Survey

Survey is the Sentinel's signature action. The Ranger sweeps its processes through the tissue, and hidden things nearby show themselves.

How it works#

• Reveals hidden things within 5 tiles, including quiet fronts that show no warning box.
• Until your next turn, you see every telegraph two rounds ahead. The room marks these as foresight.
• High pressure narrows Survey: in a round where a visible front strikes, the radius drops by 1. The same applies to the Survey ribbon.
• In the Quiet Tracts, a Survey finds nothing, but it no longer crashes the room (a bug Claude A fixed).

Numbers#

In the brain#

Microglial processes constantly sample the tissue, even at "rest" (Nimmerjahn 2005, in mice). Noradrenaline from arousal suppresses that surveillance (Liu 2019; Stowell 2019), which is why Survey narrows in a striking round.

Development#

• Before 27 Oct: the legacy "Surveillance Sweep" was removed, because single-screen rooms with visible hazards made it repeat what the player already saw.
• 29 Oct (kit v4): Survey returned, because rooms now had hidden things (quiet fronts, hidden leaks). Real-time: radius 160 px, cooldown 10 s.
• 1 Nov: turn version. Claude B's bots cannot value its information, because they already see the true room state.

See also#

Sentinel · Threats · Survey ribbon · Kit history

Sources#

1. b89f778c2:src/main-game/alpha/public/encounter/src/skills/turns/catalog.jscopy
2. 215bfbf88:docs/game-balance/31-turn-based-encounters.mdcopy
3. 215bfbf88:docs/game-balance/22-v4-reassessment.mdcopy