Try to work towards one that has semi-serious orbital positions while keeping some sense of balance-- it's harder than it sounds.
I can attest! Remember that the angles at which a phase lane meets a planet is more important than the distances of the phase lanes towards balance. There's not a lot of difference between a 5 second and a 10 second warp, but there IS a lot of difference between an obtuse and acute angle between two phase lanes.
I've been working on some interesting configurations myself. One of my favourites is the binary star configuration, where there are phase lane connections between the two solar systems. You need to space any interstellar jump (even if it's an ordinary phase lane) fairly far apart, however. This is because stars can vary dramatically on the Z-Axis, and any phase lane that has a significant slope in Z-axis causes weird behavior. This configuration allows the sun to become a "back door" that opens up mid-game. The trick is to keep the distance of conventional phase jumps short enough that players can actually rush so that the civic labs don't appear too early.