Gateway Question Roundup

1

In #behind-the-scenes, molp asked for us to put our questions about the gateway into a forum post. So I’ve consolidated some questions here:

  • Can one gateway send ships to more than one receiving gateway? Or does the gateway builder / controlling government set the destination?

  • If they are paired, can the destination gateway be changed? How often?

  • Can one gateway receive ships from multiple gateways? Or once a link is established, does it need to be symmetric (A goes to B, and B goes to A)

  • If a sending gateway has an upgrade to recieve large volume ships, but the receiving gateway doesn’t, can the trip be made?

  • Is the gateway fuel consumed to keep the gateway active, or is it only consumed as ships pass through (based on ship mass? volume?)

  • Are ships going to take damage in travels between gates, or will it be completely undamaged for this part of the trip?

  • If a gate is built around planet A, does it take additional time to travel from orbit around planet A to the gate? (Rephrased another way- is there additional time required to get to a gate than just ascending from the surface to orbit?)

  • Is there any mechanism to name a gateway?

  • Can you fly though multiple gateways in a single flight path? (Will a single SFC buffer be able to take you through multiple gateways?)

A few we are pretty sure about:

  • Can you make them on a CX? (probably not)
  • Can they be made in faction space? (pretty sure yes)
2

Considering just building a gateway will cost in excess of 200Mil, even before specialization and upkeep, how can such an expense be justified? Planetary governments don’t normally make nearly enough money to cover that once and on an ongoing basis. Usage fees, which is offset by lower ship repair bills, travel time, and FTL fuel cost, don’t seem likely to have a ROI horizon ever with such a huge outlay. In other words, though I’m extrapolating in dim light, on the surface it looks like if you make a gateway anything more than a cost sink to own then the potential users will balk at the usage cost and fly FTL. Also, if this is controlled by the local government, one election is all it take to take control of management of a gateway built by others. Seems great to use but why would anyone build one following any financially sound logic?

3

Who said the prices of various construction materials weren’t going to be lowered to compensate!
Yes, maybe governments won’t make (anywhere near) enough money to purchase all materials for gateways, but that doesn’t stop all the people who will build gateways at extremely low cost. (since it benefits them anyway)

4

How is refueling done, and is it going to be made artificially difficult to justify the increased fuel tank sizes?
Can we get long-term loan contracts implemented for governments to make repayments easier?
How will plotting a route go with gateways? Will a single checkbox enable/disable routing through all of them, or can I route specifically through 1 gateway and not another, or can I select which ones I want to use as an alternative type of route? Will tolls be visible at the same time on the route screen? Can we see time saved from taking the gateway vs performing the jumps manually?

5

i’d be willing to bet people will build these for epeen, if nothing else. once built even if there’s a high cost to use, people will still find excuses to use them-like rushing cargo to bases that have run out

6

Hi! We have a few answers:

Can one gateway send ships to more than one receiving gateway? Or does the gateway builder / controlling government set the destination?

  • Links are 1:1.

If they are paired, can the destination gateway be changed? How often?

  • Gateway destinations can be changed anytime (only via motions for now).

Can one gateway receive ships from multiple gateways? Or once a link is established, does it need to be symmetric (A goes to B, and B goes to A)

  • Links are 1:1 symmetric.

If a sending gateway has an upgrade to recieve large volume ships, but the receiving gateway doesn’t, can the trip be made?

  • We’re thinking the trip works in a one-way fashion, i.e. if your ship volume “fits” into the starting gateway, you can make the trip, but you can’t travel back through the same link if it doesn’t fit into the other gateway.

Is the gateway fuel consumed to keep the gateway active, or is it only consumed as ships pass through (based on ship mass? volume?)

  • It’s consumed per actual usage of the gateway.

Are ships going to take damage in travels between gates, or will it be completely undamaged for this part of the trip?

  • No damage planned.

If a gate is built around planet A, does it take additional time to travel from orbit around planet A to the gate? (Rephrased another way- is there additional time required to get to a gate than just ascending from the surface to orbit?)

  • There is a new “ALIGN” step that takes a short amount of time and low amount of SF (exact values depend on ship volume).

Is there any mechanism to name a gateway?

  • We’d love to add this cause it would allow for some flavor, and make selecting between multiple gateways in the flight controls a lot easier.

Can you fly though multiple gateways in a single flight path? (Will a single SFC buffer be able to take you through multiple gateways?)

  • Yes.

Can you make them on a CX?

  • Not planned for now.

Can they be made in faction space?

  • Yes.

How is refueling done?

  • Likely just by dropping the new type of fuel into a gateway’s fuel storage (accessible to owners and contracted maintainers).

How will plotting a route go with gateways?

  • Exact details are to be determined, but the plan is to allow you to either avoid all or only certain gateways via a general gatewa checkbox and specific drop-downs per (potential) gateway usage in the flight controls.

Will tolls be visible at the same time on the route screen?

  • Yes.

Can we see time saved from taking the gateway vs performing the jumps manually?

  • That would be really nice, but maybe you’ll have to switch between using and not using a gateway to see the difference with the initial release of the feature.
3 Likes
7

Q: Is it intentional that GWS are too large to be transported in any ship, and so must be manufactured on the planet where the gateway is to be built?

8

So if a gateway is out of fuel and I want to use it and I have gateway fuel myself I’d still have to wait for an authorized person to refuel it? Makes it difficult to plan a trip and negates any potential flight time savings over regular FTL if you’re left waiting an unspecified amount of time for someone else to refuel.

Could anyone be a contracted maintainer? Is there any limit? (i.e. could multiple people or even all people be made a maintainer?)

9

Can each gateway only ever support 1 link?
The pictures in the devlog imply it might be, since there doesn’t seem to be a reason to build a 2nd gateway on the same planet, but the 2nd picture states “Links” implying multiple.

i.e. if Montem has a gateway that connects to Hortus, and Montem also wants to connect to Benten, do they need to drop 200M+ on another gateway, or does one of the upgrade options (10M+) allow for more links per gateway?

If gateways can only support one link, it massively depowers them - possibly to the point of impracticality.

1 Like
10

Someone will correct me if I’m wrong. As I understand it, a gateway can be linked to one other gateway at a time. The controlling party (for now, just planet government. In the future, corporation or company) can vote to change the link. If you want two links available at the same time then you would need to have two gateways.

11

That’s what I’m worried it may be, but it’s unclear from the pictures and information shown so far.

12

Yes, that’s my understanding.

And If the two gateways aren’t in agreement of where they are pointing, neither has any function.

13

Another question that has come up in the gateway planning organizations:

Does travel through a 25 parsec gateway take twice as long as a 12.5 parsec gateway? Or does any gateway travel take the same amount of time regardless of distance?

Edit: Related Question:

I was pretty confident this was already a “yes”, but others were unsure. Is a 25 parsec jump through a gateway much faster than 25 parsecs of normal FTL jumps?

14

Can someone tell us the cost of making a gateway with more accuracy than just guesses (like 300K) and the same for maintance costs (in per day or per week)

15

We have pretty robust cost estimates. Here are mine, based on PP30D Universe wide costs:

A few others have independently made price estimates, I looked around briefly but couldn’t find them. They were generally +/- 10% of a that, depending on their assumptions on extraction of the new metal, and their commodity index choices.

They will take vortex fuel, in an unknown quantity. So we don’t really have an idea of the cost-per-jump. I strongly suspect they won’t require repairs like production buildings- I expect they will act like other infrastructure buildings that don’t require maintenance, like ADMs or SSTs.

16

We are currently discussing the transit times. Right now we are considering a fixed transit time, independent of the link length.

1 Like
17

When i said 300K i meant 300M

18

I think fixed transit time makes a lot of sense. The ADI Gateway Cooperative has put in a lot of effort mapping possible gateway links. Mostly this means evaluating the utility of a given link. I think for gateways to be worth building, they need to represent a pretty solid time reduction over FTL flight, and that means not penalizing long links.

There are some links that shortcut big regions of space, but there’s probably only one of those in the running. Other than that, many of the proposed links fly along existing jump paths, and are just a bit shorter by virtue of being a straight line. So it’s good to know those types of links can be viable.

For others who might be interested in the cooperative, the project continues to evolve, but check out: ADI Gateway Cooperative | OOG Capital Management

1 Like
19

I’m always thinking about my idea of the Standard Commodity Gateway System (name is a WIP) connecting every CX to every other CX (through 2 to 3 links) at least until CXs can be made by corps/goverments/companies. Then it will likely only be the Main CXs (maybe 1 per sector or general area of the universe map)