You could compare such a scenario to one found in SOTS (Sword of the Stars) where Hivers have these slow ships that take forever to get anywhere, and when you get stronger engines even if you sent the ship on turn 1 you could easily get to the star before the other ship, And when you get to the star you set up a gate and then there are ~50 ships around that star before the 1 gateship gets to the star.