2026-09-06 21:36:43
Anonymous:
CMB101 r3: PMR004 corrections. Specifies the death effect exactly - energises the connected water for two seconds, does not stun, and does not damage other organisms, so this role supplies no chain-kill rule. Withdraws the r1 open question that argued the opposite. Corrects the claim that insulation gains a new job: it is the same job it already had. Rewrites the late payoff around the bounded arc now that R10 is withdrawn.
hold the flood/enemies/spark.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Spark
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**CMB101 · r2 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — proposed role, new. Depends on [R3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) and, for its late payoff, [R10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat).**
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**CMB101 · r3 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — proposed role, new. Depends on [R3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) and, for its late payoff, [R10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat).**
Source rules it is built on: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6; shared grammar and the precedence stack: [Combat Rules](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat).
| **Trigger** | Being **killed while standing in water**. Not proximity, not a timer, not a wind-up it performs on its own |
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| **Action** | Precedence line 3 while alive: entirely ordinary, nearest reachable lit beacon, chase within pursuit range. On death in water: **the connected water is energised for one second** ([R3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)'s window — the same quantity as a coil discharge, deliberately, so the player learns one number) |
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| **Threat** | An unprotected body in energised water loses one health per second (GDD §3). From five health, that is a fifth of the player, delivered by their own weapon, in water they walked into. Killed on dry ground it does nothing at all |
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| **Action** | Precedence line 3 while alive: entirely ordinary, nearest reachable lit beacon, chase within pursuit range. On death in water: **the connected water is energised for two seconds** — shorter than a coil discharge's eight because it is one body's charge, not a full bank's |
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| **Threat** | The **surveyor**, and only the surveyor. An unprotected surveyor in energised water loses one health per second (GDD §3), so this is two of five, delivered by their own weapon, in water they walked into. Killed on dry ground it does nothing at all |
| **Hit count** | Three. No more health than anything else |
| **Conducts?** | Yes, ordinarily. It is stunned by a discharge like anything else, and a stunned Spark is not dead, so it does not discharge |
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| **Charge** | Sheds once like anything else. Its death discharge is **not** a shed and yields no motes; the energising is a hazard, not a harvest |
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| **Charge** | Sheds once like anything else: killing it drops its 1-unit mote if it has not already shed. Its death **discharge** is not a shed and yields nothing of its own |
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| **What the discharge does NOT do** | **Specified in r3, at [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004)'s request.** It does **not stun** — one body's charge is below the bank strength a stun needs. It does **not damage other organisms**: under the intensity rule in [Combat Rules §0B](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat), energised water harms the surveyor and does nothing to a body made of charge. **So this role supplies no chain-kill rule and never did**; the open question that used to propose one is withdrawn below |
## Telegraph
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| Counterplay | Cost |
| --- | --- |
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| **Wear insulation** | One rack slot, which is a bundle of cargo or a second battery not carried |
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| **Wear insulation** — the module's **existing** job, not a new one: it already protects a surveyor in energised water, whatever energised it | One rack slot, which is a bundle of cargo or a second battery not carried. **Corrected in r3:** r1 called this a second job for insulation, and PM is right that it is the same job |
| **Kill it from dry ground.** The cutter's reach crosses the channel edge; the discharge energises the water, not the bank | You are not in the channel, so you are not collecting motes and not discharging the coil |
| **Leave it alive.** Nothing makes a Spark dangerous except killing it | You cannot leave it alive, because the cutter cannot be withheld — so this counterplay is really "do not be within reach of it", which is a movement decision, continuously |
| Stun the crowd first and collect around the stunned Sparks | A stunned Spark is still alive and still lethal the moment your automatic weapon reaches it |
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- **Cutter:** the interaction. This role exists so that "the weapon aims itself" has a cost as well as a convenience, which is what the [Cutter page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter) asks Combat to supply.
- **Insulation:** promoted from a rack-management module to a field-survival module. Currently insulation's main job is stopping leakage between a battery and wet bundles; this role gives it a second job the player feels.
- **Coil:** a discharge stuns Sparks with everything else, and the stun does not kill, so a discharge does not set off a chain of them. The two systems do not fight.
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- **Arc, and the late payoff [R10]:** a Spark killed by the chain while in water energises the connected channel, and while the water is energised the chain travels **through the water** as well as body to body, reaching every conducting body the channel connects. With Sparks spread through a channel crowd, a burst re-energises the channel repeatedly across its ten seconds. That is the late-campaign crowd-clearing payoff, and it costs five separate preparations: the arc, a full battery, Sparks deliberately left alive, a crowd routed into connected water, and insulation or dry footing. **R10 is a proposal to the Lead** and the roster stands without it.
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- **Arc. Rewritten in r3.** r1 proposed [R10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat): that an arc chain would travel through the water a dying Spark energised, reaching everything the channel connects. **That is withdrawn** — PMR004 recommends the bounded chain, and its reasoning is better than mine, because a bounded chain keeps a burst a positioning decision rather than a screen-clear. Under the adopted model ([Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc)) the arc never energises water and chains to at most three additional bodies per hit, so a Spark and a burst barely interact: the burst kills Sparks like anything else, and each one it kills in water makes the channel dangerous **to the surveyor** for two seconds. That is still a real interaction — a burst fired from inside a channel with Sparks in it is a burst fired into your own feet — and it needs no new rule.
- **Field pump:** draining a channel disarms every Spark in it. A cheap, non-obvious counterplay that costs a bundle.
## Placement (for Campaign)
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## Open questions
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- **Does a Spark killed in water hurt other organisms?** My position: **yes** — energised water conducts to everything the water connects, and clause 1 does not care what a body is. Consequence: a dense crowd wading with Sparks in it is partly self-destroying, which is a nice thing for a player to *discover* rather than be told. It also means the discharge is a legitimate weapon when the player is on the bank.
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- **Does a Spark killed in water hurt other organisms? Withdrawn in r3: the answer is no.** r1 argued yes, from clause 1, and it was wrong in the way PM identified — an open question cannot be allowed to supply a chain-kill rule by inference. The intensity rule in [Combat Rules §0B](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) settles it: energised water is a hazard to the surveyor and nothing to an organism, which is made of charge. The role's job is to turn your own automatic weapon against you, and it does that without damaging anything else.
- **Does a stunned Spark killed during a stun discharge?** My position: yes. Stun prevents acting, not physics; the body is still full of charge. Flagged because a designer implementing "stunned bodies do nothing" would get this wrong.
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- **How long is the energised second, exactly?** Tied to [R3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) / open question C1, which the Lead owns. The Spark deliberately reuses whatever number the coil uses, so there is one quantity to learn rather than two.
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- **Why two seconds and not eight?** The coil's window is eight, adopted from [Equipment's Coil](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Coil). This is the one place the roster keeps a second number, and its reason is stated rather than arbitrary: a bank holds ten units, a body holds one. If the Lead prefers a single number, eight works and makes the role considerably harsher.
## Reconciliation with DES104 (added in this revision)
