2026-09-07 14:23:24
Anonymous:
CMB102 r12: the dependency assessment PMU008 asks for after the owner's 2026-09-07 direction. States without softening that every role on this page is a precedence exception, so the organising idea of the page is the axis the owner has just demoted - understanding enemy routing is not the central science, and enemy manipulation is the least interesting experimental focus. Recommends cutting the Grounder, whose only job is making a routing plan perishable and which r10 had already named as the first role to break if the vision changed; does not argue for it. Re-justifies the Carrier as build pressure rather than routing - punishing a hoarded bank pushes the player toward the Cascade payoff the owner wants - and promotes the Crust, twice my own first cut candidate, as the body that makes a chained combination's geometry a puzzle. Roster becomes seven with no replacement proposed, because the answer to less enemy science is fewer enemies doing science. Notes the composition cap now has a second independent reason to move, and holds R8 with the Cascade as evidence that spectacle is reachable without a damage ladder rather than as preference.
hold the flood/enemies.md ..
@@ 1,7 1,7 @@
# Hold the Flood — Enemies and Encounters
-
**CMB101 / CMB102 · r11 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.**
-
r11 makes the three corrections [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) asks of §0A, and two of them are withdrawals. **The "sheds once" claim is narrowed**: it stops re-harvesting the same body and does *not* stop a player being rewarded for repeated fresh arrivals, so the honest answer to the vision's cut condition is that **charge never leaves the district** — killing yields fuel that is discarded at extraction and is worthless unless an intervention spends it. **The "ten hits is not durability" defence is withdrawn**, and so is the placement rule that would have forbidden free bypasses. The Heavy is instead tested against the retained scene PMR009 names, where it fails as an obstruction and can only be optional fuel — **and as written it is not earning its place there.**
+
**CMB101 / CMB102 · r12 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.**
+
r12 is the dependency assessment [PMU008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) asks for after [the owner's 2026-09-07 direction](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision), in a new §0B. The owner states that **understanding enemy routing is not the game's central science and enemy manipulation is the least interesting experimental focus** — and every role on this page is a precedence exception, so **the organising idea of this page is the demoted axis.** Said without softening. **The [Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder) is recommended for cut**, exactly as r10 predicted would happen first; the [Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) and [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) are re-justified and both improve under the new direction. **The roster becomes seven and no replacement is proposed.**
## 0B. Dependency assessment after the owner's 2026-09-07 direction
+
+
[PMU008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) asks domain designers to *"explain the player value of affected systems and any broken dependency, offer a concrete revision or removal, and not defend a feature just because it is already documented."* The owner's new direction affects this page more than any other, so this is that assessment.
+
+
**The sentence that does it.** *"Hold the Flood remains a survivorlike, but **understanding enemy routing is not intended to be its central science**… Drawing enemies somewhere, distracting or tanking them can support those activities, but **enemy manipulation is the least interesting experimental focus to this owner**."*
+
+
**What that means for this page, said without softening.** Every one of the eight roles is a **precedence exception** — each is defined by how it answers, or refuses, the light. That is a roster built entirely on enemy routing, which the owner has just placed last among the things they want to experiment with. **The organising idea of this page is the demoted axis.** It is not wrong, and the crowd is explicitly retained; it is no longer the centre, and a roster designed as eight ways to be routed is over-invested in a science the owner does not want to be central.
+
+
**I predicted this pair specifically.** r10 recorded that if the vision changed what an expedition is for, *"the two roles that break first are Grounder and Carrier, because both assume a lit-branch routing game."* That is the change. Acting on it rather than waiting to be asked:
+
+
| Role | Verdict under the new direction | Reason |
+
| --- | --- | --- |
+
| **[Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)** | **Recommend cut.** | Its entire job is making a *routing plan* perishable. It has no other function: it does not threaten the player, does not feed a build, and creates nothing to discover. It is the purest piece of routing science in the roster, and it is the one the owner's sentence retires. I am not going to argue for it |
+
| **[Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier)** | **Keep — and it improves.** | It prices *hoarding charge*. Under the new direction the payoff is spending charge on a spectacular combination ([the Cascade](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Echo%20Relay)), so a role that punishes sitting on a full bank **pushes the player toward the build payoff the owner wants.** Its justification changes from routing to build pressure, and gets better |
+
| **[Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust)** | **Keep — promoted.** | It was my own first cut candidate twice. Under a design whose payoff is a chained combination, the body that a chain cannot pass through is what makes the Cascade's geometry a puzzle worth solving. It stops being a tax on greed and becomes the reason where you stand matters to a build |
+
| **[Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark)** | **Keep.** | Positioning and environmental experimentation, not routing. Your own automatic weapon floods the water you stand in; that is a thing to discover and work around |
+
| **[Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor)** | **Keep, weakened.** | Half its value was "re-routing does not clear the ground", which is a routing lesson. What survives is terrain: a reason the water you must cross is occupied, and a reliable coil target |
+
| **[Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker)** | **Keep.** | The mass. The survivorlike itself |
+
| **[Floater](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)**, **Heavy** | **Campaign's call, and both are weaker.** | The Floater is a routing role wearing water; the Heavy blocks a route, and [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) already found it not earning its place in the scene it was tested against |
+
+
**So the concrete offer is: cut one role, re-justify two, and accept that the roster is now seven.** No replacement is proposed. The owner asked for less enemy science, and the right response to that is fewer enemies doing science, not eight roles with new labels.
+
+
### What this does to the rules on the neighbouring page
+
+
- **The composition cap** (two non-Walker roles per surge) was justified by *routing* legibility — keeping the precedence stack answerable at a glance. Under a design whose payoff is a dense crowd meeting a prepared combination, **the binding constraint becomes crowd density, not role variety**, and the cap matters less than it did. I already said I would raise it if play showed four kinds were legible; **this direction is a second, independent reason to expect it to move.**
+
- **[R8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), no damage numbers, is under new pressure and I am holding it — with evidence rather than preference.** "Make a ridiculous build work" and "full screen-wipe" are exactly the requests that usually arrive as damage multipliers. **The Cascade is the counter-example: it reaches a spectacular clear by multiplying where a chain begins, and by one status interaction, with no damage value anywhere in it.** That is a demonstration that spectacle is reachable without a ladder. If it turns out not to be spectacular enough, R8 is the decision to reopen — deliberately, by the Lead.
+
- **The precedence stack itself stays**, because it is not routing science; it is the rule that makes any crowd's behaviour predictable, and a survivorlike needs that whatever its central science is.
+
+
**What I am not doing.** Not rewriting the roster's fiction to chase the new premise — [World](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery) owns the Flood's identity, and the premise is still being reviewed. Not proposing new roles. Not defending the Grounder.
+
+
---
+
## 0. Reconciliation with DES104, which landed while this was drafted
**What arrived after this role read its sources and before this revision saved:** the Lead's [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) (DES104), the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c), [Design Document r15 5f9fbb](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=5f9fbb), the critic's [REV104 r1 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882), and the Colony designer's [COL101 a1046d](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony?revision=a1046d). r1 of the six role pages and r1 of [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) were written against r14 and the r1 seed. **This section says what that changes.** It changes the name of one role and the page to cite for the rules — but the Campaign page proposes four enemy roles of its own, and two rosters is not a thing this project can afford to have.
@@ 349,6 381,7 @@
| Rev | What it did |
| --- | --- |
+
| **r12** | Dependency assessment after the owner's direction (§0B). Recorded that this page's organising idea — roles as precedence exceptions — is the axis the owner has just demoted. Recommended cutting the Grounder, the role r10 had already named as first to break; re-justified the Carrier as build pressure rather than routing, and the Crust as the thing that makes a chained combination's geometry a puzzle. Roster to seven, no replacement proposed. Noted the composition cap has a second reason to move and that R8 is held with the Cascade as evidence rather than as preference. |
| **r11** | Narrowed the "sheds once" claim after [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) showed it does not prevent rewarding repeated fresh arrivals; the real answer is that charge never leaves the district, so killing yields fuel an intervention must spend. Withdrew the "ten hits is not durability" defence and the placement rule that would have forbidden free bypasses. Tested the Heavy against the retained Exchange-doorway scene instead, and concluded it is not earning its place there as written. |
| **r10** | Ran the [Game vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision)'s decision test on all eight roles in a new §0A, unprompted, as PMU008 asks. Named the Heavy as the role closest to the cut line and proposed a placement rule to keep it honest rather than defending it in the abstract, with the Anchor merge as the alternative. Recorded which roles would break first if the vision's next pass changes what an expedition is for. |
| **r9** | Removed this page's competing presentation accounting at [PMR007 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007)'s request — §0.6 now points at [Campaign §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign), the single D025 list, rather than keeping a second version marked superseded. Cut order retained. |
