Are there any phenomena that would interfere with the broadcast of a service beacon, such as electronic warfare, nebulas, or surface-side phenomena like a sandstorm?

I've always kind of liked the idea of having the comm arrays be something that can help carry the signal or boost its range. Or if you go out into dead space, out on the outer rim or something, you're outside the comm arrays, so your comms in the ship need to physically reach the distance that they cover. Otherwise, if you're within the comm network, then you can pretty much send it as far as the comm arrays can broadcast. But we haven't fully figured out exactly how the transfer of information or that signal is going to be transmitted through the system yet. But that's kind of how I see it working at the end of the day, and going from system to system. Do you really want to send a service beacon message to someone three systems away? Is that a beneficial thing? So it depends on what it is, and we just have to play around with it and really find that cool middle ground.

Because what instantly came to mind is the old 2.0 gameplay of going around and disabling the comm arrays, and whether an assaulting force might go around and disable the comm arrays that are surrounding a particular moon before going down and raiding somebody's homestead. That's what I would do.

Yeah, and I thought about this just as far as the economy info, and how do I understand what the prices are on a different planet. Well, I would like that information to be transmitted through the comm arrays, so that if somebody goes and takes that down, then all of a sudden the Herald has a really important role, which is bridging the gaps between these communication breaks in the network. So trying to make sure that we've got a purpose for all these things is really on my mind quite a bit. I think that's really interesting as a player too, for an information runner: yeah, there's a Herald out there and he's allowing service beacons to go through, or the economy info, or just missions or distress calls or whatever. I think that would be really neat for the players.

For me, I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier, which is this is the kind of thing that drives the players together. And whether that's collaboration or opposition, it's making the environment much more interesting and dynamic. If we're making service beacon distribution tied in some way to some physical element in the game, then that means that that's something that can be attacked. And that means that now we have this interesting kind of interplay between the player base. So I love that idea. I really hope that at some point we do get around to doing that kind of stuff. I think it'll be really cool gameplay.

It also builds on that: if that data can be stopped, then that data can gain value. Because if it's not guaranteed that that's getting everywhere, but I can guarantee that, now I've got a service I can make money doing.