I think I don't understand the super highway system

[Landshark]

I was under the impression that once you go through a super highway jumpgate that it will automatically take you through a few different systems. Is that correct/incorrect?

I went through the super highway jumpgate in Grand Exchange I and it spit me out in Grand Exchange III then my ship automatically stopped (coasted to a stop).

I thought maybe I had interrupted the ship movement or something, so I tried a few times going back and forth and didn't touch any controls at all, it always spits me out in the next system and then I coast to a stop.

Did super highways change in X4 or something?

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Landshark:

What am I looking at here?

https://imgur.com/J5zczkN

https://imgur.com/5Edv8nQ

You are looking at accelerator gates which are different to the circular jump gates. The relvant information is this:

1. The blue ribbon things you see around places like Argon Prime are called highways. They go about 10-12k m/s and are the slowest.

2. The accelerator gates appear at the ends of super-highways. The go at near light speeds. An example of one is what you are looking at in your picture.

3. The main circular highway in the centre of the galaxy is connected between systems by circular jump gates. These are FTL+ speed insta-travel things, the fastest of all three. It is the circular jump gates that do the heavy lifting in getting you round, not the blue ribbon highways. They themselves are as slow as funeral in the scheme of things.

4. The galaxy consists of systems that roughly correspond to a space conurbation around a single planet orbiting a single star. This is normally referred to as a sector.

5. Some systems/sectors are divided into sections that are also confusingly referred to as sectors. The one you are looking at is Grand Exchange which has three sectors each of which is located around the whacking great gas giant in the middle.

6. Normal highways (like the circular one going through Argon Prime etc) are too slow to get from one part of Grand Exchange to another. Hence these much faster but still sub-light super-highways accessed via accelerator gates.

7. The round jump gates are the only way to travel between separate solar systems. If you are going through a jump gate you going inter-stellar. If you are down a super-highway you are not, you are going a fair distance in-system. A few light hours maybe, but not light years.

8. Accelerator gates/super-highways are only ever present when a solar system has multiple sectors, like Grand Exchange has. This is important in game play because, for instance, it means sector miners (that are not allowed to travel through gates, meaning jump gates) are allowed to usen super-highways. So a sector miner can mine and sell anywhere in the three Grand Exchange sectors/sub-sectors. Also for ships that are restricted to a certain number of "gates", such as station traders and autotraders, these accelerators/super-highways are free, they do not increment the gate count of a journey which is important for strategic planning.

9. There are several other systems like Grand Exchange connected by super-highways, Black Hole Sun and Second Contact for example. The always have the same main name, they are always connected by super-highways.

[strask]

Gregorovich, that is an astoundingly well written and useful reply for this thread. Thanks for being a good community member.

[Humble]

I see accelerator as small jump gate, not highway, because matter of speed, point here to there, but I guess it's could be look like highway and jump, fine line between. I guess it's fast enough to jump while it's not slow enough to be highway.