DIdn't saw officers yet so can't really say if it's good or not. Agreed with the rest tho.

First time we tested beacon, I've hardly expected wave hardeness scaling.

Beacons need to be a little more challenge imo.

<3

They are too new for me to fully understand but so far I like the direction.

What I don't like: (correct me if I am wrong)
This is just another item that pulls groups OFF of Beta.

What should happen:
If you take your beacon to Beta and activate it, it becomes an elite beacon with a chance of some new tier drops.  This way ones will go to Beta to use these new devises and get people ON Beta not find one on Beta and run to Alpha to play with it.

I believe that there should be SOME random spawns guarding "Something". The rest should be roaming spawns and beacons.

More NPC based events and intrusions. NPC ambushes. Anything that removes static grind but leaves it as an option.
Got to remember solo play though. Alpha should have more random spawns and less roaming spawns where beta should have few random spawns but they should be guarding something good. Then increase roaming spawns on beta that when attacked spawn reinforcements.

Couple of adjustments:

Each wave of should not get progressively (linearly) harder, this prevents solo/newer players from getting the full value from a beacon, which they may end up buying, by making the last waves unkillable. Not only that but very likely to be 'overwhelming' and killing themselves. That type of behaviour will make all but groups and corporation driven players to simply not use them.

Deployed beacons should have a fixed life, that is there power runs out after say 20 minutes.

There are no fixed number of waves, each wave deploys 30 seconds after the last bot of the previous wave is killed.

The slower you kill the bots, the less waves you can get into the 20 min beacon life. However, if you defeat 5( for example) waves then an appropriate level elite (based on the beacon stars) will spawn with the next wave, and every 5th wave after that.

Higher level beacons can have thier compositions more random, with the expectation that the combat troops are in a group.

tl;dr - Low level beacons should be more like fixed spawns with a 'boss' elite if your able to beat the timer. Higher level beacons can be more random (dangerous). This gives playability for all skill levels. There should be atleast a 25% chance to get a beacon for the next higher tier in the class, and at least a 5% chance for an officer beacon.

Getting the first beacons can be rare, but there should be a fair chance for groups to start at lowest level and get to highest level everytime if they are willing to put in the time to kill the waves.

[REDACTED] hasn't finished making the islands yet for them yet..

Im absolutely not against more roaming npcs. Just adjust speed/DPS/signal of those groups so you can avoid them in most cases. A hauling group with many lithuses for example should be defended, but not only from pvp and scarce pve on a pre-determined (and avoidable) path, but also random roaming groups, that are "randomly" moving. On the other hand a single roaming player on beta should be able to avoid "bigger" than him. That also would need a mechanism to let solo miner have some way to do their stuff on beta. Never proscribe solo play of the gameplay balancing equation, even in beta imo.

And more access to "remote spawns" aka distress beacons, wich is great for group pve because of fast access and timing. And also some "really" rewarding and challenging geographically static npc spawn. Almost all spawns can be soloed in beta, and by soloed i mean reaching respawn/destruction balance (ok,ok speed of destruction is always a factor of effectiveness, even more with group respawn, but it get somehow dissolved in respawn time).

Nice to hear that....

did you use them on alpha or beta?

I start to wonder, if the fact that they are being destroyed in a chain reaction by their peers, screws with the drop table a bit? I am talking on beta.