Spawn Beacon

The Spawn Beacon is a unique deployable available to all players. It is unlocked by default.

Spawn beacons are automatically placed into the player's inventory upon joining a Squad with two or more members, though may require a resupply or respawn to do so. It is immediately lost upon the player leaving the squad or the player becoming the last member of their squad.

When placed, a spawn beacon emits a long faction-colored laser skywards, and presents itself as a spawn option to all members of the player's squad regardless of their location. Squadmates who spawn on the beacon will appear several hundred meters above it in a Drop Pod, offset in a random direction by a few meters.

The beacon must have direct line-of-sight to the sky above to be placed, and only one beacon can exist per time per squad. All members can place a beacon, however placing a beacon will immediately destroy any previously placed beacons in that squad, and each player has a 300 second cooldown before they can replace their beacon. If a player's squad is changed, such as by a platoon leader moving them between two squads within a platoon, any beacons they have placed will be destroyed.

Squad beacons can be destroyed quickly by most sorts of damage, having only approximately 500 health. Common explosive damage can damage and destroy spawn beacons, and EMP Grenades will immediately destroy all beacons in a large radius of the pulse.

Squad Leaders
Squad Leaders have access to the same squad beacon as their squad members. However, they have also have the ability to restrict beacon access within their squad.

Squad leaders can disable the ability for either the entire squad besides themselves, or for members of specific fireteams to use beacons. If player is under a division with disabled beacon access, they will not have a spawn beacon placed into their inventory. If they already have one, it will be unusable and removed upon the next respawn or resupply.

Certification
"A signal-emitting beacon that allows squad members to drop pod into an area from low orbit."

History

 * Game Update Number 9 (May 23, 2013)
 * Fixed the Spawn Beacon timer bug that was causing it to reset every 5 seconds.
 * Performance Update Number 2 (December 17, 2013)
 * Spawn Beacons can no longer be placed inside facility walls
 * Fixed an issue with Spawn Beacon animation
 * August 5, 2014 Update
 * Bug Fixes
 * Explosives/Spawn Beacon cannot be destroyed if deployed over water areas
 * Squad beacon cooldown timer is incorrect if squad member respawns with squad deploy.
 * August 11, 2014 Hotfix
 * Squad Beacon timer set back to intended refresh
 * August 29, 2014 Update
 * Fixed Spawn Beacon timer reduction certifications not applying to the squad leader.
 * Fixed Spawn Beacon timer resetting for the squad leader when other squad members spawn on the beacon.
 * October 2, 2014 Update
 * Bug Fixes
 * Squad Deploy no longer spawns players on the squad beacon.
 * Squad Leader: Newly appointed squad leaders do not have a spawn beacon until they resupply.
 * May 19, 2015 Hotfix
 * Known Issues:
 * Squad Beacon erroneously requires resupplying
 * May 21, 2015 Hotfix
 * Fixed Squad Beacon resupply issue.
 * June 17, 2015 Update
 * Spawn beacons will now be range based, initial distance is set at 600 meters.
 * Known Issues:
 * Spawn Beacons are not a valid “Spawn on Squad” option; this means that players will not be able to spawn on a beacon unless they are within the 600 meters range even if the majority of their squad members are near the beacon.
 * July 23, 2015 Update
 * Squad Beacons near the majority of squads members will be squad spawn options regardless of range.
 * Beacon spawn range changed from 600 meters to 1,000 meters.
 * March 2, 2016 Update
 * Fix for squad beacon not showing up on map/minimap.
 * April 27, 2016 Update (Construction System Update)
 * HUD loadout UI polish and update: equipment slots with timers on them ( e.g. squad beacon ) now persist on the HUD until the timer is complete.
 * June 1, 2016 Update
 * Fixed a bug that was causing various objects, e.g. spawn beacon and motion spotters, not to appear on the map/minimap.
 * Fixed a bug that would cause Galaxy spawns not to appear on the re-spawn list when a Spawn Beacon was active.
 * October 24, 2016 Update
 * Players should now always be able to spawn into squad-owned vehicles, even if there is an active squad beacon in the same region.
 * November 20, 2017 Update (Fifth Anniversary of PlanetSide 2)
 * The 1000m squad beacon respawn limitation has been removed.
 * April 5, 2018 Update (Advanced Specialization Update)
 * Using " " will create a squad for you. You currently have access to Squad Beacons, but they will not work correctly until you have more than one person in your squad.
 * August 15, 2018 Update (Fanning the Fire-teams)
 * Squad Leaders can now toggle on or off Squad Beacon privileges.
 * Fireteam leaders (the uppermost player within a fireteam list) now have the ability to place beacons and waypoints.
 * Fireteam beacon privileges can be enabled and disabled by the squad leader.
 * August 23, 2018 Hotfix
 * We've embraced beacon access for all players as a feature. In the next update we'd like to have Fireteam locking which will make controlling this feature a bit more intuitive.
 * Known Issues:
 * Squad Leaders within a platoon can seemingly adjust Beacon access of other squads. This is only a visual bug, however.
 * May 3, 2019 Hotfix
 * Spawn Beacons, Routers, and Elysium Spawn Tube now use their original respawn timers. We will look to tune this at a later date.
 * May 14, 2019 Hotfix
 * Spawn System
 * Priority 2
 * Now includes Spawn Beacons.
 * Dev Note: This moves spawn beacons to a 15 second cooldown spawn location. This is a major buff for spawn beacons, and somewhat devalues squad spawnable vehicles, so we'll continue to tune this change as necessary.
 * May 30, 2019 Update (Combat Intensifies)
 * Spawn Beacon cooldown skill line has been refunded, as squad beacon respawns have been standardized with the new spawn system.
 * Spawn Beacons are no longer placeable as a solo player (though you've never been able to spawn on them).
 * June 6, 2019 Update
 * The Spawn Beacon certification line is now properly refunded, this change failed to make it into the last update.
 * Spawn Beacon cooldown now remains on a priority 2 cooldown when it was the last spawn point used, instead of providing a near-instant cooldown for subsequent respawns.
 * February 9, 2021 Update (Outfit Wars Returns)
 * Spawn Beacon has received updated visuals.