Right mini rant here but they overall question is "Why do we have Terrestrial Nodes and can we replace them with Portal
magic instead?" Everything following this is an explanation of why I am asking this question.
As far as I can see there is very little reason for having Terrestrial Nodes and they might even be considered a bad idea. I have minimal issues with the rest of the
node system but the fact that we are expected to believe that magical races are expected to have space based assests used for travel (A VERY expensive thing in both time resources and willpower) when they can just travel between habitable (and even most non habitable) worlds with these gates is streching my willing disbelief. Yes there is the problem of mass but if that just means going through it with a bunch of people holding grocery bags and full packs instead of BUILDING A SPACE SHIP it is more likely
nations would pick the less expensive option (
Mana is theoreticaly infinite so opening a portal costs only time as long as you have enough mages or
heartstones to open it) and simply take more trips using the terrestrial nodes.
From a militaristic perspective these nodes also are a severe weakness as almost anyone with the magical talent can just open it and send through an army. This can be minimized by defenses and such but considering the enemy in terms of logistics, set up and preperation is under only as much strain as the opposing force can send back through the node (Which if they are attacking through it seems unlikely) then they can simply sit back and send nearly wave after wave or even suicide bomb the area.
From a logistical perspective it's a godsend but not in a good way for so early on in the setting. It's cheap to use, can carry just about anything a person can carry, allows for FTL travel making communications inter and intra planetary,
stellar and possibly galactic as easy as walking through the node and saying "Blah Blah Blah." Even if there was some major drawback like some percent of the people who use this would die it would still probably be used (We still use cars even though a lot of people die a year to them). It also makes intra system logistics super simplified because you can just take a jaunt through the node and bam halfway across the planet or the solar system. This would make technology such as cars, planes and other major transportations (Or their magical equivilants) mostly obselete.
With the rant about how terrestrial nodes make technology almost pointless to develop over I'd like to suggest an alternative.
Instead of having terestrial nodes that are always on and just given to every speices why not just have highly developed magical races build magical star gates? This would require them to actualy go to other places to build the star gates, facilitating proper logistical setups and exploration. This would allow for more
plots to be created based on exploration, as well as make said plots a lot more interesting because they don't have the "Oh well thats enough for the day I'm gonna warp home an sleep in my warm bed." Excuse until they build and power a stargate.
This also removes most of the military problems created by the node system where the nodes allow for infinite travel for armies and such a stargate could simply be destroyed forcing the enemy to create a beachhead before having access to this logistical godsend again.
This also allows for things like power requirements to be given to portals, Maybe they devour heartstones at an obsene rate? Maybe they require certain reagents to activate, Maybe they require certain constelations be in the sky? (Side Tangent : Personaly I'd prefer a type of astral sorcery where mages call upon the power of the constelations to allow travel to certain areas requiring study of an area and mapping of it's stars and constelations before accurate travel is possible. (Accounting for stellar drift could be interesting as well)) This could make things like magical space ships actualy viable as stargates could be specific time use or very expensive to use. As well as allowing for enforcement of some variation of time dialation or something similar to put it on level with something like an SLE or Fold drive Whether that's in charge time or it just takes a long time to cross the portal works either way.
Now if we replaced stargate with terrestrial node that would be fine allowing portal creation to connect eachother through some planet bound node where magical pours out of is a fine idea as long as it isn't just handed to them on a silver platter that they can travel inter stellar distances without much more difficulty than asking a mage to rip the universe a new one. Hell my suggestion is probably not even the best way to go about it given a well funded civilzation could take partial advatage of it, but that's not the point. The point is to point out that as it is terrestrial nodes are too powerful for their own good and put that into contrast with a similar system that is slightly less broken.
