Lpoint scanner and jumping

Here is how it was meant to work:

Capsule jumps come in 5 levels
Stable
Weak
Unstable
Dangerous
Deadly

To find the less stable routes, you need better active sensors. The tug starts with level 1 sensors and can see Stable routes only. The Corvette has level 5 sensors and can see Deadly routes. You must be able to see a route to take the route. So a ship with level 1 sensors can only take Stable routes, and this is most commercial shipping.

There are 2 Capsule drives. Commercial and Military. The drive only matters if you crash while jumping. If you do crash, the damage your ship takes depends on the level between your drive and the route. What this means is that taking deadly routes using a commercial drive is suicide, unless you are a perfect pilot.

Only Lpoints with stable routes are on the Star Charts. Other Lpoints are hidden. The Lpoint scanner shows you where an uncharted lpoint might be located. If the lpoint has no routes, there will be nothing there. If the lpoint has routes, but you don't have good enough sensors, you won't be able to take the route.


I think a needed improvement is to have Lori tell you that there are routes, but you don't have the sensors to take them. That lets you know what is there, and tells you what you need to upgrade.

Does this help clear things up? What else would help make the system more understandable?

AHA! Now I get it *laughs head off* No wonder I couldn't get it to work. Yet when I did the mining start it frustratingly worked fine. I hadn't realized that the sensor level determined what jumps you could see and that if you didn't have enough sensors the lpoint would appear "dead" and not working.

"Better to die now with honor, than to live with shame."

Good deal! If you come up with some ideas on how to make it clear from the beginning, let me know.

I think we need a few more pieces of fiction that illustrate the concepts. Especially one that explains about using the Lpoint scanner to take routes around tolls and pirates. No one reads manuals, but the stories seem popular!

I still think using Lori in some way, via dialogue, could be cool. I really enjoy the interface for entering Lpoints etc. And simulation of the crew adds to the simulation of the ship in my view. There would be the problem of awfully long lists of moons in some systems, but perhaps we could find some fancy way to mediate that.

An idea where to get these different lvl scanners would be helpful.

agreed.