Hey everyone!
Last week I mentioned that I would give you some more information on how the strategic map interacts with the node system, which I will be doing today.
As it stands, “discovery” in the game is based solely on the player walking across the island by themselves and visually detecting interesting things (chest, ore, pirates). Once found, the player has to remember where they found it, and has to track back to that location if they want to engage with it.
While this will continue to be the case for the very early game, the new strategic map will come in once you place a military HQ. The strategic map will show you the terrain of any explored parts of the island (including the parts you’ve explored before placing the building), giving you information about where to set up defences or be wary of ambushes - where canyons can create a dangerous path or overlooking hills will provide a strategic advantage. Once placed, the military HQ will also allow you to send out scouts to help you with exploration, both to chart areas that are unknown, and to keep track of opponents on an ongoing basis.
(This image shows the current state of a partially revealed map - a little "rough around the edges", but this is how it will work in general)
Resources like trees, rocks that can be broken for stone, fruit trees, etc. are represented as icons on the map to help you get a better understanding of the land and what it has to offer. Resources that spawn randomly will also be shown in this way, e.g. fruit trees, so you will automatically see their locations if you or one of your scouts have gotten close enough (Today's main image shows an area with forest, some fruit trees, and some rocks).
A more important thing to discover, however, are the ore veins across the island. At the moment, we have rock, iron, gold, and gem veins, and finding one of them can seriously influence decisions about the location of players’ expansions, what type of goods they will produce, or where they choose to defend. Considering their importance, we wanted to not simply have the type of ore vein revealed as your scouts track across the world, but instead, scouts will only reveal that there *is* a type of mineral vein in a location. Once such a location has been marked, the player can visit the location themselves, discovering what type of vein they have found, and make a decision about what to do with it.
(This image shows a "spotted" chest between some rocks, as well as an a spot in which an unknown ore type can be found)
(The same image, with the ore vein having been revealed to be a gold vein by the commander)
Finally, there may be spawns of pirates or of chests across the world. Both of those will be revealed by scouts or soldiers, if they have direct line of sight on them (we wouldn't want to give away some of the more hidden chests simply because a scout was within 100 metres of it), or can alternatively be revealed by the commander themselves, if they look directly at it and press a key to spot the chest/pirate.
(This image shows 2 pirates having been spotted in a valley with an iron ore vein)
For chests, the location will obviously remain the same until the materials from the chest are collected. However, pirates or enemy soldiers will move around the map freely, which means that the icon on the map will only ever track the last location in which a pirate/soldier has been spotted. As a commander, it will therefore be your responsibility to make sure that the information you have is not too outdated, or to make your plans while keeping in mind that an enemy army may have moved since you last saw it.
Most of this functionality (minus the scouts) is already working in our development build, and I am thoroughly enjoying testing it - especially checking out what nodes have spawned when I see the red crosses for their locations!
Until next week!