Today's sync brings some backend changes to the Combat Core engine and related utilties. The vast majority of the changes are focused on smoothing the way for future changes and are transparent from a player perspective. There are, however, a few items of note:

• Hostile NPCs can be commanded to Guard a room, and will open fire as soon as someone enters the room. This is not yet deployed as part of bandit hunting, because bandits do not spawn inside. Just a heads-up for future Quest-based content.
• Lightsabers will now take a Force-aware individual's Lightsaber Combat skill into consideration. The skill is considered as part of a weighted average that also includes the individual's Non-Projectile Weapon (NPW) skill. You may see a small increase in damage output depending on your skill levels. Lightsaber wielders who are not Force-aware continue to use NPW/2 as the weapon skill.
• Part of the changes to the Combat Core breaks Combat-related Hooks. This only affects Admin LISP scripts, and we have made every attempt to update them accordingly. If you encounter an error with a Quest or with Warsim, please contact Baugrems.

In addition, there are some minor tweaks to Production.

• Ships and Vehicles will record the Builder (Commander of the Factory or Shipyard) at the end of production, and this information will be displayed in the detailed stats page. This is applicable for all production which finishes after the sync, regardless of when it was started.
• Shipyards now have the option to force construction to occur outside regardless of ship length. Certain ships, such as the Goji, would normally be produced inside a Shipyard 1 but are too large to fit inside. This option allows these sorts of ships to be built outside of a Shipyard 1 even if they are shorter than 80 meters in length.

Also, the Squad page will now show the location of your Squads without making you click through to inventory to see them!

As always, feel free to check out the Development Projects tracker on your right-side Technical Menu for the latest projected status on new features.

EDIT: The NPW/LSC equation is not published at the moment will be on the rules page after the next sync. It is a weighted average of your NPW and LSC skills. You basically need a 5 in both to get an effective 5. Pretty much any other combination gets you a lower effective lightsaber skill. That effective number then gets halved and mushed around in the combat code and out comes damage, which at the end of the day is all that matters.