Highways are unnecessary though. There is literally no good reason for physical highways with glowing roads and off ramps to exist in space. They also cost nothing to use, meaning there is no "thinking" part of the actions the player makes. This is why jumpdrives and seta were the better solution for all ships. Jumps can get you from point A to B but it also cost energy cells, making the travel meaningful and the bigger the ship, the heavier it is, the longer the distance, the more energy cells are required. Thus the mechanic is already balanced.JamesTheClarke wrote: ↑Tue, 4. Dec 18, 11:43 Larger ships still could be created as we know them from back in X3, but simply give them the ability to utilise jump drives. For balancing those could be coupled to cooldowns and especially vulnerable to EMP attacks to prevent capital ships from simply teleporting out of a losing battle.
That way more impatient, casual players could still enjoy less travel time while more patient hardcore pilots can always choose to fly without highways.
Furthermore you autopilot and use SETA that should have the same effect of getting somewhere fast (for those you think are more impatient). With those two features, the magical gimmick known as space highways are completely pointless. They not only add bad visual clutter, but they ultimately end up making the actual "space" in outerspace feel smaller, which defeats the whole point of playing a space sim. There is also another bad side effect of this pointless feature, it essentially encourages/requires stations to be built next to highways, which then ruins the expansiveness of sectors and the discoverability aspect as it incentivizes location. If Egosoft tries to chase too many different audiences (for an already niche genre), they may ultimately end up appealing to none in the long run.
