Pros and cons of 'locked' pathways between stars?

[safe-keeper]

Okay, so my first 4X game was Stars! by Empire Interactive. It was simple, graphics were limited, it was made by one guy who had made it just for fun and initially hadn't even planned on releasing it, but it had a certain charm and it was fun to play.

One of the things I miss from Stars! is that you could send your ships anywhere. By that I mean, you weren't restricted to corridors between planets, but could set waypoints anywhere on the map, completely at will. If you wanted to send a ship straight from one distant star to another, you could. If you wanted to station a sentry ship or minelayer in deep space, you were free to do so. If you wanted to fight another fleet, you just had a ship target it and it would intercept it.

Latelly, it seems most (all?) 4X games have chosen to let there be fixed corridors you have to travel in between stars. Want to go from A to D? You'll have to go to B first, then to C, then finally to D, just 'cause the game says so.

So partly out of sheer curiosity, I'm wondering: what exactly are the benefits of doing it this way. It's a space game, isn't part of the allure of deep space the freedom to go exactly where you want to? To me, fixed corridors between planets makes as little sense as fixed corridors between ports in EU or HOI, as in, "you can't just order your cruiser to go from the Phillipines to the open seas north of Hawaii, you have to visit Guam, Midway, and Pearl Harbour along on the way, and then go straight north to the destination sea zones".

This isn't criticism as much as it is an invitation to discussion. So, what do you think the pros and cons are?

 

[ashbery76]

The game is not only starlanes.It is one of three FTL systems.

 

[safe-keeper]

That's a relief, in that case .

 

[Bismark776]

The reason they do it is that it keeps things organized and creates bottlenecks. Players like bottlenecks, it funnels combat into specific places. Things get very chaotic and frustrating in a completely open environment, even if it makes sense. Keep in mind, of course, that nothing about space 4x games make sense. A species with FTL travel would have reached a point where they could turn matter into energy and energy into matter at will and thus all resource competition, including territory and planets would be rendered unnecessary. For the sake of fun, fantasy, and gameplay, we make compromises. Space lanes are one such compromise.

 

[Chromos]

You have 3 different ways of traveling FTL:

Hyperlanes( roadgrid between Systems)- fast but strict.
Wardrive -lets you jump everywhere but slower.
Wormholes - lets you travel big distances but needs buildings to hold hole open.

 

[ThatJamesguy01]

My view is, Hyperlanes, is teh fastest way to get from A ->D the downside is you have to go through B and C

Warpdrive can get you to D without having to go through B or C but is much slower than Hyperlanes. Strategically very utilitarian, you can get around blockades, you can attack from irritating angles.

Wormholes, and Jumpgates, well they can get you from A -> D superfast, but only if you set up the route already, otherwise it's super slow. (Basically its all about investing in places you want to go to, and travel hubs so forth, in the planning you can have a great network but its also risky)

 

[echo2361]

I'm really glad they are including all three methods of FTL travel in the game. No need for a big debate over star lanes. Personally, I've enjoyed plenty of games that had them exactly because they create strategic choke points, but I can see people's concerns about them. The only two games I've seen handle the debate in an interesting way are Endless Space and SOTS. Endless Space started with star lanes for everyone but you could unlock late game tech for free travel which had a lot of strategic implications. SOTS offered different FTL methods for all races, so the humans could move very fast on node lanes but didn't have free travel. Personally, I loved tracking the human ships movement to find their most valuable node system so I could capture it and cut their empire in half in most games

 

[FelixG]

The reason its so popular is because it creates choke points on the map where people can fortify a bit, it can be annoying having to turn every world into a fortress world instead of a few key systems.

Stellaris should be very interesting though with the three different modes of transit (Like SOTS did) and allow different combinations.

Personally I am most interested in the jumpgate FTL tech! What can I say? I was a Hiver fan!

 

[henzington]

Personally I always preferred the wormhole especially if I happen to be playing defensively as it allows you to move forces around quickly allowing you to win the war even if you have fewer overall troops.

 

[Alliegorical]

A species with FTL travel would have reached a point where they could turn matter into energy and energy into matter at will and thus all resource competition, including territory and planets would be rendered unnecessary.

What? Even with the technology to convert energy into matter, all the nuclear weapons on Earth couldn't produce enough energy to synthesize a single football. You'd need a Dyson sphere for it to be even remotely practical, but there's not enough matter in the entire solar system to manufacture one.

Speculation about such things is pretty useless anyway. You can't possibly know whether it's easier to convert energy into matter or travel faster than light unless you already know how to do both.

 

[chopak]

Basing on my SOTS experience:
Pros:
- fast
- quick
- taking less time
- especially useful in early game, you can quickly grab more land then opposition.
Cons:
- chokepoints - your chokepoints, enemy can just fly around your blockade, you can be blocked very easily.
- chokepoints - as mentioned by @echo2361, your empire can be split in two by taking just few key planets.
- chokepoints - you can really get screwed by RNG when all your starting lanes (not neccessarily in first jump) end on Random Encounter Systems (i.e. empire remnants with their kickass tech, space locust nest, derelict ancient spaceship) or simply require jump out of your range.
- in late game inferior to wormhole system (assuming wormhole system will work just like gates did in sots)

To sum up: I hate spacehighways, you can get screwed in so many ways when you use them.