Travel between stargates cannot have been instantaneous, else why aren't stargates used in the game? Use a hyperdrive to toss one somewhere else, and poof, instant travel?
No, no.
My theory is this:
Star Gates are effectively massive cities in space - enormous, expensive, and immobile. The system itself is relatively small, as it is the enormous fusion reactor built into the system that occupies the most volume. Star Gates worked by creating a massive fold in space around the ships using them, which could effectively 'drag' the ship towards its destination. The limitations were numerous - Star Gates were one-way until a return gate had been constructed on the other side, the course could not be deviated or interrupted at any time, the efficiency was dubious, and the duration of a trip increased exponentially with distance as the forces in the initial warp would equalize and 'slow'. Hyperdrive itself was not a new technology. However, Hyperdrive was the debut of the real miracle created by Humans - it included and was the first system to use Hyperfusion. An entire Star Gate could not only be shrunk a millionfold and mounted locally, but this also meant that because the warping bubble could be altered and maintained instantly, ships could 'steer' through space with the device, and the energy requirements dropped significantly, thereby shrinking the overall size of the device to one easily mountable on almost anything. Most importantly, acceleration and top speed could be maintained as long as the device had energy, and the galaxy adopted a standard of speed measurement. Because the warping effect on spacetime did not involve relativistic speeds and physically shorten the distance, time dilation is not an issue.
Stargates are no longer used for a reason, so there had to have been a major problem that hyperspace overcame. Energy demand was not the problem, as Hyperfusion was, technically, the *REAL* innovation by the Humans, not Hyperdrive. The requirement for two Stargates sounds plausible, but again, why couldn't we just use Hyperdrive to move a Stargate around now and still benefit from instant travel? My theory there is based around the description of artificial gravity and the 25k Drengin shock troops. If Stargates were instant, there'd be no need to have the archaic rotating hulls. The description of artificial gravity says:
"The Drengin fleet that conquered the Torian home world in the pre-hyperdrive era were all without artificial gravity and relied on a stargate that still resulted in a travel time of nearly a year. Two of the troop carriers in that journey had a malfunction in their rotational axis control during the journey resulting in having over 25,000 Drengin shock troops having to live out their remaining lives in space."
Clearly stargates are not instantaneous. They must've been fairly slow, perhaps slower than hyperdrive. There must've been an advantage in putting hyperdrives on ship, so my idea was that Stargates would make a linear 'path' to their destination that couldn't be changed or slowed in-flight.
