I think I’ve asked this before but I’ll be scuppered if I can find it now, so -
In the Associated Worlds, are there any stargates that the Empire/Ring Dynamics didn’t build? Are they in use? If so, by whom?
The Vonnies have a weylforge, but it’s salvaged from some godtech remnant. Other than them, as far as I know nobody else can produce wormholes.
Going off of the comments on Sticker Price.
And the text near the end of Questions: Sleep, Implied Contracts… Stargates.
There are stargates from other networks, but aside from the Vonnies harvesting it from a godtech remnant and just barely not turning themselves into a blight in the process, there’s not much. It’s very economically impractical to make your own network, so mainly you just see the occasional gate/network from those who figured it out before first contact, and those pathologically untrusting or self-reliant.
I suspect a slightly more common arrangement, if you REALLY wanted a stargate between two points but Ring Dynamics wasn’t planning one in the convenient future, would be to contract with them to pay for said stargates’ manufacture and installation but let Ring Dynamics manage it. Similar to how (here at least) if you want a high speed internet line to a place where there isn’t, you can arrange with the relevant utilities companies to install a fibre optics cable from their network to a convenient nearby point, at your expense, and they will happily sign you up to a internet service in exchange, frequently at better-than-average-price.
I was particularly curious about precursor gates, pre-contact gates (and who might have these, because I’d think having the capability to build a stargate, even very slowly, would be fairly relevant in political terms) and weird relic gates that go somewhere way off the beaten path, because I’m always curious about those bizarro corners of a 'verse where oddments are squirreled away. But yeah, the idea of paying for a spur link makes a lot of sense to me too, for those cases where you want to be connected to the rest of the 'verse a fair bit more than they want to reach you, or similar.
There are some. The Photonic Network have their own for some of their core routes that they want to attach their own proprietary functionality to. (They have mastered wormhole technology for the purposes of computational origami, so stargates weren’t all that much further of a leap.)
A few local (Vingean) powers have their own; there are a few paleotech relics floating around (most of them administered by Ring Dynamics because they understand the tech); and there are some members of the Interstellar League of Tribal Chiefdoms who have attempted to build their own following the RD patents for what amount to Jones Act reasons.
Almost all of this last category have discovered that it’s a great way to pour money into a hole in space. Worse, it doesn’t get you nearly the independence they would like to think it does, because it’s hard to operate two connected plexi without a lot of coordination with Ring Dynamics - just look at the temporal issues that occur along the Borderline.
(And given that Ring Dynamics are unquestionably the bigger outfit with the bigger plexus to manage in these circumstances, that tends to be coordination in the “do what you’re told” sense.)
None of those paleotech relics I mentioned are from the Precursor Era, I should clarify, because they’re exactly the sort of big, immobile, valuable infrastructure that was a priority target when the local Precursors had their final war.
Yeah, that happens.
Ring Dynamics have essentially two business models on offer. The first, which applies to (but is not limited to) all their speculative-construction gates and routes, is fee-for-service. The gate itself remains in the full control of Ring Dynamics, not the local governance, but on the other hand, the local governance doesn’t incur up-front or ongoing costs.
(Even under this model, if you want a gate and RD’s model shows that it will be a worthwhile route, you can pay up front to get one installed ahead of schedule. If you cover the costs of diverting the weylforge and linelayer from whatever else they would have been doing.)
The other one is link-lease, where the system governance gets to lease the gate - although ownership remains with Ring Dynamics, because they don’t much feel like giving away the farm, or how it integrates into their plexus-management systems - and as such has control over it in exchange for an annual lease payment. They can set whatever transit fees and rules they want, etc.
That said, this is a much less popular option, for a number of reasons.
For one, where through traffic is concerned, you may find yourself competing with Ring Dynamics gates for traffic, and it’s really hard to beat their transit rates and still make enough to pay the lease, plus service fees for network coordination, maintenance, fuel, and operator - which are, other than fuel, independent of traffic.
For another, one of the things that gives Ring Dynamics a competitive advantage is that they are deeply trusted when it comes to freedom of transit and charging common-carrier flat-by-mass-and-class rates. They’ve earned that over a lot of time, and it’s at least as big a factor in promoting trade as starport extrality, and for much the same reason.
Most local governances do not have that same level of trust, which makes corporations and captains alike a mite cautious about dealing with them. No-one wants to be caught in orbit of Space Venezuela the day they decide it’s gonna be a million exvals to get out-system.