Speaking of away teams, being able to lock on to an astronaut and beaming him aboard would be pretty cool.
Here's my idea: give an astronaut a device that saves a specific transporter's frequency, then allows the astronaut to beam back at will from a certain range. To prevent making escape TOO easy, have a charge-up time on the device that works like so:
- Click and hold to charge.
- When fully charged, transport initiates automatically.
- Being shot or releasing the mouse button will reset the charge.
- Being within the box dims of a hostile ship that has shields up increases charge-up time.
You can't walk around with it charged and you can't really beam out of a fight. It's a simple return device, not really an escape (unless you can hide in a closet for long enough).
This feature could cause serious problems/angry teammates if it drops the shields of the ship you're beaming back to, so I don't think that should happen.