It will turn 20 in March 2023.

The high prices don't surprise me... its a rarity meanwhile and demand is higher than the supply.
Just like fine wine.

question is if this really is a dfm or just a head prop like a mask/helmet

Mit Cruise hinfliegen und die Gegner zerstören. Da sollte mehr als genug Zeit dafür sein.

The reputation changes done by the story are required to make the story mission work. It would not be so great if you are supposed to dock somewhere in a mission and that station is hostile and won't allow you to dock there. It also would't be cool if your mission allies start shooting at you.

The thing is I went the path of creating perfectly convex shapes prior using obj2sur and maxlancer
Since the days of the milkshape sur exporter I avoided concave shapes.
Obj2sur in the latest version even has the "yes I am sure that everythign is 100% convex"-option which I of course tried (without different results, sure the sur is smaller because there is no splicing but the lag remains)

The station models are relative complex, with negative space for docking bays etc.
To ensure everything is convex I created a simplified version of the stations which I broke down into groups of convex shapes to mimic the overall shape. That was the adviced method ever since we were able to create own surs.

Since I observed these issues with obj2sur I tried to use maxlancer and its sur builder. But even there I can observe these lag issues.
I tested multiple export methods.
In one method I imported the simplified sur model with convex geometry groups from a different program and then exported it with maxlancer
In a different try I allowed the sur builder to generate the convex hull shapes, then exported the model with the sur.
There seem to be multiple export options in maxlancer... I tested them all.
In every case I am able to reproduce the lag issue by bumping my ship into the station often enough. Depending on the method used it takes a bit longer to break the game.
I am not sure what I am overlooking right now.

The use of maxlancer was adviced to me by somebody helping me with some refresh of older 3d models but even there I noticed that his models which purely were done with the surface builder can trigger the lag issue.
So I am not entirely alone with this problem.


The BVH tree you mentioned (correct me if I am wrong) is the color coded stuff you get when enabling the hierarchy option on the sur import in maxlancer, right?
I discussed this possibility as error source with 2 other modders a few weeks ago.
If so, is there a way to fix this?
Even the surs generated by the surface builder of maxlancer have these yellow and red boxes sometimes. I am not sure how to avoid that. The one post I was able to find about that was not so clear to us.

then more info is required

It was first done with a server tool called FLshell that allowed such alternate start conditions in its settings.
I think there are FLhook plugins which can do the same.

Putting aside that this clearly is an error I have my doubts that it can explain the crash at this early point.
FL seems to load the system files at a later point.

It's pretty hard to tell what causes such a crash without further info but the vast amount of crashes at this specific point are related to savegames being no longer compatible with the modded files. It would be worth a try to rename the savegame folder and try to load the game then.