Absolutely, thanks for your thoughts.
I'll do more research on the communication - had tried looking it up but I'm late to the game and there's a lot of data to parse through, so I must have missed it. Obviously anyone who wants to boil it down quickly for me in the meantime has my eternal gratitude.
Oh, an additional question! I understand there are quite a few Elite-set books out there (in fact, I think one of the Kickstarter rewards was being allowed to write and sell one?). On the whole, are these worth the time to have? I don't necessarily mean in terms of quality of writing (I find licensed fiction to be a mixed bag but fine if you don't hold too much expectation) so much as if there's any content in there that would really expand the overall lore of the 'verse, help with understanding motivations of factions, etc.
I'm sure it's a mixed bag - if there's one or two books you'd recommend over the others, what would they be?