It should be noted that a Pathlayer does not travel to its destination in a straight line. Rather, it goes on a zig-zag, ideally setting up a triangular scaffold of routes – meaning two forward route possibilities at any point, and 4 connections minimum. This essentially allows two directional traffic with exits at ever jump point.
At this point, all routing is handled at solar – even planet orbital – facilities.
The first upgrade is a third strand. An overflow lane if you will.
At this point, routing is usually handed over to a deep space station adjacent to the route – somthing to sort between unengraved route maintainance balls sent between relays, and engraved mail balls. Being mmade of nickel, their movement through the balck does have an effect of keeping paths between relays free of interstellar hydrogen – so there is a minimum amount of traffic to keep things traversable, but mail capacity exceeds this – albeit at slight tension with ship traffic. A ball awaiting retrieval will get dissolved in the reintegration wake of a ship.
The next route enhancement is a second outwards offset “lane” for each strand. This significantly increases the number of potential routes needeing to be kept clear.
Officially, if a 6 lane route is being saturated, it’s time to lay a completely seperate route rather than expand the current one further.
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