Trade Beacons, Distress Beacons, and Other Beacon Options

Beacons always felt a bit underdeveloped to me. They're helpful for outputting a location with low power usage, and for acting as a target for drones to fly to, but I feel like there could be more to them, so I had a few ideas.

Encryption

It makes sense that anyone within range of a beacon can see it, but it was always weird to me that they could see the beacon name as well. To solve that I would like to suggest beacon encryption. Beacon encryption is a setting that has the same options as assigning access to a block. A beacon that is encrypted to a player just shows as "encrypted beacon" with no name, but keeps the location. To help prevent screen clutter I think there should be an option to hide encrypted beacons which is by default on, but can be easily turned off for players who want to raid secret locations. An important detail for this is that you ALSO don't get to see who owns an encrypted beacon. It could be an ally, an enemy, or even a member of your own faction who is encrypting the beacon from everyone but themselves.

This will let you do more with beacons without constantly transmitting information you might want to keep secret from enemies. All of the below beacon types will look the same to someone they're encrypted to.

Beacon Types

Beacon types aren't different from other beacons, rather they're different settings that can be configured from the control panel (like with the gravity generators). I do think they're should be big, medium and tiny beacons for different use cases though!

Distress Beacon (Combat)

The combat version of the distress beacon works by targeting another grid, and transmitting both its own location and the faction of the targeted grid. If an AI ship sees that and either likes you enough or hates whoever's attacking you enough they might show up and aid you in combat. This always seemed like an obvious use for the beacon but it also makes making friends more valuable, and makes it easier to set up AIs to call for their friends cause they can just use the same system! Optionally as a balance mechanic, you can include a currency datapoint, where you can set an amount of money to give to anyone who joins the fight and fights for at least 5 seconds, and the higher the money is the more likely AI ships are to help you (and potentially player ships as well).

Having the AI occasionally turn their own combat distress beacon on that you can fly towards to help, or choose to dip out from fear of backup incoming would be really fun!

Distress Beacon (stranded)

If you end up in a situation where you can't move because of missing components to repair a damaged grid, missing hydrogen or anything like that then you can set a beacon to output this distress beacon signal. You include whatever you're missing in the beacon and friendly AIs might show up and give you some of your missing resource. You can also set this up with the reward system from combat distress beacon.

This would also be really fun for AIs to occasionally shoot out because it would make the world feel more alive, and help you feel empowered for saving NPCs (in exchange for some positive relations)!

Trade Beacons

Rather than having trade stations having an antenna that you try to look at they have a beacon, and this beacon includes prices for selling and buying allowing you to see what kind of trade station that one is from a distance, and allows you to plan out trade runs where you buy from one station and sell to another easier making being a trader a more accessible playstyle which I think is always great!

This would also allow players to set up their own trade beacon, and potentially even have AIs make choices about where to fly to and who to buy from based on your beacon (For example if you set up near someone that sells iron plates and set your prices lower than theirs more ships will head to you then to them).

Docking Beacon

Docking beacons don't need to have as much range as some of the others rather they're small beacons you build near a docking location and designate a specific nearby connector as the dock. These would mostly use the tiny beacon since they're only helpful if you're already right near them. You would also include the orientation of the connector (Is it a bottom connecter, a top connector, a side connecter, is there a specific side you want the ship's entrance on things like that) as well as the maximum dimensions of the docking area (being able to extend different amounts in each direction like 30m X+ but only 10m X-) and the dock type, so an AI can look at your docking beacons and make a sensible choice about what to try to dock with.

This will allow you to automate which docks get used or not used by AIs docking with your station and allows a station to suggest a specific dock to you when you approach based on the dimensions of whatever ship you're piloting!

Broadcast Beacon

Broadcast beacons are one of the simplest beacon signal types other than the default, They transmit a camera signal that can be picked up by any grid in range without giving access to the rest of the transmitting grid. This allows players to transmit a message to a lot of other players on a server, as well as to allow AIs to transmit messages to players as part of story events! Not too practically useful, but fun and immersive!

And obviously the basic beacon setting, which works the same as it does currently!