The service beacon will expand and evolve to include new contract types, additional filters and more feedback precision, and AI characters will be able to interface with the system. What can we add to the service beacon?

Well, we already have service beacon work on the 3.2 roadmap. So what we're talking about is some of the stuff we did, but also, like I mentioned, AI being able to also generate service beacon requests, which creates a really nice feedback loop. In general, I think we've decided that we need to spend a little more time on the usability and focus. The first use of service beacon will be in 3.1, which was nice. We moved it up from 3.2 into 3.1, so I know everyone had a lot of teeth gnashing when bind culling went out of 3.1, but the service beacon stuff came in, which I think is going to add a little bit of gameplay, but it really is going to come alive more in 3.2, and will include things like the ability to be able to rate: yes, this one's a reliable service beacon person, or no, they're a bit sketchy.

The service beacon system is new for 3.1, and even though 3.1's only been in PTU for a couple days, many backers won't have experienced it as a system yet.

And I think in some of the past releases, it wasn't functional. So I'd have to check. I think in the PTU release that will be happening today, people should be able to be using the service beacon. But yeah, it's a very, very new thing. But it's kind of cool because it's basically the first stage of player-generated missions, and the whole service beacon system is basically a player contract manager. It's like, hey, I need you to do this job, whether it's help me, I'm under attack, or it's take me from point A to point B, or escort me from point A to point B, or eventually take out this person, or whatever it would be. This is how players will enter into contracts with other players, put jobs and missions out. Also probably how they'll be able to, like, you can hire some people to help you do this big run, which you'll make a bunch of money on. And then some of your costs go to the people you had to hire to help you to do the run. And so the service beacon is the infrastructure that allows that. And we're building on top of it. And it's very critical, I think, for the player interaction, we're talking about you with your friends or interacting with other players, achieving stuff either together in cooperation or in some cases you could be in opposition. But I think very much a good focus of Star Citizen is the idea of you and your friends going and doing stuff together. Whether it's against AI or it's against players, it's kind of up to you. But I think our big focus is, yes, this is an online game. How can me and my friends go and have fun together?

I'm just imagining that somebody is going to end up creating a Star Citizen Yelp to start reviewing people in service.

Well, that's actually the idea. So the service beacon is going to have that. So it's going to have the equivalent of the Yelp ratings or the Uber ratings, where you can rate both the person that's responding, taking the contract, and the person that's giving the contract. So it'll help to have that: if someone basically does a honeypot deal, you give them a zero-star or one-star rating, and you see this person who's offering a contract and their rating's one, versus someone offering a contract whose rating is five, you're going to take the person that has a five rating.