I can accept highways, provided that they don't require a lot of attention to use (you enter, do whatever while you're sitting in the traffic pattern, and then exit when you approach the destination), and provided that they don't have an imposing physical presence that clutters the universe with "spaghetti".DavidGW wrote:Personally, I think highways should not be scrapped, just improved. They help bridge systems with quick, cinematic travel, while still allowing the player to drop out at any point along the highway. I don't think that should be given up.
In my opinion, they should be mostly empty space, with little or no physical structure except at periodic intervals to maintain ship speeds. Basically, they should be little more than "marked lanes" for high speed travel, or a row of lights, rather than "subways in space". Once they start looking like massive constructions with walls on an epic scale, they cease to be believable.
Having "highways" as marked routes to prevent collisions makes sense; we do that with air traffic now. Building tubes to contain that traffic makes no sense, ESPECIALLY if things are going to jostle and bump regularly. The idea is to PREVENT collisions by making traffic coherent, not guarantee collisions by packing the ships tightly together in a confined space. Once it becomes a mini-game to use, it's no longer a "feature", it's a mistake.