Is it possible to make emergency beacons that don't cost any money to create, like medical support, refuel or repair, something like calling 911?

Actually, that's something that we're looking at. One of the things that we're looking at next, I'm not saying that's necessarily going to go into the next release or not, but distress beacons are something that we're very interested in. In fact, whenever we first started working on the feature, it was always part of the discussion that there would be some way that you could fire up some distress call and get help. And it's not necessarily that there's a price associated with it, though there could be. But it's just to say, hey, I'm in the middle of nowhere, I just got ambushed or whatever. There's some quick, maybe a hotkey, maybe an interaction that you can just automatically throw it up. And if somebody's nearby, they'll get the notification. They can go help you. It's just a way of saying, hey, I need help. And if someone wants to be kind, they can, but maybe they're a pirate.

I feel like I understand one of the reasons why we haven't decided one way or the other, because there are advantages and disadvantages to having it cost something. If you have a distress beacon cost something, then you cut down on abuse, the fake calls. The fake calls are going to cost that person something to make. If they're all just free willy-nilly, then you can have people spamming and just setting traps for free with no recourse to themselves.

Although they're going to be a service beacon like any other, so they will have a reputational feedback associated with them. So they can't just keep doing it. Maybe they'll do it a couple times and they'll get it. But if they keep doing that, they're going to get a reputation for it.

And there is also whatever criminal rating that you're going to get because of the actions that you do. So you trap somebody, you take their ship, you steal from them, you kill them, whatever. All those things are going to eventually have some sort of criminal rating associated with them that just builds up, and you get bounties, you potentially get thrown in jail someday. Those are all not outside of the realm of reason of the universe. So there's consequences to your actions, and some people are going to be okay with being a pirate and being that guy, but they're going to be hunted. They're going to be highly sought after. They're not going to be able to fly in UEE space. There's going to be consequences to those actions.

But again, we don't want to completely remove piracy from the game. That's part of the game.