Beacon

Old model Witchpoint Beacon

YAH Beacon Advertisement

Buoy Repair facility

Beacons exist in two varieties:

Electronic beacons (located inside a dockable) which merely transmit a signal in space to your scanner - which may be of limited range

Physical beacons which can help with lining up for docking, and which also send a signal of unlimited range to your scanner

The most commonly encountered (particularly in the Vanilla game) are the Station Buoy and the Witchpoint Beacon.

• The Station Buoy is a vital introduction since the Elite era, much reducing accidents during docking with the station.
• The Witchpoint beacon has revolutionised interstellar travel since the Elite era, but now gives the ever-increasing plague of pirates somewhere to find their prey in more anarchic systems.

Vanilla game Rock Hermits have no beacons and must be found by searching.

Detecting Beacons

Whilst the two beacons above can be located throughout the system (if you have an Advanced Space Compass), other beacons may have more limited ranges.

• The basic Compass in the Vanilla game detects the first only. The ASC (Advanced Space Compass) also detects the second.
• There are other OXP beacons detectable by the ASC.
• Telescope is an OXP which enables detection of beacons from a distance on one's viewscreens (F1-F4 in flight) - rather than just the compass. They show up as green dots in the sky.

Other Beacons (OXPs)

Retextures

• Commies adds propaganda beacons to Commie systems
• WPB OXP introduces an elderly beacon texture for the poorer systems.
• Your Ad Here! transmogrifies some beacons into massive advertisement hoardings.

Rock Hermits

Rock Hermit Beacons OXP adds internal electronic beacons of limited range

Rock Hermit Locator is an elderly OXP adding physical beacons of unlimited range to them.

See Rock Hermits for a couple of other OXPs which have more complex RH location techniques

Other stations

• Most OXP stations have their own electronic beacons: Click here and mouse down to the Dockables section.

See especially SothisTC and Mandotech Station & Shipyards (and the Jaguar Company secret bases).

Your beacons

• To place your own beacons to help locate things see Tracker OXP and Waypoint Here. These only work while you are still in the star system.

Other OXPs

• Buoy Repair introduces some impressive looking buoy repair facilities to your Ooniverse.
• GalCop Missions includes some minor missions involving beacons.

Lore

In between them all, the witchspace marker drifted, deactivated. Lave was indeed closed for business. Galcop had switched it off once threats had been received that any ship entering Lave via witchspace would be destroyed. No ships could witch in from Diso, Leesti, Zaonce, Orerve or Reorte without the broadcast co-ordinates from the marker. Huge queues were building in those systems as traders, wishing to jump to the Lave system found they couldn’t get clearance to travel. Due to Lave’s location and importance as a major centre of commerce on many trade routes, the result was complete pandemonium.

(Status Quo §9)

Note that this conflicts with the Vanilla game code - see Witchpoint beacons are in the core game, so they're a thing below.

Links

• Buoy
• Witchpoint
• Hyperspace / Witchspace

• Witchpoint beacons are in the core game, so they're a thing. What exactly is their purpose? Are they simply markers, or are they perhaps needed for incoming ships to lock onto - no witchpoint beacon, no inbound traffic?. BB Thread (2020).

• Why do traders/convoys make their way out through pirate-infested space-lanes to the Witchpoint beacon and then jump from there? Why not do so from the much safer aegis of the orbital station? Three attempts to answer:

(Newbie) Moving to a new system. BB Thread (2021)

Ideally Imperfect OOniverse: Calibrated Hyperspace jumps. BB Thread (2017-8)

Long gone Commander checking in,.... BB Thread (2008)