possible suggestion about highways?

[nightphreak]

i know it's probably late in the game to make suggestions like this , but while i didn't exactly care too much for some of the highway features in XR many didn't like them at all, i kind of saw them as a replacement for the time acceleration. though the option to build highways as an option for players or even make modding so that the option to build those highways and place them where you want them would be kind of nice, because as much of a nuisance as they were they could also be kind of nice on occasion. just a thought though.

[spacecoyote99]

Mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it would be interesting to create your own trade routes. On the other, I can see the galaxy completely filled with roads after x00 hours..

I honestly prefer not to have highways at all, except perhaps in the way I saw in the demo videos so far: very limited, connecting the gates of core systems. Considering we now have SETA, travel mode and boost.. Do we actually need them?

[Marco Nero]

Why you need to fly inside yellow tubes instead enjoing the space, using boost, seta and travel mode? Make your traders flying with an escort and protect them, flying in the emptyness of space, that is much more interesting i think

[Crimsonraziel]

I actually like the idea, but still voted 'no'. I think spacecoyote99 is right, as it will just lead to some kind of grid or meshwork of highways

[Ezarkal]

The idea is interesting, but it would also require heaps of additional mechanism for it to be viable in a game.

If we can build highways, can we destroy them too? Otherwise as spacecoyote99 mentioned, everything will end up as a ribbon mayhem. If we can destroy them, then what about hacking/redirecting/temporarily disruptinig existing ones? All of them actions that the NPCs should be able to and effectively perform as well.

Aside from the obviously exorbitant building costs, would there be some kind of maintenance cost to keep them running? (That would actually be a good deterrent to prevent players from building too many of them.)

I know I'm pushing the idea a bit far, but if the game ever goes in that directions, these questions and many others will have to be at least considered to some point.

So yeah, as far as "just a thought" goes, it would be fun. But realistically it would take a pretty good amount of work to implement properly, otherwise it will quickly becomes unbalanced.

[Geek]

No. Building highways is just a poor substitute for having a proper travel mode.

[ajax34i]

Voted no, because, if they give us highways we'll want (to build) super-highways, and if they give us super-highways we'll want (to build) jump gates, and I'm not sure if they want to bring back the Hub or similar functionality.

[OrderFromChaos]

Voted yes, not to have the ability included in the game, but to make it accessible to be unlocked via a mod. Too much work to expect it to be polished in this release and arguably too much power to both players and npcs to be included in vanilla (especially if it can't be disabled). However, I don't see any reason to lock it up behind some difficult to modify core sections of game code.

Definitely love the idea of being able to destroy/disable (temporarily or permanently) the highway systems in densely developed systems. What a great way to wage war and hostile economics. Literally imposing trade sanctions on sectors or embargoes!

This almost justifies having highways in the first place!

[nightphreak]

If we can build highways, can we destroy them too?

i would suppose they would be done in a similar manner as the stations, destructible, possibly also depreciative with a maintenance cost associated with them to keep them running.

hacking/redirecting/temporarily disruptinig existing ones?

i suppose that may work, though not sure the purpose that would be needed for such a thing aside from trolling npc's.

Why you need to fly inside yellow tubes instead enjoing the space, using boost, seta and travel mode?

well an additional option isn't always a bad thing, but most people didn't like the highways in XR in the first place so doubtful anyone would overuse them if they were creatable.

and this is just an idea it's doubtful that this would be implemented unless included in an expansion or mod.

[Honved]

I don't see much point in building more of something I don't think should be in the game in the first place.

[Skeeter]

For those that like building complex railways or roads in things like transport tycoon or simcity I guess if the framework for a complex building system with hundreds of parts it could be good like straight tubes vent ones, signaling systems, stations of a sort to pull into.

[Nanook]

Are we playing a space flight game or a transportation game? I don't view 'highways' as space flight, personally.

[Skeeter]

I hope a space game. I only posted above as it was the subject and if it had to have building highways then do a decent job. Personally I'd rather use gates and jumps.

People seem to build "empires" in a space game, baffles why since it's a space adventure game and not a empire game, but there you go.

[adeine]

Only if you can build a highway so it intersects with a station complex and watch all the AI traffic go wheeeeeee-splat against it.

[The Q]

Yes, I would like to be able to build highways, provided transporters (my own as well as NPC ones) are able to use them. I don't really see, why "heaps of additional mechanism" need to be implemented to make them viable though. If I build a station far away from the sector centre and from any other fast lanes to get there, then naturally it would be great to build a highway to get ships there more quickly. Sounds pretty simple to me. Looking at different features of the X games, a simple approach was often choosen before implementing more sophisticated features, be it in station construction or ship control.
The ability to build highways would lead to a mess in systems? In the old games I was able to create stations directly infront of gates, on top of capital ships and from X3 onwards I was even able to create complex tubes through the whole sector. So I am pretty sure I can handle the mess that could result from building highways myself. IIRC prior to X3R, there was not even a self-destruct command for stations. Imagine the mess you could make when building stations in the wrong positions back then. In any way, if making a mess of highways is a concern, then limit their construction possibilities: Only straight lines, path must be clear of all obstacles (including other highways), no stationary objects are allowed in a 5 km radius around the opening/end gate.
Why use highways instead of boosters or travel drive? Well, driving on rural roads with my tractor to deliver my meagre harvest or to show off my Porsche 928 at the weekend is fine. However, if during weekdays I'm at my multi-million dollar company managing my logistic empire, then I want my trucks to take the route which is the fastest and where they have to drive around the least amount of obstacles. This is usually the highway.
The implementation of highway construction leads to the desire to build other transportation features? Sure, same as flying more than one ship will one day lead to the desire to fly all ships or station construction leads to the desire of building complexes one day. Should we therefore miss out these basic features (flying ships, Building stations) to begin with? I don't think so.

[Honved]

Rather than the massive, overbearing, complex, and insanely expensive contrivances that Egosoft calls "Highways" in XR, I would think that a much cheaper and more conservative system would fit the series a lot better. The "highways" could still be shoehorned into the lore as a later and more "advanced" development built up over a long period of time, not the quick and dirty makeshift system implemented immediately after the existing X3 timeframe.

Think along the lines of the Terran "accellerators", but on a smaller scale, and with several of them built in a line. They would boost your speed in the direction they point by something on the order of 1000-2000km/h, and that speed would begin to drop off pretty significantly after the first few km. By the time you reach the second booster in the line, 5-20km downrange, you'd be down to 500-1000km/h or so. That gives you SETA-like speeds or faster, without using SETA, and the ability to turn onto or out of the line at any point. High-speed routes would place the boosters closer, so you'd retain most of your speed before hitting the next booster; less important "roads" would have longer gaps between boosters, where you'd lose a lot of velocity before reaching the next one and only average 500-800km/h, rather than 800-1500.

The cost and time to construct the "highways" in XR would seem to dwarf all other investments in stations and ships by orders of magnitude, and just doesn't seem believable, no matter how much I try to hand-wave the impossibilities away. Building and placing a set of "boosters" would seem to be the first logical step, gradually being linked back-to-back and expanded into what would eventually become the XR highway network.

[lyubarskiy]

I feel like end game for X should be building your own faction and dominating the universe.
Think of it as stellaris or any other 4X game but from first person.

From that thinking I think it would be great if you could build up you sectors to how you want them built. That includes highways. I feel like strength of X games was being able to build anything that an NPC can (build able in lore). Stations, ships, mines etc. Why not let us create our own empire the way that we want.

And even if you do end up with a grid over the whole universe. So what? that sounds like you played the game the way you wanted it. You built up the infrastructure through hard work and fun game play.

Heck, let the NPC factions build it, then play as pirate to destroy a section and kill the freighters. Similar to freelancer. Or stop supplies flow to an enemy faction.

I don't know, I see a lot of possibilities here.

[Falcrack]

My personal feelings about highways, are they are okay. But there are some things I would change personally.

* I would prefer it if they were more or less straight lines, the shortest distance between two points.
* I would prefer that there was less discrepancy between the speed of my ship and the ships travelling in the highway. This is to reduce or eliminate the bumper car minigame while travelling, I really hated that.
* I would prefer that any ships encountered in the highway were actually ships travelling to a destination, not simply spawned in the second you entered the highway in order to create the illusion of more traffic. I don't want more traffic when travelling at high speeds, I want less!
* Being able to build highways between two points would be pretty cool, it would have to take a bunch of time and money though. It would be even more cool if NPCs would dynamically construct highways as well, such as if a rich asteroid field is discovered, a station is set up next to it, so a new highway is created in order to better meet the needs of the station.

[grayx]

My 2c: tl,dr - a lipstick on a pig.

I don't understand this dev's need to sustain this naive, childish idea of ... "some kind of tubes throughout the cosmos" for so long. Yeah, probably they've invested a lot of time and resources into this so it's hard to let it go, but it's essentially an equivalent of horse carts transportation put in the 21st century as a legit way to travel. And this attempt "let's try to fix the stupid concept by allowing the player to make more of it"... Ok, yeah, it's a game, I get it, but it's soo... not clever.

Highways are... "magic". Among all the bad things already mentioned while beating this dead horse, they're also breaking that famous "suspension of disbelief" to so many which was talked about a lot some time ago. And, who said "the only reason I'm buying XR is because of Highways" ever? They are adding nothing to the game. If you want some similar hocus-pocus, use those "slings" like in Mass Effect, or some contraption like that...

But, then again, yes, this is just a game, so why not, let's put wizards in also...

What?:)

[gbjbaanb]

So many developers refuse to let go of stuff they've added. no matter what.

I'm guilty of it myself.

Highways seemed liked a good way to solve a problem of pathfinding (*that I found wasn't that bad anyway, not in sectors that weren't stuffed full of asteroids) and speed without SETA. But as with all great ideas, they turned out to be less than optimal. And instead of just saying "oh well, we tried, didn't work out as well as we'd hoped this time", they instead try to keep fiddling with them until they are made to work.

The cost of putting them in means they have to spend more and more and more on them. The best solution here is to improve pathfinding, possibly pre-calc "invisible highways" in sectors for the AI to use and let the player do what he likes. (there are modern pathfinding algorithms that do this approach very well) and scrap highways as a thing. Then add a cruise drive to make ships go faster (or just make the top speed fast as you like, with reducing manoeuvrability the faster you go to prevent it being used in combat)

As for magic.. they are putting in teleportation to make up for the lack of jump drives so they know that JD is a good thing, they just can't bring themselves to realise all these problems could be solved easily, if they just let go of the new stuff that wasn't as good as hoped.