Gateways - Underwhelming

[SilentReaper]

I’ll cut to the chase. Gateways often result in slower and more expensive trips than just using regular FTL. Billions have been invested in these things, and the resultant effect is just completely disproportional to the cost.

I expected CX-CX travel to be significantly cut due to the distances we’re talking here, but in many cases, it literally takes longer to traverse the gateway network than it is to just fly regular.

This is caused by 2 factors from what I can tell:

1. Gateway traversal speed. It’s just…. not great. Good, but not great.

2. STL trip to get to and from the gateway. Since gateways could only be built on planets, if I’m traveling from BEN to ANT, in reality, I need to hoof it from BEN to Katoa to get to the gateway there, and then from Hephaestus to ANT on the other end. This adds a ton of extra time which in most cases completely negates the relatively small amount of time saved using the increased traversal speed of the gateways over FTL flight.

I’m not saying I expect to be able to get from BEN to ANT in 5 hours, but there has to be some tangible benefit to these gateways otherwise they will continue to go underutilized as they are now. For gateways to even be worth it, you have to be traveling from a planet with a gateway to another planet with a gateway. Only this way do travel times actually reflect the investment that’s been made into these gateways.

Solution:

1. Increase traversal speed. This is a simple and effective way to address this issue.

2. Gateway system jumps. I would love to see the addition of upgrades you can add to a system with an existing gateway to build infrastructure allowing FTL speed jumps from various entities (planet, CX) in a system to a gateway constructed in the same system. The cost should reflect the limited capacity of these upgrades. But the idea would be that if Katoa has a gateway, we could build another structure on Umbra that could quickly transport you to the Katoa gateway similar to how gateways work already just limited to within a system.

Something has to be done about this because I think where we’re headed is just a complete collapse in gateway production universe wide once the novelty wears off and the CX’s have been connected as had been planned out months in advance. I think most people have realized what a relatively poor alternative they are to regular FTL flight in many cases and just don’t even bother given how expensive using the gateway network can be depending on where you’re traveling to and from where.

[Ogrebeef-Backkicker]

These issues have been discussed in detail:

Poor Gateway Flight Times

Gateway Speed Comparison A lot of people are noticing that gateway trips are taking longer than FTL flights to the same destination. This seems to be the case for all but the slowest ship types. We expect very fast ships to be faster without a gateway, but we’re seeing gateways perform worse on speed, damage, and sometimes fuel consumption. I understand the design might be for: “gateways are only situationally good”, but right now we have “gateways are rarely good”. There seems to be a few con…

[CraftsmanThirteen]

Totally agree here - between the slow traversal speed and the unknown if the gateway will actually take you (ie if it runs out of fuel before you get there) - I don’t think gateways are that useful.

I don’t regret much about this game, but I do regret my colony ship (new sectors are crappy) I regret my RE colony (RE isn’t used for much and as people realise that gateways aren’t that useful I expect people might even stop upkeeping them at some point).

At the moment I am waffling between just closing my RE base and using the HQ point elsewhere - and parking my colony ship somewhere and ignoring it - or keeping it and adding other metallurgy buildings to take advantage of my experts.

[SilentReaper]

Ah, my bad. It does seem that is the case.

[Archiel]

It’s good to have a fresh take on this issue, since it’s been a while since that thread was active.

We’ve done a lot of additional math now that we have a more complete understanding of the mechanics. ( Understanding Gateways | OOG Capital Management ) Ultimately, even as we work to identify the absolute best cases for gateway construction… they still aren’t very good. There are very very niche conditions where they are a benefit at all, and you really need to squint and rationalize.

I agree that the STL travel from CX to Gate is a huge impediment to them being good for anything other than contrived non-real-world use cases.

Given the shortage of developer time, I also think that increasing the 3 pc/hr speed is the most realistic option.

[hajes29a]

Unless, your bases are near gates…it takes longer, than conventional jumping.

In some cases, I use gateways because I get 5h less travel time. Of course, it costs more than conventional travel STL/FTL.

It would be great to have something like jump ships (inspired by EVE Online). One either travelled manually (I had various engines, warp drives that could improve travel speeds).

Or there are/were special jump ships that were limited by range/skills. One could jump 10ly, which was something like 10 systems jump.

So far JumpGates are disappointment. In sci-fi cyberpunk theory, jump gates should improved travel by 1000%.

Moria <> Antares round trip with 5kt ship takes 4.5 day. I expect less than one day round trip. Not to mention, JumpGates operators pump the money from users. Moria Vallis production fees went haywire in last half year.

It is communism 101, inspired by great Anglo-Saxon communists in real world.

[Ogrebeef-Backkicker]

I agree, the 3pc/hr speed needs to be increased.

The original intent of Gateways was to create a bridge between systems that were physically close together but required several hops to get to. The very best gateway pairs can cut that travel by more than half (i.e. Gasworld←→yi-265j is 44pc by FTL and 19pc by gateway). But even then the gateway is only going to be faster if your ship flies slower than 7pc/hr. There are lots of blueprint designs faster than that. If you have to have a slow ship to make a gateway worthwhile then either the gateways are pointless or the better ship engines are pointless.

Right now, with very few exceptions, the only times I use a gateway is when I don’t need a faster flight because I’d be asleep when the ship arrived.

[CraftsmanThirteen]

I agree - I normally do check them but I never get a speed boost that is really worth it. Maybe leave all the “real space” parts of the trip the same, but just double the gateway speed or something like that so instead of a “5 hour” jump it is now 2.5 hours - and that should be the least use of developer time.

[SilentReaper]

One option I haven’t seen considered is adding a ship part that could jump the ship in-system from anywhere to the gate itself, cutting down the STL time significantly. Don’t know this would be rationalized physics wise. And having to put vortex engines on every ship we wanted to be able to do this would be overkill and way too expensive. But perhaps some alternative for regular ships, an upgrade of sorts kind of like how the STS or RDL is.

Overall though I agree that given the constraint of dev time, just increasing the speed of the gateways themselves would be the simplest and quickest way to address this.

[lowstrife]

Increasing the pc\hr speed of the gateway travel will not fix gateways. That’s not the problem.

Moria cx to antares cx is a very long distance trip, across a lot of different gateways, a situation that gateways were supposed to be excellent at handling and their entire purpose. Yet because of the TRA to the gateway location being so variable and extreme, departure time it will never, ever be comparable or useful for anyone using gateways that don’t have one or both ends of their trip being the source\destination that happens to be the planet the gateway is built at.

Gateways impose a 6-24 hour delay, or, an insane SF burn that normal FTL travel doesn’t need to pay. Ontop of the transit\upkeep fees you also need to pay. That’s not balanced correctly.

I run a fleet of 30 ships with 45 bases on a network that spans most of the developed galaxy and I’ve used gateways a grand total or 4 or 5 times total because they are completely inviable for any cx travel. The only viable routes for gateway travel are planet <> planet if you happen to have a direct route, which many people do, but are a minority of the ships\routes.

The simplest fix is to just have the gateway departure location be identical to the FTL departure location. Basically a gateway enables “super ftl” in a system where it’s established. You no longer need to physically visit the gateway location to begin the gateway journey. Your ships go on their normal DEP route, and then instead of JMP, they perform LOCK, GTW. This normalizes gateway travel to use the same rulebook that FTL travel does.

This eliminates the ship having to transit across the entire star system when (most of the time) the gateway is physically located on the other side of the system.

Or, as is many cases, your destination is on a different planet in the system the gateway is built in. Unless you’re traveling to that specific gateway planet, it will basically never be worth using the gateway network.

If these changes were to be implemented, I would actually suggest slightly nerfing the pc/hr gateway travel time. I’m fine with gateways being more expensive for more speed, that’s how they should be. I contributed more than $300 million to the moria gateway network and only like 100 ships use it per day. But it feels terrible when any time I look at them for a particular route, it’s both significantly more expensive AND slower.

[Ogrebeef-Backkicker]

At this point, I think the BIGGEST problem with gateways is that the devs haven’t done enough to communicate the actual intended purpose of gateways or that they’ve heard our concerns and are considering ways to address them.

I’m pretty sure that gateways were only meant to be a shortcut between two planets and never envisioned as a single travel point for a whole planetary system. But there are plenty of people like lowstrife who think the opposite. If the former is true then pc/hr needs to be fixed. If the latter then STL travel needs to be fixed. Regardless, gateways were brought about to in some way in at least some situations improve travel. If they can’t do that then they are just a shiny new way to make the game more complicated and burn excess money. The devs need to do more to help us understand so that we can make better decisions in implementing them.

[shagie]

The CX to CX runs (and even some place to CX) are sometimes poor. This is often due to ships that are pervasively designed for FTL flight times and the in system transit is largely “get to the jump point” and otherwise ignored.

vs

That brings into the first variable of gateway transit - planetary alignment. As I write this, Moria Station and Montem are on opposite sides of the system. As such, the ships that one typically loads up (LCBs) have an extended in system transit to get to the gateway. The “it takes 2 days and 3 hours via gateway vs just under 2 days vs QC drive” is largely “it takes 1 day 1h to go from Moria station to Montem.”

At the end of the test flight plan, it takes 3 hours to go from Hephestes to Antares station. If CX transit was important, the route should have been linked to Bober or Eos instead.

The gateway route uses only SF for the entire flight. Going from the default crawl speed of in system flight to something more performant can drastically cut down on the in system flight times which make up the majority of CX to CX gateway transit.

Changing the fuel usage from 0.05 to 0.25 takes the MOR-ANT gateway route down to 1 day 9 hours.

Even running the reactor for a QC at 100%, you’re not able to match the gateway transit time.

I’m personally quite happy to have the Circe - Moria route. Normally, this is just under a day with regular FTL travel. With the gateway, I’m able to have it be a route I can dispatch in the morning and do again in the evening with a quite reasonable 8h transit time.

Or Verdant to Sand as a 5 hour flight rather than 20 hour. This is twice as fast as Promitor to Avalon which at one time was considered an ideal paring. Verdant to Circe is 16 hours.

• CX to CX routes are always going to be penalized (and especially Benten) with in system transit time.
• When planets don’t align, in system times can add quite a bit of time.
• The SF usage defaults are slow - improving in system transit times are things rarely done.
• It’s always going to take a day to go from Moria to Antares via gateway - the question is how much time do you spend moving from Moria to Montem.
• Gateways are ideal for linking planets that are part of a production chain.

[lowstrife]

It’s not just cx<>cx routes, it’s any source\destination that is in the same system, but not the same planet as where the gateway is physically located.

Agree w\ the rest.

[shagie]

So, for example Circa (the gateway is at Circe) to The Burn Pits (the gateway is at Verdant) with default settings shaves 11 hours off the route with default settings

and 18 hours with a mild boost to in system over the 100% reactor use.

Another advantage is that my in system ships that lack a FTL drive in QQ-001 and XH-594 can shuttle iodine, thermoplastic, insulation, steel, toolkits, and epoxy without needing to dispatch a more massive FTL ship to the route (and Circa and Libertas aren’t gateway stations either).

[SLKLS]

For planet to planet runs increasing the SF usage can save some time as you have another 20-50 fuel extra used for the start / landing. In the case of this route 72 of the 149 SF is used just for the starting / landing.
And another problem with STL travel is that it can lead to high damage but currently TBP and Verdant are pretty close so it is not too much.

[lowstrife]

Gateways are very good at linking specific planets together, but if your route doesn’t involve one (or both) of those specific planets their utility rapidly falls off.

Lots of examples are shared of routes which are viable, but they are specific A to B routes between specific gateway planets. There are a lot more planets in the verse, and it feels bad for any gas giants in a system which are a 3 day STL trip from where the gateway is.

[shagie]

So don’t use a gateway for trying to plot routes to a cloud city base.

Having gateways be optional for every situation removes some interesting choices of how things are done. Making the question of “how do you get from Gasworld to Moria via gateway” be one that is fast means that putting it out at 30 AU is now meaningless.

Trying to make it so that everyone has great utility with the gateway in all situations would make it so the dimension of the game with various distances between planets and their orbits being in motion themselves (it always bugged me in EVE that everything was static) is no longer a consideration.

I don’t believe anything needs to be fixed. There are routes where I take the gateway nearly every time (and some that I now take that have to be done by gateway the entire route). There are also times when I end a ship and it turns out that the gateway would make it so that it gets into port at 3am rather than 9am… and it doesn’t matter to me which one I use so I go with the cheaper on (faster isn’t always better). I am reconsidering what in system engines I put on new ships.

I would also point to that some players are very adverse to paying any credits for anything. They’ll never use a gateway. Additionally, the players that go from MOR-ANT on a semi-regular basis are rather few compared to the number that go from Verdant to Sand to Moria (and the ones that go directly from Verdant to Moria likely aren’t using a gateway because they’re flying starter ships and 2700 NCC is a portion of their credits that they’d rather have it take a day and a bit than a bit under a day.

I don’t believe that the argument for speeding up in system transit time because gateways exist is a good one. There are other options. Switching to a small SF tank can shave hours off the otherwise slow transit time when using the same amount of SF (it means moving the slider to the right). Making all comparisons with a the default slow settings and pointing to outer planet gas worlds claiming they don’t have a good use of the gateway, I believe, isn’t the strongest of arguments to say that they don’t have good utility.

[Ogrebeef-Backkicker]

@shagie

likely aren’t using a gateway because they’re flying starter ships and 2700 NCC is a portion of their credits that they’d rather have

The fuel savings for a starter ship using the gateway from Verdant to Moria is about the same as the gateway fee so there isn’t really an economic disadvantage to using or not using the gateway. Anyway, a starter ship flies at 3.9pc/hr. So 43pc without the gateway vs 29pc at 3.0pc/hr with one means gateway flight only saves about 8% on flight time.

Regarding flights to outer/gas giant planets utilizing gateways - sure you can do it and have it make sense. You just need to build a gateway at that planet rather than go to the inner planet’s gateway and SF over to the outer planet.

[shagie]

@Ogrebeef-Backkicker

The fuel savings for a starter ship using the gateway from Verdant to Moria is about the same as the gateway fee so there isn’t really an economic disadvantage to using or not using the gateway.

The advantage is time. Being able to get to Moria station from Verdant in 80% of the time with no changes to defaults (22h 42m / 1 day 3h 54 m) and being able to get to Moria and back in a just over a day without pushing the reactor to 100%.

The routes that were built are ones that most players aren’t going to benefit significantly from. The gateway network from CX to CX isn’t the use case for most players flying ships. Those who are doing it are flying ships that don’t benefit from the gateway network.

The spots where it has been useful to me have been routes that are point to point links for systems where I happen to have bases at both endpoints.

Gateways don’t substantially speed up the general use case. They significantly speed up specific pairs that have signficant logistic coupling between the two - even if its only a few hops away. Being able to move stuff between QQ-001 and XH-594 is great. This is a route I’m plotting as I type this. That’s a 250 m3 HPR reactor ship - and the gateway is a superb choice there (if anything, its too fast I’m not going to be awake at 7:55 AM).

My point is that the use case that most late game players are expecting it to fill (faster runs for moving goods between CX to CX for arbitrage on prices) isn’t the one that its optimal for (the HCB appears to be far better).

… and an edit.

Anyway, a starter ship flies at 3.9pc/hr. So 43pc without the gateway vs 29pc at 3.0pc/hr with one means gateway flight only saves about 8% on flight time.

That 3.9 is from

Note the “(max)” in there. That’s if you crank the reactor up to 100%. Most people are running it at minum, about 30% of rated performance. The Verdant - Moria run in a starter ship can’t do 100% because it runs out of fuel before it hits that performance. 3.9 pc/h in a starter ship often costs 300 FF and you had better end up where you’ve got a fuel depot.

[Ogrebeef-Backkicker]

@shagie

That’s if you crank the reactor up to 100%. Most people are running it at minum, about 30%

I almost always set mine to 100%. I know a lot of people don’t but that seems inefficient to me. Unlike STL flight which has vastly diminishing returns on time savings with increased fuel usage, FTL flight is a more linear increase. If flying as fast as you reasonably can isn’t the goal then why bother with bigger engines or gateways.

Anyway, when comparing gateways vs reactor usage it needs to be an apples to apples comparison. “About 30%” reactor usage is going to be something different depending on your ship type, amount of fuel available, and whether you actually set it to 28% or 35% or something else. 100% is always 100% and then the only variable is ship type. I have a tiny ship with a max speed of 30.3pc/hr but if I set the sliders all the way to minimum it is barely any faster than the gateway.