Lpoint scanner and jumping

So are all player ships (tugs, SP, Patcom, ect) going to be upgradable, or are certain upgrades still going to be ship specific?

To be honest, the feature is so new we have not talked about it at all. I am still making sure we have not broken the player ships.

The little we have discussed it, the largest systems, like reactor, drives, and thrusters will not be able to change. If you want a better reactor you have to purchase a new hull.

The weapons, sensors, and jump drive can all be upgraded.

Hopefully you'll take advantage of Cambragol's (was it Cambragol's?) plan to have separate paintjobs for the different empires: then you can make minor differences between the power capacity, drive capacity, and thruster capacity of various patcoms depending on where they were built.


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Personally, however, I think every system should be swappable. Perhaps you could have a "retooling" cost for the critical systems, so you can't just swap out a drive assembly unless you're willing to pay a fortune for the labour.

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Surgeon-General's Warning: Early test cases of Torn Stars have resulted in fatalities. The errors in the software should be gone by now. Hopefully.

Ah, you just want to tuck a double power reactor into that rusty hulk, and sucker in the pirates?!

Nothing in the design prevents that from working. There are some issues because drive properties are part of the hull proper, and not the systems on the ship. Particle Systems didn't go for full physics modeling like StarShatter. And to allow reactor and heat sink swapping, you would want to add "hull space" as a factor into loadout. It is not done now, but you would be welcome to add it. We would want to get closer to a proper balance first.

It might be nice to add a time penalty to extensive repairs or major modifications. Swapping out the reactor could take a few days of work. As would rebuilding one on a ship shot into pieces. Meanwhile, your cargo is not moving and your crew is racking up a hell of a tab at the station bar....

Culled from Ship and Combat thread:

Originally posted by cambragol

Okay, I will go in and just confirm whether the lpoints are there or not. Perhaps there is a bug which is hiding them...What kind of ship are you flying while searching...and what kind of sensors does it have? Most of the hidden routes would require the level 3, 4 or 5 sensors.

Well I went back and again started a new game (Capsule Jump Deadly)- starting in (what I assume) is an Advanced Patcom with lvl5 sensors.

There are 13 possible L-Points in that system (Kronholm Alpha). 9 had no Lpoints, 2 were unknown Dangerous, 1 unstable, 1 deadly and 3 stable.

It might be prudent to increase the time limit in dangerous and deadly capsule tunnels, as I have yet to make it through one in the given time-limit of 60 sec. Unstable tunnels aren't too bad, but Dangerous and deadly have entirely too many light sources which slow down the frame-rates considerably.

Heres the breakdown of that system:

Start Game- Capsule Jump Deadly

System: - Kronholm Alpha

Advanced Patcom-
Active 5 sensors
Passive 5 sensors

possible Lpoint Scanner list:

Rochester - no lpoint
Vernons Leap - no lpoint
Okahara - no lpoint
Stibbe - no lpoint
Klepaki - no lpoint
Fukuoka - unknown: (unstable) (obstructing asteroid)
Lamar - no lpoint
Aoki - Li Po: (stable) - Watts: (stable) - Unknown: (Dangerous)
Daiglish - no lpoint
Withnail - no lpoint
Angevine - Tau Tsun (stable) - Unknown: (Deadly)
Reardon - Unknown: (Dangerous)
Mudra - no lpoint

Okay those results are exactly what you should have found. A good portion of any systems lpoints will yield no valid jump routes. However, a certain portion will, and a diligent explorer will be rewarded for searching. However, perhaps there are not enough lpoints with valid routes, or more precisely hidden lpoints opening up alternate 'secret' trade routes? I actually felt this to be the case when I originally set things up, and decided to err on the side of caution, rather than flood the Middle States with 'secret' routes.

As for the Jumps, Deadly and Dangerous. I guess years of modding this game have made me a bit better of a pilot than I thought. I can make it through the Dangerous fairly easy if I concentrate. Deadly is quite..deadly however. I have made it, but seldom.

Not sure what the verdict is on the difficulty of these routes. we need to keep in ming that the route need to be a challenge at later stages of the game, not just initially. Perhaps the consequences for failure on a jump should be reduced to allow pilots to 'practice' their piloting skills more often without fear of destroying their ships.

Anyone else have any comments on the difficulty of Dangerous and Deadly routes?