More a quality of life improvement than anything else, we can now order our mercs to explore a sector and mark items on the sector map.
Once the assignment is done (as seen in the video you will be notified) the items are circled. You will be given an approximation of the item's position. Green stands for 'on the ground but not yet found', blue stands for 'hidden in objects', red stands for 'buried item' (often of the explosive kind).
There is a modifier that determines how fast our mercs are in this task in JA2__Options.ini:
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Exploration
;
; This assignment has a merc exploring the sector for items the player does not yet know about. Once done, the approximate location
; of these items is marked on the full sector map.
; This does not reveal the items, reveal rooms, or take care of traps - it is a merely a help for the player on where they should
; go looking.
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Modifies how fast a merc explores. Higher means faster. Values in [0.01; 10.0], default 2.0.
EXPLORATION_POINTS_MODIFIER = 2.0
So for, say, AIMNAS bigmaps, one could turn that value down so the assignment takes longer. In fact AIMNAS bigmaps was the motivation for this. While there are no items on smeagol's maps yet, at some point there will be... and this might save quite a bit of time for compulsive looters
There is no 'off' switch for this feature. If the existence of this angers you... just don't use it.
This has been added to the trunk in r8815 & GameDir r2537. Using the new exe without the new GameDir is actually okay this time, but still bad practice.
[Updated on: Mon, 01 June 2020 23:46]
I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.
If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.
Just a quick thought: could you please add an option and set this exploration feature to reveal everything in the sector?
That is to say, have every under-roof titles revealed, doors/containers unlocked and opened, items/named NPCs revealed.
Might be a little unbalanced due to mercs need to do ability check to pass through locked or trapped doors/containers.
However, this will save quite a lot real life time. Re-explore a city sector especially in the early stage of game (like Drasssen) is quite boring after played so many times.
Anyway, thanks for the nice quality of life addition.
While that would be possible, that would obviously interfere with quests, so no.
I mean, if that's what you want, you might as well simply activate cheats, reveal all items and then bypass doors by teleporting your character.
I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.
If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.
I didn't realize there were cheats for revealing areas... I really would love if there were assignments for that (similar to moving items between sectors).
Exploration used to be my way of grinding mechanic skills or strength - but as I grew older my real life time became more valuable to me than slightly accelerated stat growth.
Doesn't mean I want to miss out on free first aid kits... but shouldn't it be enough to tell your Mercs "go raid all the things" - rather than watching them open all the closets?
I'm not sure story wise how this mechanic works... why would you explore enough to know "there's items in that rough area" without actually knowing what the items are?
I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to reveal roofs for all reachable areas and reveal all items that aren't locked or in unreachable rooms... but haven't looked at the code change yet, so don't know what would be involved.
-- so we can tell if the item was found already, but not if it's accessible... - but from normal inventory (i.e. discovered item, maybe through window, that's in a locked room) I know the game can calculate inaccessible items...
So I guess what I'm asking is possible. If you think exploration is valuable without revealing roofs and items then my solution would need to be an option, so people can choose to use it the "hint" way or the "actually explore" way. I'd still love the hints for locked items, that way I'd still get the XP for the unlocking... though I'd prefer that to be an assignment, too, since I often work with shitty Mercs and have wrist issues. I click very fast and with refillable Cantenes (and thus infinite Energy) there's really little point in not just kicking it over and over. I probably should turn on the "door kicking can hurt your foot" option... - but I'd love to just tell my mechanics to try and keep trying (and get XP from doing it as assignment). Even when I don't need the gear I often open stuff OCD style, but it's not actually satisfying as much as I can't stop myself from doing it.
Seems related like that's when the flag is set maybe? So since assignments are done on strategy level doesn't that mean that flag is already set then? Should be right? Or does that only save it for visible items? couldn't see anything like that in there.
Edit3: Managed to get and compile source 1.13 Build (for practice) - now I just have to actually... well code the feature I want. Might need some help along the way.
Edit4: Just finished exploring the math for how many explore points you get and at first didn't see most personality traits were commented out! I was like "Why is NONSWIMMER -0.2f !?! - most items aren't under water :D" --- then I realized they're just all copied there in case and most are commented out. Nice touch! Forgetful is really a great catch! "Oh did I search there already, can't remember... I found something good, but don't remember where "
Edit5: finally made it through the changes I linked above. I misunderstood the feature. Once you finish the exploration assignment suddenly you get all the hints, but before that none. That makes it a lot simpler to code for I guess, than trying to randomly add hints as the exploration assignment progresses.
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Might need some help along the way.