Personally i like the idea of warp gate travel, it opens a realm of possibilities.
Say you wanted to be an explorer, but what would be the point. In current games, you would just see a destination and you might have your name attached to it but that's about it. Now take it one step further, you brought a portable gate with you. Now that adds some interest but it could be "overpowered". So we stick in some limitation, lets say it has a limited range.
Well that's all fine and dandy but would there be any tangible reward from such a thing. I say yes, a toll fee for anyone else using it. But how would you get people to use it, one way would be to have some builder friends build a hub city. But you may need to add extra incentive to visit this hub city. So remember earlier i said the gate was portable, portable things are usually week compared to their full blown counterparts.
So how about we upgrade the gate. Easiest thing to do would probably to extend range. Of course the connection must be mutual so if a gate is in range of the upgrade gate but the upgraded gate isn't in range of the other gate the could be no connection. So effectively a long distance connection between two upgraded gates would be a highway.
Now that the construction concept is there, What would the gate traveler experience be like? Many games usually have it so you get ready to jump, you jump then you arrive. Not much excitement there, especially if you have to make multiple jumps. How about we add some excitement in the jump. Maybe there could be a mini game in the wormhole.
Back to the portable gate, lets say since its so low power it's inherently unstable. Because of that, the wormhole shows it by weaving erratically which if your ship touches the outer edge it would take damage. Now if the gate was upgraded it would be a smoother ride and maybe the wormhole would bigger to accommodate larger ships.
The one flaw with that would be that it may add more time to travel that what once may be accustomed, and multiple jumps might be annoying. But what if you had to plot your course before hand, to which there would be no need to stop at each gate but the wormholes behavior would change dependent on the section you are in. So if you started in an upgraded gate section but at one point ended up in a portable gate section, the wormhole would start off smooth then end up erratic. But the advantage would be since there was no need to slow down and speed up for each gate, the time would be significantly reduced than if you had to start and stop at each gate.
Well that's an idea i had on the matter. Probably a little more complicated and longer than it needed to be, but shows that there is potential in the warp gate method.