1. Could warp be bound to a key or have W make the jump automatically once it sets the right throttle?
A hotkey is possible, but I prefer to stick to vanilla conventions as much as I can. Do you know you can switch between ability bars with Ctrl+1~5? That might help. I tend to keep rarely used abilities like neutrino detector, fuel siphoning and interdiction pulse in the second bar so screw vanilla conventions.
I got pane switching bound to the keys after 9 for quicker access and it is still too uncomfortable.
There is no need to get rid of the ability button, I'd just like to have a key bind option, lets say E, please.
Besides speed throttle on W is already a configurable immersion breaking key bind outside the ability bar.
2. Is there a way to reduce minimum burn required for the warp?
No, sadly. The minimum burn speed/jump distance is hard coded because the hyperwarp animation spans nearly the full length of the minimum jump distance. If it were much shorter your fleet would actually move further away from the destination when it teleports, due to the distance it travels beforehand and afterward.
That probably won't break anything on my end as I upped the travel distance to a lightyear/burn level for two reasons:
a) Warp is really good for hopping great distances especially in hyperspace and the default 0.5 setting is a limiting factor even for small sectors.
b) I wanted to prevent precision jumps from NPC fleets onto my face and 1ly intervals feel perfect for that. Warp should be a utility, not a superweapon.
So could you not hardcode it by any chance?