[prescient63]

I'm confused about one point. Once a player or corporation builds a gate do they own that gate and no one else can travel through it? If this is not the case then you would run into what is known as the free rider problem. It basically says that certain individuals have no incentive to put money into projects if they can piggy back off of other individuals. There are obviously easy ways around this such as tolls, which would be my preferred method. Especially since first to market will by and large have a stranglehold over the gates in that system.

However, if their prices were high enough you could figure out the NPV of building a new gate that goes to the same system and decide whether it was worth it. Then once there were two gates in once system price wars would ensue and costs of travel would come down. There would also need to be some sort of set value for the operational costs of the gates. Interestingly you wouldn't actually need increasing gate costs. Basically first to market will recoup their costs first by high toll prices, and when other entities enter the market they will reduce their prices, eventually operating just above the bare minimum to where it is not efficient to build new gates any longer.

A pass system where you could buy a pass to a certain corporation's gates for trading purposes would maybe be even better than tolls. The other part of the pass system is that if you are buying a certain pass there would be an incentive for large corporations to create gigantic trading networks rather than using someone else's and would provide a benefit to those who purchase passes.
I think this game has huge merit. For it to be fun for me there would have to be a sort of stock market/contract system. People could develop investment funds to fund new projects, hostile takeovers, and acquire new capital for corporations.

I love your idea, but needs some work on the economic end mostly because this is a trading/economics game if I am reading your post correctly.