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Valenar - Location Dossier

This page owns the deep inspection surface for a selected Location. The Location dossier surfaces in three panel modes — compact, wide, and full — coordinated with the shell-level panel-mode vocabulary in gd-shell-screen-model.md.

Role​

The dossier explains why a Location matters and what the player currently knows about it.

It should gather only the world truth the player has earned so far:

  • Location facts and current knowledge state
  • nearby approaches and travel context
  • generated clues and Features
  • visible Threats
  • discovered or enterable Sites
  • place-specific activities and follow-up planning
  • linked Journal entries, lore records, or annotations when prior discovery is part of why the place matters
  • presentation-layer marker summary derived from Feature, Site, Threat, clue, and activity-availability state

Conceptual Sections​

  • Overview - terrain, topology, control, and broad strategic readability
  • Survey - knowledge depth, unknowns, survey progress, and notable signs
  • Activities - causal activities available from current Location, Feature, Threat, and Site state
  • Features - notable signs, facts, or generated content that are not yet full site entries
  • Approaches - routes, access lines, nearby ingress or egress, and dangerous approach context; hosts the route preview overlay handoff
  • Threats - pressure or hostile presence attached to the Location, Features, or Sites
  • Sites - first-class places such as mines, wards, restored ruins, and dungeon sites

These are conceptual sections, not a commitment to one exact tab or row implementation.

Panel Modes​

Compact​

Compact mode answers "what is this / what matters now?" It keeps the map visibly dominant and surfaces:

  • Location name and terrain identity
  • knowledge state (unknown / hinted / scouted / surveyed)
  • headline survival readback (water / shelter / food / fuel availability where known, without inventing specific numeric thresholds)
  • danger and corruption pressure where known
  • top three to five quick activities relevant to current Location state
  • marker summary line — a one-line count of Features, Sites, Threats, or clues currently visible at this Location
  • a "Right-click for quick activities" hint surfacing the ContextPanel entry point
  • an "Open Dossier" cue that promotes the selection to wide mode

Compact mode does not show every available activity. The full ContextPanel quick-activity menu is reached via right-click on the map; compact's top-N activities are a shortcut, not a replacement for the canonical entry point.

Wide​

Wide mode answers "what can I do / what are the consequences?" It preserves shell context (rail visible, map present) and provides deep inspection:

  • Overview tab with terrain, control, topology, claim state
  • Activities tab with available activities, their preview, queue and schedule buttons, and blocked-reason readbacks
  • Features tab with notable signs and generated content
  • Approaches tab with travel routes, access lines, and the route preview handoff (see Route Preview below)
  • Threats tab with pressure and hostile presence; explicit empty-state copy when no threats are known
  • Sites tab with discovered or enterable Sites; explicit empty-state copy when no sites are identified
  • known versus unknown facts kept legible — unknown information reads as unknown, not as empty or falsely precise

Wide mode does not fabricate site, threat, or service content. Surfaces with no real backing data display an explicit empty-state string rather than mock rows; this is the rule that retired the prior mockServices() placeholder.

Full​

Full mode answers "how do I plan, compare, manage, optimize?" Full is the Location planning board. It is not a stretched wide layout; full is a distinct component (LocationPlanningBoard in the Wave C client) with a two-row layout:

  • top row: spatial overview of the Location and its neighbourhood, plus the route preview card for any pending travel
  • bottom row: activity planning card, nearby Location comparison, camp suitability comparison grid, and a queue preview strip

Full mode surfaces:

  • Location summary headline reused from compact
  • nearby Location comparison — neighbours with quick readback of their terrain, survival readback, danger pressure, and known activity availability
  • marker stack overview — every marker currently presented at this Location, grouped by source row (Feature / Site / Threat / clue / activity hint)
  • route preview — the same overlay surface as in Approaches, expanded for planning, including travel time, stamina cost, danger per segment, nightfall risk, and known versus unknown segment shading
  • camp suitability comparison — relevant camp candidate markers and how current Location compares to neighbours
  • activity category rows — the same category labels the ContextPanel uses (Travel, Survival, Explore, Planning) presented as planning rows; the labels are presentation grouping, not a behavior taxonomy
  • queue preview strip — the activities already enqueued from this Location and the activities the player is staging
  • map-mode legend reused from the strategic shell
  • known versus unknown breakdown

Full mode reuses wide-mode tabs (Features, Approaches, Threats, Sites) inside the planning board where appropriate. Reuse does not collapse the distinction between wide and full: full owns the planning-board layout, the comparison columns, and the route preview surface in its planning form.

Marker Presentation Summary​

The Location dossier surfaces a marker summary in compact mode and a marker stack overview in full mode. Markers are presentation-layer visualizations derived from existing Location / Feature / Site / Threat / clue / activity data; they are not a new gameplay entity.

This section is summary only. The authoritative marker taxonomy, positioning rules, zoom aggregation, and priority order live in ../systems/gd-map-markers.md.

Route Preview​

The Approaches section and the full-mode planning board surface a route preview overlay before the player commits a travel activity to the queue. The overlay shows:

  • pre-enqueue route line on the map canvas
  • destination marker at the target Location
  • travel time and stamina readback
  • danger per segment
  • nightfall risk
  • known versus unknown segment shading
  • hover breakdown per segment

The route preview is a shell overlay, not a queue row. Committing the previewed route enqueues a travel activity through the canonical queue path; the preview overlay then clears.

ContextPanel Cross-Reference​

Right-clicking the Location on the map surfaces the anchored LocationContextPanel with grouped quick activities (Travel / Survival / Explore / Planning). The ContextPanel is part of the shell map interaction contract, not part of the dossier; the dossier surfaces a hint to it from compact mode and reuses the same category-label grouping in the full-mode planning board's activity rows. See gd-shell-screen-model.md § ContextPanel for the canonical behavior.

Taxonomy Rules​

  • Use site-first wording. A dungeon, mine, ruin interior, or ward location belongs in Sites once discovered or enterable.
  • Unknown dungeons can appear only as clues, Features, or threat signs until they become Sites.
  • Unknown or nonexistent content must not be shown as known rows.
  • Site wording should stay explicit about state: wild, discovered, secured, active, owned, developed, depleted, sealed, destroyed.
  • Threats stay attached to the relevant Location, Feature, or Site context; they do not replace the underlying place entry.
  • From a Site row, the player can move into related activities or the separate combat/dungeon surface without losing Location context.

Design Rules​

  • The dossier must preserve uncertainty. Unknown information should read as unknown, not as empty or falsely precise.
  • Feature, Threat, and Site sections should stay causal and world-specific.
  • The dossier should connect scouting, survey, threat handling, site exploitation, and planning without inventing content the player has not earned.
  • The dossier can link out to Journal, but it does not replace the Journal's day-based prose and annotations.
  • Compact, wide, and full are three distinct surfaces with three distinct questions. Full must never be authored as a wider-canvas copy of wide.
  • Empty states must be truthful. Surfaces with no real backing data must show explicit empty-state copy rather than mock rows or fabricated services.