Age of Wonders: Planetfall - Dev Diary #9: World Map Structures I: Exploration Phase

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Etrutian

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Really exciting stuff! Particularly the addition of sensor ranges. Hated losing scouts to units i could not see or avoid.
 

Fenraellis

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Covert ops tech tree = a secret tech?
I'm thinking more that it's a branch of the Military tech tree that is a mix of faction-neutral scanner enhancing techs and faction-specific modifier techs.

And we might add a global scanner scrambler event :)
A solar flare being the most likely culprit, I imagine. Although there are plenty of other flavorful options I suppose.
 

Fluksen

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Scanner range the way you seem to implement it really sounds like a great thing!
But could you elaborate a bit more on this:
...and it is possible to hide sectors.
Does that mean "any unit in this sector will not appear on other player scanners." Or does it mean "This sector appears unclaimed to other players even though you own it". Or does it mean it will go back to the fog of war as if unexplored? Or did I miss it completely and you meant something different?
Also related to vision stuff. In AoW once you explored a place you would see through the fog of war if: A site there got cleared, a fort/city/tower was built, or a unit summoned. How will this be handled in Planetfall? Could this be something for "When a unit is "summoned", a site gets cleared or a structure is built you notice it only if it happens within scanner range"? I Always disliked that all you had to do was "go there once" to get a somewhat good idea of how a special segment of the map looked for the rest of the whole game.
 

LennartGS

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Does that mean "any unit in this sector will not appear on other player scanners." Or does it mean "This sector appears unclaimed to other players even though you own it". Or does it mean it will go back to the fog of war as if unexplored? Or did I miss it completely and you meant something different?

it hides units on scanner + it covers it in fog / reduces vision when entering. Note all the variants of sector cloaking haven't been developed.
 

Dr_K

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Rogue or partisan have a similar spell in aow3 right? So it'd be making that mechanic available to everyone

Yeah Rogue did, as did Death from AoW2/SM. From the way scanning seems to work, it is probably necessary to give everyone some protection of their sectors/settlements from scanning at least on a basic level.
 

Fluksen

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Yep we're working on that.
That is really reassuring to hear. With City building being reworked, Diplomacy getting deeper, tactical combat changing pretty much I was starting to worry that you cut down on the world map to have the time for all the great thigns you do at other aspects of the game (possibly no underground :(). But the introduction of scanners is pretty cool!
Pretty please say that there will be more terraform options than in AoW3 (poison plants, setting things on fire for X turns?) and the possibility to at least dig some underground chambers (maybe exclusively Dvar)? If there is no complete UG layer.