Colonization Survival: Keep immersion, ditch map teleport

Avorion does that, and I find it immersive enough. Some Space Engineer fans may consider it too much "weird space magic", but there are other things that need more realism more urgently.

A kind of stargate would be better but I still don't like that option. I prefer to simply have the jump drives.

Stargates and teleportation between stations removes the justification for building large motherships with jump drives. Without the need for jump drives I can't justify to myself building a big ship for my smaller ship to dock to and then warp to a new sector. I may as well just build a small ship and just fly between stations. I find that boring.

If stargates are to be a feature, and I hope they aren't, it would be good if they can only transport very small distances so it is not that you use them to travel around the solar system but rather can use them to travel 1-5km. That way you could have two bases nearby and use the stargate to quickly travel between them. Any further than this and I think the best travelling method should be your ship. But overall, I don't like the idea of stargates. The solar system is too small and I want lots of reasonings for having a ship. Without ingots, we don't have a reason to make cargo ships. If they keep teleportation permanent then we also won't have a reason to make larger ships for long distance travel with 20 jump drives.

Yes, the space station gateways add natural chokepoints to the map. That would be important in multiplayer.

Adding gates just seems like it would ruin the justification for creating large ships with jump drives.

And if people begin using these gates in multiplayer, it will just concentrate veryone at the same ambush locations... ruining it for anyone who is new to the server.

The game has sensors. You can't easily hide if you are planning to go to planets or moons. I think there will be more than enough interaction on Verdue, Kemik, and Byblos and the moons (and hopefully a gas giant).

I mean if you are playing multiplayer, the planets act as a sufficient attractor to others and they are not so big that it is easy to get lost in.

Don't forget that a jump drive allows you to jump freely between any two points. The space station gates only connect fixed points. This means you always have an incentive to build a jump drive.

I think the gate network is a good thing, because it allows the player to access the map sectors early in the game. The jump drive is a late game device. I don't think it would work very well if you were trapped to the initial sector until late in the game.

Both jump drives and space station gates have their place.

"Adding gates just seems like it would ruin the justification for creating large ships with jump drives."

-Assuming planets are still roughly the same size and distance apart they were in SE1, it would still take 15 mins to fly to the far side of one with the new speed cap, and I know more than a few people that refuse to setup their bases or park their stuff less than an hour's conventional flight from a planet (a touch over 1,000Km now). On top of that, if all the gates aren't next to each other then it may still take the better part of an hour to cross the solar-system without FTL because you'd have to fly between gates to make your various connections.

"And if people begin using these gates in multiplayer, it will just concentrate everyone at the same ambush locations... "

-Dealing with pirates and ambushers is part of multiplayer, but if you know they are there then you can do something about it.

--Pirates can be bribed,

--Ambushers can be distracted with bait-ships,

--Guards can be hired,

--White knights and indiscriminate pvp'ers will go looking for gate-camps just to blow them up,

--Blockade-runners can be used to just YOLO through the gate-camps,

--Smugglers can be hired to sneak you past gate-camps and take you where you need to go,

--Traders will find ways past gate-camps to bring stuff you need to you,

--Alternate routes can be taken,

--And your desired large ships fitting big FTL setups can just bypass the gates entirely.

"I mean if you are playing multiplayer, the planets act as a sufficient attractor to others and they are not so big that it is easy to get lost in."

-It has been my experience in SE1 that planets are where you get better food, easily located economy-stations, and enough gravity to protect things from low TWR ships, all at the cost limiting ore access, slowing travel, and being constantly harassed while offline by grinder-monkeys. Subsequently planetary interactions tend to be limited to singular late-game seed-runs when they haven't been found else ware, and a gate-system that would both allow smaller ships with limited FTL capacity to travel across the system and attract gate-camps for me to blow up would definitely be a significant incentive to regularly go back to planets.