Methodologies for determining one or more staged topologies for a communication network, communication networks implementing one or more staged topologies, and systems for determining one or more staged topologies for a communication network are provided. In one embodiment, a method of determining a staged topology for a communication network including a plurality of nodes includes identifying a plurality of topologies comprising different subsets of available communication links among the nodes, associating a connection matrix with each identified topology, establishing one or more sequences of topologies using the identified topologies, multiplying the connection matrices associated with the topologies in each sequence of topologies to obtain a sequenced connection matrix corresponding with each sequence of topologies, multiplying each sequenced connection matrix by a weighting matrix to obtain a total cost matrix corresponding with each sequence of topologies, and selecting one of the sequences of topologies as the staged topology based on the total cost matrices corresponding with each sequence of topologies.