Yenaldlooshi
Cosmic Mongoose
Location info: At TL higher than us, I think that ought to be super simple, especially when you look at all the other advanced stuff done at spacefaring TL. Also, wouldn't the previously mentioned problem of the beam being so big on the reception end now become an advantage to help the receiver receive?The issue with relay stations is station keeping. With a radio based one it can be omni directional and it can pick up and relay any signal in range. If it is laser based, you need to know exactly where that rely station is. Coordinates are easy enough when you have plenty of trig points and/or a feature rich environment that is stationary. In free space, objects can self report their position but either party can have positional inaccuracy (and usually both). The point of lasers is their precision. For them to be useful your position information has to be equally precise.
A clever pirate will place their ship between you and the star port and being closer they can block a huge area of space (relatively). If you move so they can they and they are on the inner end of the line between you and the port.
Jamming is a massive subject and anything realistic probably won't be playable. These aren't the droids you are looking for.
The highest effect on opposed check determines who wins. The effect of the winning check determines the level of success. By forcing a raised difficulty you reduce the level of success for the winner. So they only just manage to defeat your jamming and they only manage to get a garbled signal through, or you succeed with such a high positive effect that you manage to jam them without swamping their band and therefore don't tip off third parties that jamming is even going on.
Blocking the beam: Said pirate would need to have piggy backed on that locational info to find the right place to block such a beam, also they would have to have help because if they close range with the target, they will not be blocking the beam as much and the beam will spill around them since it is so wide at that point.
Opposed checks with raised difficulty: I take your point and I realized that as I saw it with the opposed roll for a grapple. You have your effect, they have theirs and the one that has the best effect not only will win the grapple to do a grapple action but they can also add the effect of their roll to any damage they might cause based on what grapple action they chose.
Jamming RAW does not state any special benefit of a higher effect other than you beat your opponent or you don't. Same with Target Lock and sensors. You either lock your target or you don't. You don't get a "extra special target lock" because you won with a 6+. It's fine if you are a referee who adds colorful narrative or likes to give special benefits based on the different degree of effect, but that is house rules for these rolls as a descriptive result due to effect level is not specified beyond win/lose.
So where effect does not matter beyond did you beat the other guy, Difficulty is meaningless. If you want to make it harder on one of them, then you need to assign asymmetric difficulties. Moreover, if you did go with Laser or Maser jamming, which is in core, then why oh why would you say it is difficult or formidable for the defending player who has these comms to roll against? Shouldn't the only extra difficulty really be for the ship that is up against this tech?