Entanglement can be used as a resource to support a wide range of quantum applications. However, the scarcity of efficient entanglement distribution protocols poses a significant challenge for the deployment of large-scale quantum networks. Losses in the media prevent the direct transmission of quantum states over large distances, but the use of quantum repeaters presents a possible alternative for long-distance quantum communication. Here, we focus on homogeneous quantum repeater chains and provide some guidelines based on heuristic methods that allow the design of entanglement swapping policies. For instance, delaying simultaneous swaps on adjacent nodes can reduce the probability of losing entanglement. Whereas previous work mainly focused on chains with few nodes only, we present three different policies that are easy to implement and scalable to longer chains. We evaluate these policies using Monte Carlo simulations, comparing their performance to the well-known swap-asap policy. When classical communication time is neglected, our policies provide lower delivery time than swap-asap for probabilistic swaps and large entanglement generation probability. When classical communication time is large, only one of our policies is in most cases faster than swap-asap for both probabilistic and deterministic swaps.