2026-09-10 14:01:32
Anonymous:
Outcome 57: make oxygen, packing and return readable
hold the flood/survival and loadout.md ..
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# Hold The Horde — Survival and Loadout
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**Status.** First-pass paper contract, not owner-approved balance or implementation. Limited carried oxygen, unlimited ship oxygen, shared capacity for spare oxygen/equipment/loot, carried-property return on death, full journal pause and the selected opening direction are owner decisions. All capacities, item sizes, starting parts, refill behavior and timing below are proposals.
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*A first-pass design. Limited carried oxygen, unlimited ship oxygen, shared space for equipment/air/loot, carried-property return on death, full journal pause and the selected opening direction are owner decisions. The starting kit, item sizes, refill behavior, timing and every number below remain proposed.*
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## Two spaces, one carried total
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## One trip: leave room for the impossible thing
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The **active rig area** answers what can operate now. Only parts physically installed there can receive links or act; moving a part to inactive cargo frees rig area. The **shared carrying capacity** answers what the astronaut can transport. Every active rig part, inactive part, portable canister, objective item and piece of loot occupies this total once. Installing a carried part in the rig does not charge capacity twice, and removing it from the rig does not free carrying capacity.
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Before opening the airlock, the astronaut makes a bet. Under the current paper baseline they can carry ten units. Four one-unit parts fill the four-space opening rig: **Threat Sensor → Pulse Projector** fires ordinary shots automatically, while **Manual Trigger → Barrier Plate** gives one faced manual defence. Two reusable vessels are available aboard; one ordinary-full canister costs two carrying units. Departing at **6/10 C** leaves four spaces for whatever the station reveals.
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Worn suit functions sit outside both spaces: the integral oxygen tank, navigation, journal and emergency cutter. They cannot be dropped, sold, linked into the rig or used as spare cargo space. The cutter is a deliberate close-range tool for common cutting interactions and desperate defence: it neither selects targets nor fires automatically, and using it occupies the astronaut instead of supplying a free second weapon. The proposed opening rig has two explicit paths: **Threat Sensor → Pulse Projector** supplies ordinary automatic fire, while **Manual Trigger → Barrier Plate** supplies the source-defined manual special.
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That empty space feels wasteful until Cargo Turn. A crowd spills across the isolation rack while the Projector worries at the nearest visible target and the player turns the Barrier toward the dangerous lane. Behind the crowd, a loose **Fork Relay** makes one service pulse reach two lamps. It is not a stat prize; it is the first proof that one reusable part can change both a weapon and station machinery.
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Ship refill gear and home fixtures stay aboard. Preparing with a reusable part does not consume it: the player may reclaim it before departure unless they deliberately leave it installed, which the manifest shows. No reusable home tool must be abandoned to manufacture a packing cost.
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Picking up the Fork uses one space. Freeing the two-unit isolation bridge uses two more. The astronaut can now carry the four-part rig, one canister, Fork and bridge at **9/10 C**, with one space still empty. Taking two canisters instead would have started at 8/10: the bridge could still fit, but the Fork could not come too unless the player deliberately left or dropped something. Nothing is silently discarded and no loadout is labelled sufficient.
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For one legible opening example, propose **ten carrying units (10 C)** and **four one-part rig spaces (4 A)**. The opening rig’s Threat Sensor, Pulse Projector, Manual Trigger and Barrier Plate each use proposed **1 C / 1 A**, occupying all four rig spaces and four carrying units. Ship storage begins with two refillable portable vessels; the player may carry one or both. A canister occupies proposed **2 C** whether ordinary-full, prepared-full, partial or empty; the isolation bridge occupies proposed **2 C**; the loose Fork Relay occupies proposed **1 C / 1 A** when active. None of these quantities is owner-selected or tuned.
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The oxygen display is low enough to make the next noisy stage tempting rather than obviously correct. The player can trust completed fastener work to remain, but cannot treat the route or a reserve marker as a guaranteed return margin. They turn back with the Fork and bridge. When the airlock closes, the horde noise stops, ordinary ship air is free, and the equipment becomes a new set of possibilities: trade the Fork into the four-space rig by packing another starter inactive, lend it to a home fixture, or carry it back into a station that may change after the next death. Preparation was a wager; the find changed the wager; home is the relief and the place to make the next one.
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Four occupied rig spaces make the required immediate lesson **carried versus infrastructure-installed**, but still allow optional rig experimentation. At Cargo Turn the player may move Manual Trigger to inactive cargo, fit the Fork, and try **Threat Sensor → Fork → Pulse Projector + Barrier Plate**. That branch replaces manual barrier timing with sensor-triggered behavior and costs a world-time edit; it is different, not an instant upgrade. Keeping the Fork packed preserves the later branching opportunity selected opening A allows. A fifth space would hide this active-area cost, so four remain proposed.
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## What the astronaut can carry and use
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Capacity is checked before a pickup, retrieval of an installed part or departure. An over-capacity action refuses before commitment and leaves the item visibly where it was; nothing is silently dropped. Field rig edits, pickups, deployments and oxygen transfers are world-time actions. Opening the journal pauses enemies, oxygen, readiness and action progress; it cannot finish any of them.
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The **active rig area (A)** answers what can operate now. Only a physically mounted part can receive links or act. The **shared carrying capacity (C)** answers what comes on the expedition. Active parts, inactive parts, canisters, objective objects and loot each occupy that total once. Mounting a carried part does not count it twice; moving it inactive frees A but not C.
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## Portable oxygen contract
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The current comparison uses **10 C** and an opening **4 A** rig. The four proposed starter parts cost **1 C / 1 A** each. A canister costs **2 C** whether full, partial or empty; Fork costs **1 C / 1 A** when active; the isolation bridge costs **2 C / 0 A**. [Mechanical Interfaces And Opening Quantities](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanical%20Interfaces%20And%20Opening%20Quantities) owns the complete quantity sheet and operating limits.
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The suit tank is the active breathing supply. Under the accepted first-pass quantities in [Mechanical Interfaces And Opening Quantities](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanical%20Interfaces%20And%20Opening%20Quantities), propose a **12 O** suit tank, an ordinary **8 O** canister, a bench-prepared **12 O** canister, base breathing of **1 O per 30 seconds**, and transfer of up to **3 O per 30 seconds**. A carried canister is reserve gas, not a second automatically draining tank. The player deliberately couples one canister to the suit; breathing and transfer run continuously while world time and threats continue. The display shows exact tank level, the selected canister’s exact remaining level, transfer progress and current shared capacity. A player-set reserve reference defaults to **4 O** but is never a route estimate. Coupling follows Combat Rules’ staged-action interruption contract: damage alone does not cancel it; explicit cancel, displacement out of reach, loss of the coupling, or an occupied control does. Any interruption preserves the incremental result below.
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Worn suit functions—the integral oxygen tank, navigation, journal and emergency cutter—sit outside both totals. They cannot be dropped, sold, linked into the rig or converted into spare space. The cutter is a deliberate close-range tool for cutting work and desperate defence, not a second automatic weapon.
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Transfer is conserved and incremental. It stops immediately when the suit reaches **12 O** or the selected vessel reaches **0 O**; ordinary breathing continues, and gas that could not transfer stays in its vessel. Thus starting at suit **11 O** and canister **5 O**, after 15 seconds the suit is **12 O** and the canister **3.5 O** (0.5 O breathed and 1.5 O transferred); transfer then stops, so another 15 seconds of breathing leaves suit **11.5 O** and canister **3.5 O**. If interrupted, the suit keeps only the amount already transferred and the canister keeps the remainder; neither duplicates nor vanishes. A full, partial or empty canister keeps the same carrying size because the physical vessel remains. An empty vessel can be brought home for free refill, dropped at a known place, or used by a separately authored station fixture. No general fixture use or canister consumption is assumed here.
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Capacity is checked before pickup, fixture retrieval or departure. If the object will not fit, the action refuses before commitment and leaves it visibly where it was. A deliberately dropped object stays at its recorded station location. A part installed in station infrastructure stops using C and A, works only through that fixture's visible rule and remains there until the same instance is reclaimed. Home fixtures stay aboard; under the proposed lending rule, a lent part can be reclaimed safely before departure, turning off that fixture's function rather than consuming or duplicating the part.
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Aboard the ship, the player may connect the suit tank and any canisters in storage to the ship’s unlimited oxygen supply. Refill costs no scarce oxygen, currency, charge or maintenance resource. It may be stopped and resumed, leaving an honestly shown partial fill; the safe ship context adds no expedition pressure. Before departure, the manifest distinguishes the proposed **8 O ordinary-full**, **12 O prepared-full**, exact partial and **0 O empty** states rather than replacing them with an abstract total.
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Compatible links among accessible mounted parts can be changed in the journal. The journal fully pauses enemies, oxygen, readiness and action progress. It does not perform physical work: pickup, dropping, mounting, removal, fixture use and oxygen transfer all take live world time. Ordinary weapons mostly fire themselves when their own source, target and readiness allow; the player uses manual controls for labelled specials such as Barrier, Nozzle or a stored discharge.
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[Home Projects](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Home%20Projects) also proposes **12 O bench-prepared canisters** at the same **2 C** vessel size as the **8 O ordinary fill**. Treat ordinary-full and prepared-full as distinct visible fill states. If a prepared canister is partly used, an ordinary ship refill adds only enough oxygen to reach 8 O; it never vents an above-ordinary remainder, erases it, or restores the already consumed prepared surplus. Only another completed powered-bench preparation restores 12 O prepared-full. The improved fill remains in the vessel after its relay is reclaimed and follows the same carried, dropped and interrupted lifecycle as any canister.
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## Oxygen is time, not a toll booth
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Breath and combat resources remain separate. Receiving oxygen does not heal suit condition, restore a weapon instantly, fill a Capacitor, create a trigger, reset a causal wave, refresh a barrier or power station machinery. During a field transfer, normal world time passes, so a weapon’s ordinary readiness may progress according to its own rule; the oxygen transfer did not cause that progress. Under Combat Rules’ bounded baseline, returning alive or reviving aboard restores ordinary condition for the next expedition; field healing and lasting injuries remain open. A canister affects another system only when a later authored mechanism explicitly says what is connected and what is spent.
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The suit tank is the active breathing supply. The current comparison uses a **12 O** suit tank, **8 O** ordinary-full canisters, **12 O** bench-prepared canisters, base breathing of **1 O per 30 seconds**, and transfer of up to **3 O per 30 seconds** while breathing continues. These are tuning candidates, not proven safe-route values. A canister is reserve gas, not a second tank that drains automatically.
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## Item lifecycle and return state
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To use one, the player deliberately couples it to the suit while the world continues. The display shows exact suit oxygen, the selected vessel's oxygen, transfer progress and carrying use. A player-set reserve marker defaults to **4 O**, but it is only a warning level: it never estimates the route or orders an automatic return. Damage alone does not cancel transfer. Explicit cancellation, displacement out of reach, loss of the coupling or another occupied control can interrupt it, preserving exactly what has moved.
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| State at the moment an expedition ends or an action is interrupted | Capacity / operation | Voluntary return | Ordinary or deliberate death | Interrupted action |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Worn suit tank, with any remaining oxygen | Outside carried capacity; supplies breathing | Aboard at its remaining level, then freely refillable | Aboard; already breathed oxygen stays spent, then freely refillable | Field transfer leaves the tank at the amount actually received |
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| Ordinary-full, prepared-full, partial or empty carried canister | Two proposed units; inactive until coupled; prepared fill has more usable oxygen at the same size | Comes aboard in that exact fill state | Comes aboard in that exact fill state | Transfer preserves gas already moved and gas still in the vessel; ordinary refill cannot recreate spent prepared surplus |
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| Active rig part | Uses one proposed carrying unit and one rig space; linked and operating | Comes aboard in the rig | Comes aboard in the rig | Unfinished field edit commits nothing; last completed arrangement remains |
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| Loose or inactive carried part | Uses carrying capacity, no active rig area | Comes aboard | Comes aboard | Pickup not yet completed leaves it at its source; completed pickup makes it carried |
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| Newly found carried loot or freed objective item | Uses its stated capacity once | Comes aboard | Comes aboard | Before pickup completion it remains at the source; after completion it is carried |
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| Part, canister or loot deliberately dropped | No longer carried; cannot operate unless its own rule says so | Persists at its recorded station location | Persists without duplication; death makes the old route historical and does not guarantee a convenient new route | A completed drop changes state; a cancelled drop does not |
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| Fork or other part deployed in a station fixture | No carried capacity or rig area; operates only through that fixture’s visible rule | Remains installed | Remains installed; completed station work remains | Before installation completes it stays carried; after completion it is installed |
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| Oxygen breathed or material consumed by an explicit effect | Already spent and occupies no capacity | Does not return | Does not return | Only oxygen actually breathed or material actually consumed is spent; gas transfer alone changes its container |
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| Survivor | Never cargo or a loadout object | Follows Rescue Rules | Death grants no delivery, loss or shift exception | Transfer state follows its owning rescue rule |
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One boundary example is enough to show the rule. Starting at **11 O** in the suit and **5 O** in the canister, after 15 seconds the suit reaches its 12 O ceiling: 0.5 O was breathed and 1.5 O moved, leaving 3.5 O in the vessel. Transfer stops immediately. If another 15 seconds pass, breathing lowers the suit to 11.5 O while the canister remains at 3.5 O. Gas is neither duplicated nor discarded at a ceiling, empty vessel or interruption.
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Voluntary return and death therefore use the same carried manifest. Death additionally ends the expedition at that point, starts the next trip aboard and shifts the station; deliberate death uses exactly the same rule. It gives no special refill, extraction gate, charge tax, property loss or survivor result. Completed fasteners and other completed work persist under their own rules; an unfinished stage is lost. A living return does not trigger a shift unless another future rule explicitly establishes one.
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Aboard the ship, unlimited oxygen provides free **ordinary refill** to the suit and raises a canister only as far as 8 O. Refill may stop and resume at an honestly shown partial amount. A commissioned packing bench can raise an eligible vessel to 12 O **prepared-full** without changing its 2 C size. That improved fill belongs to the vessel and remains if the lent bench part is reclaimed. If prepared gas is used, ordinary refill never recreates that four-unit surplus: below 8 O it fills to 8; above 8 O it neither vents the remainder nor tops it back to 12. Another completed bench cycle is required.
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## One opening kit, two packing choices
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Oxygen stays separate from combat resources. Transfer does not heal condition, ready a weapon, refresh a barrier, create a trigger or fill a Capacitor. World time may let an independently recovering part become ready, but the oxygen did not cause it.
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Both choices pursue the selected goal: reach Collar Control, free the isolation bridge and bring it aboard while deciding whether the loose Fork powers both the rack and patient-bay shutter.
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This pressure is useful when another thirty seconds might reveal a clue, finish a physical task or make room for a startling find. It becomes annoying busywork if the player is repeatedly coupling vessels when no real choice changes, or if exact arithmetic pretends to certify a route. Clear state, incremental conservation and free home refill are meant to keep the decision on **what is worth risking now**, not on avoiding hidden loss.
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| Departure choice | Manifest under the proposed ten-unit model | Strength | Cost exposed during extraction |
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| **Retrieval-ready** | Four active rig parts (4) + one full canister (2) = 6 used, 4 free | Reserved space for the freed bridge (2), carried Fork (1) and one unit of other loot | Less breathing reserve; the player may need to return after a completed fastener rather than attempt the noisy final stage |
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| **Air-heavy** | Four active rig parts (4) + two full canisters (4) = 8 used, 2 free | More time to observe, retreat or survive a longer route, while the bridge still fits | The Fork must stay deployed/behind unless another carried object is deliberately dropped; reclaiming that object needs a later trip whose route a death-shift may move |
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## Air, spectacle and room for discovery
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Neither loadout is labelled sufficient or superior. In the air-heavy case, deploying the Fork buys the safer shutter state and removes it from carried capacity while installed. After the bridge clears, the player may retrieve the Fork only if capacity permits, leave it powering the shutter, or drop an empty vessel at a recorded location and carry both objective items. Every uncarried object persists for possible later retrieval, but death can make the known route historical; convenient access is never promised. Death adds no confiscation.
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The opening choice above contrasts one canister and four free spaces with two canisters and only two. Later, the same trade becomes sharper because the game still allows a ridiculous build.
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Consider the same qualitative decision after two bridge fasteners are complete. The player has used part of the spare canister, the reverse breadcrumb records the outward path but cannot promise its present safety or exact oxygen cost, and the next stage is visibly noisy. **Return now:** the rig and partial canister come home, refilling is free, and both completed fasteners remain removed. **Press on:** spend more breathable reserve, trigger the horde hold and try to free the bridge; if it is freed before death, it comes home while carried, but if death interrupts removal the bridge remains in its rack and only completed fasteners persist. A deliberate death after freeing it is a legitimate return with the carried manifest, but it also causes a station shift and forfeits the current position. The decision is about time, route access, current work and capacity—not fear of an invented loot penalty.
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Under the proposed later **8 A / 10 P** ship configuration, **Ricochet Foundry** mounts Sensor, Projector, Dynamo, Capacitor, Manual Trigger and two-space Vector Nozzle for **7 C / 7 A**. Add one 2 C canister and the astronaut leaves at **9/10 C**: automatic banking discs and a manual shove are available, but only one unit remains for a discovery. A second canister would not fit without leaving a part or other object behind.
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## Uncertainties, effort and later evidence
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A lean positional kit—Sensor, Projector, Manual Trigger and Nozzle—is **5 C / 5 A** under the proposed 6 A configuration. With one canister it leaves at **7/10 C**, preserving three spaces for finds but giving up the Dynamo, stored charge and the developed disc climax. The first loadout chases spectacle; the second protects capacity. Neither promises enough oxygen, a safe route or a particular temporary upgrade. Their power, heat, flight slots and manual-command rules remain in Mechanical Interfaces.
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Still open are the true capacity model and rig geometry; alternatives or tuning to the proposed tank/canister/transfer quantities; the starting loadout; objective-item sizes; field-refill vulnerability; field healing and lasting injuries; which fixtures accept oxygen; alive-return world behavior; and the presentation of partial/prepared vessels. [Player Information](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Player%20Information) is now a preparation-closed **proposed** interface input: its continuous oxygen/capacity display, atomic pickup feedback and carried/installed labels are useful dependencies, not owner-selected rules.
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Temporary combat upgrades earned during an expedition reset whenever the astronaut returns aboard, alive or revived. That makes every trip a fresh climb toward spectacle. The physical parts and knowledge that enabled the build remain, so packing still expresses a plan rather than erasing progress.
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**First-pass planning envelope, from assignment through one focused review and this bounded response:** Systems authoring 6–10 active role-hours, Reviewer 3–5, Systems response 2–4; **11–19 role-hours total**. The 6–10 author range maps inside the Whole Game Outline’s 6–12 **author-only survival** allowance. Review and response were additions for this package, not a second copy of that allowance or of the outline’s separate coherence-review row. These are planning estimates, not logged labor; after this response, no further Systems work is implied before PM disposition.
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## What returns, and what stays behind
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**Later exhaustive SMALL-band survival specification, revised to remove duplicated UI work:** Systems authoring 16–28 role-hours, focused review 4–7 and response 2–4; **22–39 role-hours total**. Its unique deliverables are canister and capacity variants, loadout cases, mechanical pickup/refill/drop/deploy transitions, resource edge cases and cross-system rule checks. It hands those states to the information layer and explicitly excludes cue presentation, journal/manifest screen structure and accessibility equivalents.
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Voluntary return and death use the same carried manifest:
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Player Information owns that presentation inventory: **35–59 total role-hours**, plus conditional **8–14 author hours** for survivor-information states with review separate. Whole envelopes must not be added where a dependency is shared; each deliverable is counted once. The survival estimate fell from 33–56 because it duplicated UI-owned work. Both exclude implementation, assets, localisation, balance and testing; TARGET/STRETCH remain unestimated.
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- The worn suit, active rig, inactive carried parts, canisters and newly acquired carried loot come aboard once, preserving their last completed object and fill states. Oxygen already breathed and explicitly consumed material stay spent; free ship refill happens afterward.
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- A completed pickup makes the object carried. If pickup or removal was interrupted before commitment, the object remains at its source. An unfinished rig edit commits nothing, leaving the last completed arrangement.
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- A deliberately dropped object or completed infrastructure installation remains at its recorded station location without duplication. Death makes the old route historical and does not promise convenient retrieval.
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- Completed station work persists under its own rule; an unfinished stage is lost. A survivor is never cargo and follows the separate rescue rules.
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Later owner-authorised implementation and real-player observation must establish whether oxygen creates useful pressure; both packing choices are understood and viable; players distinguish rig area from capacity and breath from readiness; interruptions are legible under horde pressure; the cutter reads as a tool; and return or death creates the intended consequences. This paper contract establishes none of those outcomes.
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Death ends the expedition, wakes the astronaut aboard and shifts the station's unconnected areas. Deliberate death follows the same rule: no recovery cache, confiscation, extraction gate, charge tax or special property loss. Under the current proposal, walking home alive does not itself cause a shift. What happens to a survivor during an unfinished crossing remains unresolved.
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Home is therefore relief without being a free undo. Air is safe and ordinary condition is restored for the next expedition under the current combat baseline, but current position, any unfinished stage and every temporary combat upgrade are gone. The player keeps what they actually carried and must decide what the changed station makes possible next.
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## Open decisions
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The true capacity model, starting kit, final oxygen quantities and transfer vulnerability remain unselected. So do field healing and lasting injuries, alive-return world behavior, survivor mortality, transport and cargo delivery, and which fixtures accept oxygen. Whether stored Capacitor charge survives return or death is also open. The owner has not selected regular combat growth versus stage-only offers; this page does not invent its meter or cadence.
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These rules are written hypotheses. Only later owner-authorized implementation and real-player observation could establish whether oxygen creates excitement rather than chores, the packing choices are understood, or the relief of home lands emotionally.
