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Table of Contents
Torque Tycoon > Game Components
Rumors
A rumor is a time-limited lead to a hidden site. It provides an exact radio frequency and modulation, plus a broad direction from a named anchor airfield. It gives no coordinates or search radius and does not reveal the final site position.
Rumors reach pilots through encounters: a local at a Hub or City offers one after a landing, and the rumor leads to a site in the wider area of that Settlement.
Exploration has three server-wide slots, shared by open rumors and by mapped sites that have not been commissioned yet. A new rumor only appears while a slot is free. Ignored leads eventually lapse and free their slot; mapping a rumor passes its slot on to the mapped site, which keeps it until the site is commissioned. Cartography Institute adds one more slot. Tier 2 and Tier 3 rumors also require the appropriate regional Survey Station level.
Leads are not drawn at random. They favour gaps in the local production chain - a mapped Factory with no working supplier for one of its inputs nearby, or a working producer with no Factory in reach to take its cargo - and they arrive one at a time rather than in bursts.
Players investigate a rumor with SRS and the A/N audio signal: a steady tone marks a course line, and a Morse A or N tells you which side of it you are on. The full signal behaviour belongs to A/N Direction Finding; the flight procedure is covered by Map a Rumor.
