Relay Stations are an important component of Otherlight Communication Networks. Their primary role is to push transmissions deeper into Otherlight, thereby increasing the speed of communication when sending messages across deep space. In this way, they act as the spinal ‘motorway’ of a network, performing the long-haul leg of a journey before Receiver Buoys take over for the final, local stint of the transmission.
Older relay stations work by monitoring one or more pre-meditated frequencies and injecting high-energy bursts immediately before and after each passing communication, forcing it deeper into Otherlight. The final relay a message will pass performs the same process but with different encoding to instead pull it shallower, so it can be read by the receiver buoy.
More advanced relay stations are often designed to enable greater network flexibility, gaining the additional capability to forward, redirect, and directly address incoming messages. This lets ships with high-powered communicators bypass receiver buoys, speeding up communications by solely using the deeper-level parts of the network. However, it also requires a much more complex station: instead of just monitoring frequencies, it must receive, process, and re-transmit incoming messages, a slower and more energy-intensive process.
Deep-space relays therefore tend to use the older design even when newly-built, with this type of relay now colloquially referred to as a ‘booster’.