PATHS (Pyxis Alternative Travel Heuristics System) is the decentralized alternative system of navigation and map distribution employed by House Pyxis as a means to continue engaging in unusual navigational practices and to avoid being tied to the centralised Velan system LINES after their split. While LINES uses a network feeding information into the a central source, which then feeds the information back out to ships about the current state of the sector, PATHS uses a peer-to-peer system where equipped ships and dedicated nodes share information with one another on a contact basis to keep their map and weather information up to date. This is the same system piggybacked by the newer system, PLANES.
Peer-to-Peer System[]
PATHS is built on a peer-to-peer network of nodes, including scattered buoys, PATHS equipped ships, and in some cases clandestine transponders or navigation spyware embedded on third party ships or cargo.
These nodes constantly collect the information about the conditions of space around them, updating their internal maps and weather outlook. Whenever two or more of these nodes come into communication range of one another, they share, compare, and update their available information about the sector map using the information collected by the others to improve their weather models and map of the sector.
All this data is archived. Some highly advanced users are known to view the direct ledger of updates and communications to make their own personal determination about what looks like the more accurate information, or to weigh a very high risk jump against all availability data.
Ships with PATHS systems are encouraged to equip themselves with advanced drivespace sensors. All ships are able to record various drivespace conditions, but the advanced sensors improve the quality of this data, while bringing light upon additional environmental variables not typically sampled by standard equipment.
PATHS User Experience[]
The PATHS network itself is setup to keep a log of recent inbound and outbound jumps to provide suggestions for most popular route, route of the most recent PATHS ship to arrive from the destination, and other useful shortcuts and filters for easy route finding. However, most individuals choose to rely on routes they have stored on their own ship computers.
It is important to note that PATHS equipped ships are not required to report to other nodes in the system the route they took or are taking. This is often used by individuals who want to keep their especially dangerous or secret routes private and therefor unreported on suggestion features of the PATHS network. Individual routes and maps can be easily marked as secret or open as necessary, and even a jump by jump basis.
Weather metrics regarding intervening drivespace and system stellar conditions cannot be kept secret, but such data is always reported anonymously and encrypted.
PATHS Distribution and Commercial Model[]
PATHS itself is generally free to use, but has a very high bar for entry in terms of usability and required experience. Pyxis begin using the system the moment they first begin learning to navigate, but non-Pyxis users will likely find themselves overwhelmed.
PATHS can come in many forms depending on personal mods and adjustments. While the backbone necessarily remains the same, with the network and encryption components in particular being decided by engineers and developers of the system stationed back at Lodestone, other parts of it can be heavily modified to individual preferences, leading to many different user experiences and disparate recommendations or products depending on a person’s source and method of installation.
Numerous installation and training services exist to varying degrees of cost and legitimacy. Many provide their own modified packages of PATHS, often as a selling point, with installers touting particular features or conveniences in their given package. Others offer services to specifically build a new distribution tailored to the exact needs of their client.
Providers of these services usually also sell routes, either bundled with their distribution, separately, or as part of their own subscription service. Many Non-Pyxis PATHS users choose subscriptions because of their familiarity with LINES based subscriptions.
Upon request, the Lodestone Engineers who maintain PATHS will install their main official "Vanilla" package of the system for a modest fee. While it won’t have the bells and whistles, specialisations or conveniences, of many other packages provided by various third parties, it is generally well regarded for being stable and safe distribution. This is the same package that is provided for free for users who wish to attempt installing it themselves.