While you are partially correct I'd like to adress some of that. The Jumpdrives in the X universe are all based on the original Xenon/Terran jumpdrive that we saw in the first game. They are all based on the same technology that we originally saw the jumprive use, and this new jumpdrive is only able to target gate signatures or those similair. This technology is based on the jumpgate network and relies on it to work. The jump beacons were constructed and developed by the community of planets. They take advantage of what they know about the jumpdrive and gates in order to create a lock on point without the need of a gate which is why the jumpdrives can still function even without the jumpgates.Vaperius wrote: There are large distinctions between Jump Gates, Jump Drive, FTL Tunneling and what an experimental jump drive are, and the type jump drive that Khaak and perhaps Xenon use.
Jump gates are essentially a system for connecting a stable space-time-gravity anomaly between two points in space consistently; if the anomalies in Torride are any hint to perhaps this phenomena either being a natural occurrence or merely something that that Ancients took advantage of to create stabilized gate travel across a system wherever one of these anomalies already existed.
Also: its an important note that the devs have conflated their FTL Tunneling/Jump Drive to each other, as the FTL that capital ships has are not true jump drives.
FTL Tunneling(Jump Drive as its commonly referred to in-universe) that the capital ships perform "merely" is actually a form of warp travel in my opinion and theory, and is therefore not jump drive as its in fact, not instantaneous, it only appears instantaneous because of the relatively small distance involved.
I've never seen them jump between systems; so forgive me if I am wrong; but capital ships have to use gates to travel between systems as with their FTL Tunneling it would potentially take perhaps hours or days versus minutes via simply "Jumping" into a system with a gate. However even if they are jumping into a sector via the their drive, I am fairly certain there is a specific difference between their local jumps within a system and between systems (FTL Tunneling/Warp vs Jump Drive).
True Jump Drive such as on the Xperimental shuttle can reach any destination instantly in theory although it has some obvious problems.
We also get a true Jump drive again in the X3 series however technically its superior to the X:Rebirth from a mechanics standpoint simply because we could potentially expand the areas we can jump to directly, which while not as useful in X3, would be useful in X Rebirth; however dropping independent structures from the Skunk causes (Nav Beacons in this instance) any sector with them to display a friendly signature within system despite not showing the Nav Beacon location directly on the list of ships within sector, however I digress.
Then we are finally into perfected Jump FTL, which is insane from a Lore standpoint. We've got gates; and then we've got perfected Jump FTL of the Khaa'ak and Xenon. These two race give zero shits about the ancients plans for them.
Perfect or rather "point-jump driver" is essentially relatively more accurate then an UFJD or the now-common place in X Rebirth Jump Drives in that it does not require a signature as far as we know to lock on to yet can accurately place ships in a approximate area of where they want to go within a system.
The reason that any the races haven't done this however is both a design choice by the devs to keep their game world manageable and from a lore-standpoint. Why would they? The jump gates are convenient and unless their system is resource strapped(in which case they could afford to anyway), there is no reason to leave when they realign or shut down.
There is also the matter how "How do we govern an unlimited amount of space" which is an impossible question to answer since the moment you get a solution (namely a lot of ships), someone discovered 30,000 more systems and slapped jump beacons in them for everyone. Political unity would shatter if the governments of this universe let people wildly expand freely into every nearby system.
Don't get me wrong; they definitely could do it though, they could probably colonize a quarter of the galaxy in a few centuries just by the sure virtue of how widely distributed because of the gate network Argons and Terrans have become not to mention other races..
It seems however that the jumpdrives in Rebirth has changed. Whereas in previous games ships would jump directly to gates the ships in Rebirth seems to only jump to beacons. As a result of the dark it seems that all the systems that we know of have been expanding their beacon network as to make travel easier. It seems however that the ability for these jumpdrives has changed slighlty throughout the dark. Jumprdives now has a far shorter range compared to the ones that we saw before. They do not seem to be able to target gates in other systems either. I would assume that this is a result of either a lack of resources to build proper jumpdrives or a further developed drive that was tailored to the needs of these intersystem ships. My guess is that once the universe adapts again to the reactivated gates we'll see more of the previous jumpdrives capable of jumps across several systems. It is possible that the jump beacons does not properky work without the gate network intact. Putting a jump beacon in a far away system would most likely not allow the jumpdrives to lock on as it would be too far away. For long distance jumps they always relied on the jumpgates to be able to relay the jump beacon signals.
And for lorewise there are several reasons as to why a jumpdrive independent from the jumpgate network would be desired. Having one of those would offer superior mobility. They'd be able to completely ignore established frontiers. Military wise it would be a massive advantage. It would also alow one to sever themselves from the jumpgate network and be secure while able to acess everyone else.
Many of the systems in the jumpgate network presumably died when the jumpgates shut down. There were very few systems that were fullt self-sufficient and therefore it would be that many systems has a reason for wanting to leave where they were.
