Ancient gate on a clearly identified asteroid bug me a bit. It feel like going in the African savannah to see animals and find a bus stop every 300m, it break the feeling of finding an unexplored system. It's so easy to find that, with my friends, we use the outpost to meet and share stuff instead of beaming to a ship or to our home world. I think we should keep one ancient gate per system, but put it on the surface on a random planet. It become a simple reason to explore planets, and once discovered, the planet would be marked as having a gate. And we can also imagine having a small local quest to reactivate the gate (with a npc at the outpost rewarding you for reactivating gates).
I think an easier solution is to simply not have a gate in every system. Would force you to leave the system you're in from time to time.
I totally agree that the ancient gates make it feel like the universe is the Disney theme-park version of what should be a vast unexplored universe. I'd like to see the pre-built gate system just completely replaced. Make it so that players can construct gates that link to the network of gates they have already established. Have the outpost located in the starter system. When the player is fixing their FTL drive have the NPC grant them the plans to build gates and have the outpost always listed as one of the linked gates the player can visit from the gates they later construct.
Having gates be constructed by the PC is non-ideal because it loses the sense of purpose of the gates... they are clearly entities meant to unite the systems. I'd love to see them link to a bigger place, or different outposts in different star clusters (groups of solar systems). Right now, I feel like it's weird that the only part of this advanced space-faring civilization we see star-side is a tiny outpost that's supposed to be connected to every single gate in the galaxy. Why isn't it used as a means of transportation? Why can't I hire a shuttle around the solar systems populated with the homeworlds of intelligent species? That kind of thing seems like a natural evolution of a spacefaring civilization of this nature... Look at the citadel from Mass Effect: It's flipping massive. That makes sense, it's the central hub of sentient life throughout the galaxy! On a related note, because of the tiered nature of not just planets, but galaxies (which, by the way, is completely illogical, planet temperatures + radiation exposures are far more dependent on the distance from the star than the type of star the planet orbits), fuel isn't a huge issue most of the time. You don't even expend it to go to missions or to return home (convenient, but also, what? Shouldn't I at least have to be in the right solar system?), and the outpost is accessible from every single solar system. There is no reason not to just stay in one solar system until advancing to the next tier. I'm saying it has to be, but I feel like making fuel more difficult to come by would make the universe seem bigger, whereas right now, with a small universal outpost and low fuel costs, the entire galaxy seems relatively tiny...
Here's an idea, gates should only appear in systems that are part of constellations. Would make the constellations notable, and also make the gates appear far less frequently.
Or maybe there will be one gate on each system... only that some (most?) are found on a planet's surface instead of its own asteroid. So people have to explore to get the goodies of the Outpost!
The two guys up there both make valid points, but I think a better method would be removing the gates from later tier systems (like seriously, who's visiting planets that might as well be on FIRE?), but allowing an upgrade to the Ship's teleporter around mid-tier to have a constant link to the outpost (in addition to 'Beam to planet' and 'Beam home'). That'd be a reward to progressing players who understand the importance of the Outpost, while at the same time ensuring that players can't find themselves in a 'no-escape' situation which the outpost is designed for preventing (selling fuel, extra processors, etc).
I'd personally like to see gates appearing on a select few planets myself. In fact, maybe I should look into working on a mod where gates appear on the surface of certain planets, with little immediate indication as to where they might be located...
...and here's a trio of interrelated mods that demonstrate this kind of concept: Planetary Gateways Ship-To-Outpost Teleporters No More Gateways
