Beacon Network – Node Types

Original Progenitor Beacons

• Form Factor: ~15 m × 35 m cylinder — dense, elegant, and almost featureless from the outside.
• Performance: 100% baseline throughput. Consistent, near-instant routing in dense lanes.
• Core Components:
  • Singularity Core — unknown exotic construct generating the FTL propagation effect.
  • Phase Seed Array — controls link formation and hop alignment.
• Durability: Designed to last tens of thousands of years with minimal maintenance.
• Placement: Often in deep, stable orbits or Lagrange points, sometimes anchored inside protective stations.
• Control AI: Fully autonomous and capable of high-precision navigation support — including autolanding for city-class vessels.

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Salvaged / Rebuilt Beacons

• Form Factor: ~50 m × 250 m — roughly 40× the volume of an original due to extensive scaffolding, oversized field stabilizers, and protective armor.
• Performance: ~10% throughput of an original; slower routing and fewer parallel channels.
• Core Fragment: Contains a functional but incomplete singularity core recovered from a destroyed or degraded original.
• Reason for Size:
  • Missing Progenitor subassemblies replaced with bulky modern substitutes.
  • Housing includes large crew access areas, redundant power, and active debris defense systems.
• Service Life: 5,000–20,000 years if maintained and sheltered from major impacts.
• Failure Modes:
  • Cumulative kinetic damage from micrometeors and orbital debris.
  • Rare catastrophic strikes from large asteroids or deliberate attack.
  • Over thousands of years, outer shielding erodes and signal handling modules degrade.
• Placement Strategy: Often installed in slower, low-priority corridors or as replacements in previously “dark” regions. Usually set in sheltered orbits with debris mitigation measures.
• Navigation Aids: Limited — enough for hazard mapping and basic traffic control, but insufficient for precision autoland of massive craft.

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Strategic & Cultural Implications

• Patchwork Mesh: The galaxy’s comms map has lanes that have been slow for thousands of years, shaping trade and political borders.
• High-Value Assets: Even a 10% salvaged node can reconnect entire regions to the network, making them worth enormous diplomatic and military effort to defend.
• Corridor Politics: Factions vie for access to intact originals for faster travel; control of even one node can shift regional power.
• Maintenance Culture: Skilled crews who can keep salvaged units running are respected specialists, often serving neutral guilds or corporate coalitions.
• Archaeological Gold: Even damaged components of a destroyed beacon are priceless for study or reuse.

Beacon Network – Message Times (Updated)

Assumptions: Distributed nodal mesh with fast trunks and slow spokes. Times are typical 1-way (“ping”) and round-trip (RTT) under normal load; expect jitter.

Route	Corridor Class	1-Way Time	RTT	Effective Speed
Earth ↔ Lunar Node	Trunk (dense)	0.01–0.05 s	0.02–0.10 s	500–2,500c
Earth ↔ GEO / Lagrange Subnodes	Trunk	0.02–0.10 s	0.04–0.20 s	250–1,250c
Earth ↔ Mars Orbit	Trunk	~0.5 s	~1.0 s	~1,440c
Earth ↔ Jupiter Orbit	Trunk	~6 s	~12 s	~480c
Earth ↔ Neptune Orbit	Trunk/Mixed	15–30 s	30–60 s	480–960c
Earth ↔ Kuiper Belt (avg)	Mixed	20–40 s	40–80 s	600–1,200c
Earth ↔ Barnard’s Star (~4.25 ly)	Trunk (healthy)	~5 days	~10 days	~310c
Earth ↔ Alpha Centauri (~4.37 ly)	Trunk (healthy)	~5.15 days	~10.3 days	~310c
Earth ↔ 10 ly (good trunk)	Trunk	~11.8 days	~23.6 days	~310c
Earth ↔ 10 ly (degraded lane)	Slow/Degraded	18–46 days	36–92 days	~200–80c
Earth ↔ Alphecca / α CrB (~75 ly)	Sparse/Slow	~138 days	~276 days	~198c
Earth ↔ Galactic Center (~26k ly) – Direct	Sparse	~520 years	~1,040 years	~50c
Earth ↔ Galactic Center (~26k ly) – Optimized bounce	Multi-trunk	~130 years	~260 years	~200c

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Corridor Classes

• Trunk (dense): Intact original beacons, low jitter, high capacity. ~300–400c interstellar, 400–1500c intra-system.
• Mixed: Originals + salvaged, occasional bottlenecks. ~150–300c long-haul.
• Sparse/Slow: Few originals, salvage-heavy, longer hops. ~50–200c.
• Dark: No viable route or intentionally disabled.

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This makes the Galactic Core interesting strategically:

• Direct link is slow (good for archival or low-priority traffic).
• Indirect link is 4× faster if you can get priority passage through multiple high-demand trunks.

• Green = dense, high-speed trunks
• Gold = mixed-speed bounce routes
• Red = sparse/slow corridors