Glad you're having a good time. Boosters are a good way to cut down on travel time along with a hardware option mid-late game. We have a fix in the upcoming patch that addresses the destroy/detonate issue you're seeing.
There should be no limit to how far a linked beacon can be however pirate regions will disrupt them. So you options are to path around them using cloaked beacons (early game research required) or by destroying the pirate beacon and removing the pirate region.
We appreciate you taking the time to comment and report these issues. Cheers!