Lpoint scanner and jumping

If there are no routes you can see, then Lori would say something like "There are faint traces, but nothing we can lock in on". But if there is one route you can see, then you get a list of routes and no message.

Generally, I was in favor of "the mystery" (after all I coded it that way on purpose) until I spent a few hours trying to track down a bug that was just "the mystery" misunderstood. I think that since this whole jump idea is so new, we need to error on the side of clarity. Once people know there are hidden routes that will be revealed by better sensors, then we won't have to show so much. Since out of 4 posting testers, half failed to understand what was happening, we need to make it clearer or we will see dozens of the same bug reports.

Even a comment from Lori linked to the current system would work wonders.

When approaching a potential lpoint, Lori should pipe up and tell the player that there are no viable routes detected, as far as the current sensors can tell. If there are viable routes she should say as much. Both of these comments should come when the player is coming within range of the potential Lpoint. Then it will be clear to the player whether or not there is an lpoint present. They will also have the visual cue of the Lpoint wireframe either being there or not. If there is an Lpoint, the player hits tab and away they go.

This still doesn't cover the problem of routes invisible to the current sensors being overlooked. But perhaps the wording of Lori's comments could hint that better sensors might give a different story.

umm..ok. I still have yet to find any "weapon's seller" peddling sensor/scanner upgrades...am I missing something here?

No, they are missing. That is why the lpoint starts have corvettes prefitted with the best sensors next to the lpoints.

I am adding them into the game now. They will exist this weekend.

Is there any way to make the inventory screen a little more informative? Like maybe a short description of each componant when they are highlighted?

Sure. You will soon purchase player equipment in the loadout screen (where it normally happens on 99% of all other space sims). I will add a small html window with a description of the ship system.

Now that we are free of the old PS loadout system, we have some choices to make on how the capsule jump upgrades work. The old system did not let us add new ship systems into the game, and there were only 2 kinds of capsule drives. So we ended up using Active Sensors to detect the fainter capsule routes, because we have 5 levels of routes, and there just happen to be 5 levels of active sensors.

Cambragol always favored that the capsule drive class should dictate which jump routes you could see and take. Now we are finally free to implement that solution. So you should see new drives with the player loadout screen.

I don't promise to have written the help files yet.