To be honest I also don't think it is a problem with being forced to spread defenses out and forcing the offensive... it would make ground forces way more important so you force an attacker to commit large resources to any serious campaign and actually protecting trade lanes become important. Ground forces will tie up enemy forces long enough for a reaction force to relive any sieges. You need serious thought about patrolling space and placing reaction forces along important trade routes.
In my mind, the major issue with a system that allows "free jumping" (even with significant restrictions) is the amount of damage that can be done by a tactic which is prohibitively expensive to counter even if the actual colony or base under attack is not taken by conquest. The example I have in mind is one where an enemy takes, say, 50% of their fleet and hyper-jumps into Sol or another major system with a well-developed presence (100s million population, shipyards, civilian lines throughout the system, and so on) which is defended by, say, 20-25% of my own fleet (say I have a few major bases like this, plus fleets deployed at critical JPs). Even if the colony is not taken, the enemy fleet can destroy a large amount of very expensive infrastructure before jumping out assuming they can defeat my fleet with their numbers advantage. As it is utterly impossible to defend all such critical locations adequately to defeat such a tactic, the only counter is to do the same thing, effectively leading to gameplay dominated by a hybrid of alpha-striking and MAD strategies which I at least find unappealing.
Certainly it should be
possible to find a mechanic and balance such that warfare becomes fluid and maneuver-dominant instead of static as it is now, but this balance would be very difficult to find and I'm afraid more work than Steve would realistically be willing to put into what is really a game balance problem instead of a fun and exciting programming problem. Essentially, the challenge would be how to balance a hyperspace-type mechanic so that a prepared defensive fleet can defeat a larger jumped-in offensive fleet (here travel time even within a system is a problem - it could take days or even weeks to intercept such a fleet!), yet without overpowering the mechanic so that it is almost useless. That's a tricky and unstable balance point to find I think.
I know that some people don't like this concept and I respect their opinion but I simply don't agree and think the static nature of JP is far from optimal from a strategical perspective of giving options for gameplay. It also would make the game more like naval warfare on Earth where there are very little bottlenecks, we still manage to find large fleet battles in history despite that don't we.
Personally I also would prefer an approach that wasn't as JP-centric and allowed for more fluid maneuver, scouting, etc. and not warfare dominated by JP assaults. However the one thing JPs do very well is force a sense of "geography" into a naval war in that any attack has to follow a well-defined route...attackers cannot simply materialize anywhere and open fire, there's a logical route and logistics train involved even if a stealthy surprise attack is still possible. Pearl Harbor? Maybe. Hypothetical Japanese carrier strike on Norfolk? Not so much. The issue JPs have is that they're simply a very blunt solution to that problem as it stands and thus goes too far to the other extreme, you can't do a Pearl Harbor because the entire map is Gibraltars and Suezes essentially.
If star systems in Aurora mapped to an actual map somehow (and this was clearly visible to the player), then we could have a literal distance between systems which would be an excellent basis for a hyperdrive mechanic.
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I still think it make little difference as you still have to travel to the JP to get your ships back... this is the main issue in my opinion. You need a way to get ships both in and out of a system in order for raiding to ever be a true thing in Aurora.
I wonder if a "simple" fix would be to let such a mechanic work two ways, i.e. a jump drive with a large (effective) squadron jump distance can enter a jump point from that same distance or some fraction e.g. half the distance. This way the jump point is still central but a small stealth ship can skirt the edge of JP defense fleet range to make the jump back to safety. If a small, sneaky ship has millions of km squadron jump radius it should not be impossible to sneak back through the JP even against a large defensive fleet unless the latter has a very extensive sensor net in place.
This would require small system defense fleets to be in place to intercept such raiders while otherwise limiting the damage they can do to be somewhat less than apocalyptic in scope and preserving Aurora's sense of geography. If you establish a good system for getting raiding fleets in and out you can even force the opponent to divide his JP defense fleets opening up the chance to force the JP at better odds.