Originally posted by GrandAdmiralAbaht
Also, during missions in Freespace 1, jump nodes are not the end of a subpace tunnel between systems. They give ships the abillity to go to a number of systems. Admiral Wolf states in a briefings that "There are dozens of systems of the Antares node". Your map shows that there are only 4 possible destinations from the Antares nodes.
In the breifing for the mission to capture the SC Tyrannis, they say that they are not sure what system the Tyrannis will jump to they only know that there is one jump node in the Ikeya system. They do not say that the Tyrannis will jump to Ribos (Which is the only system you can jump to according to your map).
Um... I think dozen's of systems 'off' antares means leading from antares (Beta Aquilae, Ribos, et al). Also, the mission where you defend several nodes sort of indicates that nodes are between 2 points only, otherwise they wouldn't have so many of 'em there.
Everything in the way FS2 plays (giving this precedence,as it's the newest one) indicates jump nodes are between 2 points - i.e. the tracking of hostiles ships. also the actual subspace missions.
From techroom;
"n simple terms, subspace is an n-dimensional tunnel between one point in the universe and another. A vessel can travel through this tunnel in a matter of minutes, making a journey that might otherwise take decades or even centuries at light speed."
I sincerely doubt that a node can 'switch' destinations - the tech description describes crafts 'entering' a stable subspace tunnel, rather than controlling it. FS2 travel seems to be more passive - opening and taking a shortcut - rather than actually controlling where to go.
Gravity is obviously a factor, too....possibly easing the creation of the vortex. From the descriptions, intra system jumps almost seem to enter one of a large number of stable subspace tunnels, which only exist within a system. This could explain why ships sometimes jump out a bit from their target. It also eases mission balancing, because you'd have to be at a certain point to actually jump out - hence preventing badly damaged ships from just running away.