This is a minor suggestion, but one I felt worth making. What about implementing Message Buoys? They could programmed with messages (single sentence, multi-sentence broadcast, etcetera); there could be variables on receiving (range-based or hail-only, for example) and similar things.

The instant problem I see is abuse; spamming large numbers of message buoys into an area, which'd hit performance both for graphics and number-of-objects on the server (which I only assume is a potential problem). My suggestion for this would be to assign any buoy a "battery life" (possibly longer for more expensive buoys?...), and/or also make them targetable/destroyable, and/or have NPC ships "eat" them as if they were hostile ships or resources...

Anyway. I think it has possiblities.

I like it. Reminds me of the "death buoys" in Descent 2. Maybe make it so a player can only place one buoy at a time..

This would open the door to new items like sensor buoys, nav buoys, jammers, jump inhibitors, etc. The mine launcher would be the perfect starting place to get some non-weapon deployable items.

A good way to prevent abuse is to balance it with a vulnerability, like the buoys being vulnerable or having limited life, like you mentioned. They'd be small and therefore hard to hit from a distance, but with around 200 hp, any energy weapon hit would take it out. And we already get sectors full of cargo crates, so the object count shouldn't be a huge factor most of the time (as long as they expire after some time).

I'd forgotten about the cargo crates... Yeah, maybe it'd be less of a performance problem than I thought. :)