Women are right about Paradox games

It's true. They gave jump drives as a tech so that fleets can still warp jump on a cooldown if needed. They also added hyperlane relays which basically makes hyperlane highways so that you can travel across your empire quicker in mid-game. Gateways are useful later game, and there is a megastructure called a quantum catapult that can yeet fleets across the galaxy from the system you build it in (one way only though).

Making hyperlanes the default way of getting around gave the galaxy a decent form of terrain that made things significantly less chaotic while also giving the player meaningful ways to improve their mobility throughout the game. Warp and wormhole were objectively better than hyperlanes and it was hard to balance it because the relative freedom that the other two had just meant you can trivially hit and run hyperlane empires. Wars between the other two was tedious micro to chase fleets or defend systems.

Hyperlane vs hyperlane is manageable because you can more reliably predict enemy movements and give systems strategic value based on their hyperlane connections. It's easy to look at the map and know what the frick is happening. Wars have visually clear fronts, border gore was reduced by a significant amount, and you can strategically position fleets and/or fortify chokepoints. It made the game feel more strategic and less about smashing your doomstack against their's until your's wins and gets to r*pe their systems unabated.