Hi there, this week we return to the heroes of Planetfall. We take a close look at their ability to wield legendary items and pilot a large variety of vehicles and mounts.
The item system is very different from Age of Wonders due to the heroes’ ability to share stand-issues Modules with regular units, the new piloting abilities and the new weapons arsenal.
Stand Issue Items
Heroes share stand-issue Modules with regular units, which get unlocked through research. Additionally the Unit-unlocks in the research tree unlock an associated hero Weapon or Vehicle nearly all of the time. For example, by researching the Amazon Tyrannodon laser dino unit, you unlock the Tyrannodon mount for your heroes as well. The Kir’ko Tormented unlocks a Psi-Shotgun for your heroes.
To access mounts and weapons of other races - including that race’ vehicles and mounts - you’ll need to add one of their colonies to your empire. Absorbing a colony unlocks the ability to research the primary units, mods and ops of that race.
When a hero dies, its standard-issue mods and vehicles get destroyed, only the legendary items survive. This is both to avoid item spam as well as avoiding many incompatible items. (psi mods are ofno use to non-spi users)
Whenever you equip a weapon you carefully need to match it to your chosen modules. Just equipping a Arc-rifle might disable cool laser mods you purchased.
Legendary Items and the Item Arsenal
Legendary Hero Items are found in the field by exploring the sites of the Star Union, or by performing quests for NPC factions. To streamline item management, we introduced the Item Arsenal. Without it, it was hard to find items that matched your hero’s specialization and mods and the interface was clunky.
First, a pickup dialog clearly shows the hero items you gained with the question you want to pick them up and send them to the arsenal or sell them.
Un-equipped Hero Items are now gathered in a single empire arsenal. This makes it easy for you to compare all items at your disposal and equip it to a matching hero. Item Couriering and per-hero inventories for unequipped items are no longer a thing. When something is unequipped it goes back to the arsenal. If you ever bought a standard-issue mod and no longer use it, it can be transferred to another hero via the arsenal.
Piloting Vehicles
Vehicle items are equipped in the hero’s primary weapon slot replacing the main gun/attack, with the abilities coming from the vehicle. These include active abilities, unit type identifiers. Also the base-hit points, armor and shield values are replaced with those of the vehicle. Note that Vitality and Armor level upgrades do boost those the vehicle.
Vehicles and mounts come in very different forms. When you give your commander a vehicle perk at the start of the game, you have a choice of an initial assault or support vehicle. These vehicles vary per race (Assault bike and APC for Vanguard)
When a vehicle is destroyed, the hero escapes to an adjacent hex on combat map with with 20% of its original hit points. The Hero just has its secondary weapon equipped so you have to be very careful.
So even if a vehicle doesn’t guarantee an “extra life” for you hero in combat, the pilot path still seems pretty powerful. You might ask yourself why would you ever want to be outside of a vehicle. Well, most legendary drops are not vehicles - energy swords, psi guns, etc. Mods might be incompatible with vehicles. There are many hero upgrades that work for infantry or melee roles. And keep in mind that unit attributes (large target, mechanical) might expose the hero to new types of attacks. All paths of hero specialization are viable options.
We close off with the increasingly adventurous expressions of Michael Valentine, thanks Glenn for the screen caps:
The item system is very different from Age of Wonders due to the heroes’ ability to share stand-issues Modules with regular units, the new piloting abilities and the new weapons arsenal.
Stand Issue Items
Heroes share stand-issue Modules with regular units, which get unlocked through research. Additionally the Unit-unlocks in the research tree unlock an associated hero Weapon or Vehicle nearly all of the time. For example, by researching the Amazon Tyrannodon laser dino unit, you unlock the Tyrannodon mount for your heroes as well. The Kir’ko Tormented unlocks a Psi-Shotgun for your heroes.
To access mounts and weapons of other races - including that race’ vehicles and mounts - you’ll need to add one of their colonies to your empire. Absorbing a colony unlocks the ability to research the primary units, mods and ops of that race.
When a hero dies, its standard-issue mods and vehicles get destroyed, only the legendary items survive. This is both to avoid item spam as well as avoiding many incompatible items. (psi mods are ofno use to non-spi users)
Whenever you equip a weapon you carefully need to match it to your chosen modules. Just equipping a Arc-rifle might disable cool laser mods you purchased.
Legendary Items and the Item Arsenal
Legendary Hero Items are found in the field by exploring the sites of the Star Union, or by performing quests for NPC factions. To streamline item management, we introduced the Item Arsenal. Without it, it was hard to find items that matched your hero’s specialization and mods and the interface was clunky.
First, a pickup dialog clearly shows the hero items you gained with the question you want to pick them up and send them to the arsenal or sell them.
The Pick up interfac. While we were at it, we also updated the items popups to contain cleaner info.
Un-equipped Hero Items are now gathered in a single empire arsenal. This makes it easy for you to compare all items at your disposal and equip it to a matching hero. Item Couriering and per-hero inventories for unequipped items are no longer a thing. When something is unequipped it goes back to the arsenal. If you ever bought a standard-issue mod and no longer use it, it can be transferred to another hero via the arsenal.
The arsenal is part of the military overview tab, where we’ve also added a handy Hero Overview. You can use this to quickly navigate to heroes and see if they have unused slots and upgrade points. (pictured on the right)
Standard Issue Items - Michael has expensive tastes
Piloting Vehicles
Vehicle items are equipped in the hero’s primary weapon slot replacing the main gun/attack, with the abilities coming from the vehicle. These include active abilities, unit type identifiers. Also the base-hit points, armor and shield values are replaced with those of the vehicle. Note that Vitality and Armor level upgrades do boost those the vehicle.
Vehicles and mounts come in very different forms. When you give your commander a vehicle perk at the start of the game, you have a choice of an initial assault or support vehicle. These vehicles vary per race (Assault bike and APC for Vanguard)
When a vehicle is destroyed, the hero escapes to an adjacent hex on combat map with with 20% of its original hit points. The Hero just has its secondary weapon equipped so you have to be very careful.
So even if a vehicle doesn’t guarantee an “extra life” for you hero in combat, the pilot path still seems pretty powerful. You might ask yourself why would you ever want to be outside of a vehicle. Well, most legendary drops are not vehicles - energy swords, psi guns, etc. Mods might be incompatible with vehicles. There are many hero upgrades that work for infantry or melee roles. And keep in mind that unit attributes (large target, mechanical) might expose the hero to new types of attacks. All paths of hero specialization are viable options.
We close off with the increasingly adventurous expressions of Michael Valentine, thanks Glenn for the screen caps:
