Yea, if not much work Jay, make it a game configuration option. And sure, maybe have an option to “cap” how high/fast you can go. Highly recommend you also have cheap/standard/expensive/really/crazy expensive options for the level upgrades.
BTW, as I play almost all turn based games these days, having the “faster” Warp Gates would be very beneficial to those games IMHO since it doesn’t require more checking in.
I vote for 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x, 3x, etc all the way up to maybe 10x max in increments of .5 with costs getting increasingly higher and warp gates have to be individually upgraded.
Something like that 
EDIT: Though on second thought, I’m not sure if adding additional complexity to the game is really worth it.
Certainly an option that you can have for custom games, then people have to specifically choose it they want to play with multilevel gates.
Let me know if you set up a sandbox to test it, I’ll play.
I like the thought of better movement late game, especially in the super-games. And it sounds like you don’t want to let them assault faster, so that is good. I just would be careful for making a snowballed player unbeatable, even if teamed up on. And that would boil down to play testing anyway.
I think that when you have $40k to spend, you won’t be buying industry/$40-$80 where it is needed, but rather use bulk upgrade.
Regarding the speed in smaller games, the max speed allowed could be galaxy size dependent.
Great idea Qwerty. Maybe tie the maximum to distances between player starts? Something easy like SpeedCap=0.5*AverageHomeDistance
So in one of my ring maps, starts are 14-15ly apart on each ring, but 25 between rings. Probably averages out somewhere around 20, so Max Gate level would be 10. Easy to adjust the formula based how games play out.
Bulk upgrade is awfully convenient, but it does have trade offs. I like to micro manage it more, have really been loving the quick upgrade screen of late.
I do have my lazy days though. 
I haven’t used the quick upgrade since I added the colour indicator on the last viewed star in the galaxy menu.
I dont know if this is a very known feature.
See the little red eye.
When I want to upgrade industry I open this screen, sort by $I and click on each eye down the list looking at where the star is. If the star is in a good place I buy. The red colour eye shows me where I was in the list when it resorts.
I seem to remember that Jay added warp gates to offset that ‘speed’ levels had been removed from the game. Doesn’t adding levels to warp gates just bring speed back? Personally I think that adding levels to gates adds an unnecessary level of complexity to a game that’s beauty lies mostly in its simplicity. Probably not a popular opinion among those who prefer complicated strategy games!
I think it’s okay as you won’t be attacking an enemy at higher speed than his star supports. It’s meant only for distributing ships within larger empires - a must have in 64p games.
I like the idea of High level Warp Gates being magnets. What if a ship traveling between two warp gates isn’t at the lower warpgate, but the average of the two levels? High level warp stars will always be targets as long as they exist.
I bound a purchaseEconomy command to a key and it’s just awesome together with this red eye indicator.
Basically, I think I am doing the same thing as you, but instead of moving mouse to buy the infrastructure, I just hit a key and then left-click to select another star
The real issue with high level warp gates is how hard it would be to take over. If a player has a bunch of lvl 2 warpgates then in order to attack that star, the other player would have to build a warpgate to try and match his speed. You should not have to build a warpgate just to attack a star. In a turn based game then reinforcements can get to the star too fast. A player will see an attack coming and be able to pull ships from farther away which will arrive in time to defend. Higher levels would be harder to capture. In order to capture the warpgate star without building a warpgate, the other player would have to be away from the computer during most of the attack.
My earlier Magnetic Warpgate idea resolves this issue as gates don’t need to be built in pairs each gate pulls all ships towards the star quicker, but has no effect on ships leaving the star (more of a tractor beam then a Warpgate).
sorry for gravedigging, that does not die what lies eternally… 
has this topic been resolved somewhere?
I like the idea of magnetic Warpgates with speed of…
startgate/targetgate/speed
0/0/1
0/1/1.5
1/1/2
1/2/3
2/2/4
warpgate level capped at 2.
As always, I find it questionable why something like warp gate levels can’t simply be disabled or enabled. We already have the option of removing them entirely. I see little hindering the simple act of making an “high-speed warp enable?” option on the game creation menu. Thus, both parties are satisfied. Gamers who want the slower, steadier game can have one, while the speedy demons in our midst can command their Scotty’s to enable Warp 10 if they see fit to.
This is a common theme with me lately, just giving people that good old option to customize those kinds of parts to the game that are controversial and about evenly split. Probably, I don’t have excuse for some of those ideas I’ve commented on or proposed, but this is one of those I would argue has validity to it.
Sadly, the argument that this is basically asking for Speed tech again is quite valid to my mind. I mean, at this point, what with all the trouble of having to create the warp speed levels, costs, interactions, etc. We might as well just bring back the speed tech and give people the option of removing it like with all the others and save ourselves the trouble of this.
Granted, Warp Gates aren’t speed tech, since the option of destroying gates to cripple offensives remains, unlike leveling up a permanent technology.