To me they seem almost like a mandatory thing to have early on. As long as it's unclear how search radii are defined without beacons, could they maybe cost wood instead of metal?
The Beacons are already a very easy crafting recepie.
It is easy to skip the wood tools and crude workerbots and make iron and basic bots in five to ten min max. So Beacons are very easy. And as a note, the center without a beacon is, exact that square wehre you creat the Codeblock in purple, that can then bound to a beacon, if not, that Point is the Center.
