Approaching a Paragon Dwelling with a Colonizer.​

A Paragon Quest​

An NPC Boss Army alert (Highly WIP)​

Hi there! Welcome to this week’s development update where we’ll be discussing the role of NPC factions and the all new PvE (Player V Environment) Diplomacy system in Age of Wonders: Planetfall.I’d like to emphasize the game is still in development so everything is subject to change; this diary includes some WIP interface stuff and onscreen text.As you visit the collapsed worlds of the Star Union, you’ll notice they are filled with survivors. The game recognizes the following NPC Factions. (NPC is short for Non-Primary Combatants)– Mutated descendants of the urban populations. Their society and religion were shaped by gaming culture, as the empire population was entertained extreme VR experiences. With the networks gone, they seek their thrills in the physical world.– The former governing and elite classes. They’ve survived the collapse through life extending augmentations and therapies which are now faltering. They haven’t lost their arrogance and entitlement though.– Intelligent plants escaped from biotech company Terra Tech. They strive to live in a symbiosis with other life forms, not for people with tenctaclephobia.– Robots from the emergency services that have developed their own autonomous AIs after the central network of CORE went down.– Mysterious floating aliens that have become more prevalent after the collapse.- An umbrella term for the monsters and pirates that are beyond reason and cannot be negotiated with, not a true NPC Faction.The NPC Factions are far from the sitting ducks from previous AoW games, they can’t be ignored. They might have alien savage societies, but are in the majority at the start of the game.When expanding you’ll soon run into one of more of the factions. You might decide to approach them in a friendly way, so you perform quests for them and improveand– which you can then use to ask faction armies to give up important structures for you to use. Each NPC Faction has its own set of quests and narrative flavor.If you decide to remove an army belonging to an NPC faction by force, it means war with the entire faction and a hit on your global reputation. Be careful not to start too many NPC wars as their bases and dwelling will start to spawn invading armies and your colonies might be overrun.Just as AI Players, NPC factions lay claim to unowned Sectors around their habitats. So even if you try to avoid them, conflicts of interest with your NPC neighbors will soon start to appear: if you settle in sectors next to their dwelling your relations with them will suffer.NPC factions will make demands based on their relation with you and based on the stage of the game. Small and early offenses can be made right by payments in one of the key resources. Soon demands will escalate and include demands that you hand over sectors to them. If you decline demands, relations will go further south and you are at risk of attack.As in AoW3 there are stacks garrisoned at NPC dwellings, and ones patrolling territories. This time NPC factions will also launch invasion attacks. This is associated with an event. An extreme version of NPC attack events are Boss events, extra strong armies that have named Boss characters with high level unit mods and henchmen.Each NPC Faction has at least 5 unique units, including a Tier IV as well as a set of unique Mods and Operations you can acquire from them. Depending on your relation level you can recruit NPC Units as auxiliary forces. The higher your relation, the higher the level you can recruit. This recruitment costs additional influence.The ultimate friendly goal is annexing a faction’s Dwelling to your city. These dwellings have resource yields comparable with the Golden Landmarks (the highest-level economic structures in the game), and the units of the faction are unlocked for production.This is not all, NPC interaction comes into play with PvP interaction too. You can mess with the NPC relation of other players through Covert Ops and of course they’ll play a role in achieving particular victory conditions.Thanks for reading this week's journal, looking forward to your comments!