongoing fee, if that is what you mean?