[Taqwus]

Message beacons -- say, done as a component on a satellite. Ships approach, and it beams a message, be it perhaps useful warning ("Warning: Black Hole Ahead"), a territorial claim ("This system claimed by Century 2400 Real Estate. Trespassers will be annihilated."), silly ("For a good time, call 1-900000-5555-55555555"), or just plain obnoxious ("George Q. Bush III for Galactic Imperator: Barbara Bush was his GRAAAANDmammy.", "Vote Al Gore: So he's an android. But don't you want an immortal leader?").

Only useful in multi and for scenario authors, and would take special-case code I'd think (the only variable-length strings assignable on a per-ship basis are the ship names, IIRC, and I don't recall that space being very long), but it'd be amusing if ever done. And it'd facilitate things like leasing planets (For instance, it might be mutually advantageous for a production-heavy race to lease a research planet from a research-heavy race in exchange for resources) and other oddball commerce by allowing a "for lease" sign to be placed.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night