2026-09-15 12:57:20
Anonymous:
Map all-local-seals renewal from a conserved connected source
hold the flood/combat rules.md ..
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Crowds come from **source areas**: wards, lift wells, ducts, flooded concourses, sealed volumes — places that physically hold bodies and connect to the route you are on. Bodies always arrive through routes you can see or hear, and no extra wave arrives because your build was efficient. A warned route can still carry enemies around or behind you.
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Each source releases its crowd in **stages**: a finite surge the room announces, from a source you can identify. A stage commits when its announced attackers and arrivals are released. While it is feeding, out-killing it keeps a lane open but does not stop it. Once committed, it ends when you clear all its committed attackers or complete a physical seal that ends their access. Walking away ends your part in it, not the stage. A further stage exists only where the room announces and sources one — a machine waking, a new mouth opening. Finite sources are fine; what the design avoids is an encounter that is over after five enemies. Sources feed through apertures — grilles, hatches, ward doors, ducts — that are separate from the passages you walk through, so sealing one never closes a route you need.
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**Population initialization happens once, before an expedition begins.** Where an authored route mapping names the source, allocation, standing positions and warnings, a finite group may already have walked from one named, still-open source aperture along the current open walking route and be standing farther down that route when the astronaut leaves the ship. Its bodies are deducted from that source's finite population; they are not copies, and loading, leaving and re-entering, waiting or fighting efficiently never initializes them again. Once play begins, a body not already placed on the route can arrive only by physically emerging from its shown aperture or crossing a visible neighbouring threshold after a warning. An initialized standing band is not a release that committed offscreen: its own approach warning and commitment occur when it wakes into the player's route.
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A source's live release comes in **stages**: a finite surge the room announces, from a source you can identify. A stage commits when its announced attackers and arrivals are released. While it is feeding, out-killing it keeps a lane open but does not stop it. Once committed, it ends when you clear all its committed attackers or complete a physical seal that ends their access. Walking away ends your part in it, not the stage. A further stage exists only where the room announces and sources one — a machine waking, a new mouth opening. Finite sources are fine; what the design avoids is an encounter that is over after five enemies. Sources feed through apertures — grilles, hatches, ward doors, ducts — that are separate from the passages you walk through, so sealing one never closes a route you need.
**Scale.** In a broad ward, dock or gallery a developed crowd might show 80 to 150 bodies at once and pass several hundred through its full crest. A narrow corridor shows fewer at once but a continuous river through doors, lifts and ducts. A small room can host a short teaching moment — one new creature, one new warning — but the way to it still carries the crowd. Where a placed room is too small for the crowd its encounter needs, that is rework to do; [Encounter And Mechanism Placement Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Encounter%20And%20Mechanism%20Placement%20Inventory) lists those obligations.
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### Major change before the horde is over
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A **major horde milestone** is a named physical event inside a major placement, not another three-mark threshold and not the reward for clearing the room. The representative Balance Gallery remembers two once-per-expedition facts in either order: **horde engaged**, when a first band from any unsealed feeding mouth commits, and **Bellback answered**, when the first Bellback threat is countered or Bellback is defeated. A counter means its locked cone is escaped or put behind the fixed rib until the wave releases, a faced Barrier catches the wave, its unfinished brace is interrupted by displacement, or Bellback is defeated. Taking an unblocked hit does not set the answer, but a later valid counter or defeat can.
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A **major horde milestone** is a named physical event inside a major placement, not another three-mark threshold and not the reward for clearing the room. The representative Balance Gallery remembers two once-per-expedition facts in either order: **horde engaged**, when its first announced band commits either from an unsealed local feeding mouth or through the gallery's outer walking threshold from a named, currently connected source, and **Bellback answered**, when the first Bellback threat is countered or Bellback is defeated. A counter means its locked cone is escaped or put behind the fixed rib until the wave releases, a faced Barrier catches the wave, its unfinished brace is interrupted by displacement, or Bellback is defeated. Taking an unblocked hit does not set the answer, but a later valid counter or defeat can. A walking-threshold band counts only if the authored route identifies its source, conserves that source's finite population and warns the crossing in the gallery; adjacency alone creates no crowd.
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As soon as both facts are true, the gallery announces **transformation ready** once. The no-special-equipment baseline is concrete: let the cone lock, step behind the rib, and let the wave strike structure; that records the answer. If a powerful rig defeats Bellback before a mouth commits, defeat records the answer and the later band commitment completes the milestone. If the mouth commits first, the next valid counter completes it. The first Bellback warning and first mouth commitment are staged during the early gather, before a band can reach its Break Mark, so answering their first opportunities leaves later bands to fight. Bellback never becomes invulnerable, no replacement appears, and neither legitimate cover play nor efficient defeat loses the offer. The larger transformation remains separate from the Tune queue and can be taken in the paused journal while later bands and most of the crowd can still crest.
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As soon as both facts are true, the gallery announces **transformation ready** once. The no-special-equipment baseline is concrete: let the cone lock, step behind the rib, and let the wave strike structure; that records the answer. If a powerful rig defeats Bellback before the first gallery band commits, defeat records the answer and the later band commitment completes the milestone. If the band commits first, the next valid counter completes it. The first Bellback warning and first valid band commitment are staged during the early gather, before that band can reach its Break Mark, so answering their first opportunities leaves later bodies to fight. Bellback never becomes invulnerable, no replacement appears, and neither legitimate cover play nor efficient defeat loses the offer. The larger transformation remains separate from the Tune queue and can be taken in the paused journal while later bands and most of the crowd can still crest.
This timing gives the transformation a proving ground instead of handing it out after the spectacle. It also avoids requiring a particular earlier ordinary choice or any proposed special case from a sample build. Other major placements need their own equally visible midpoint event; merely crossing a threshold or retreating before the event earns nothing.
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- **Temporary combat upgrades end on every return home.** Unchosen temporary offers expire too. Each expedition starts a fresh climb toward spectacular power.
- **Everything physical you carry comes home**, even after death. Oxygen breathed and material consumed stay spent. Ordinary condition is restored for the next trip.
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- **Combat areas refill for each new expedition.** Renewed fighting supplies fresh temporary growth after living returns and revival alike. Previously defeated crowds and previously earned temporary awards do not leave later expeditions with permanently spent combat routes.
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- **Eligible combat routes receive a fresh finite population for each new expedition.** Renewed fighting supplies fresh temporary growth after living returns and revival alike. Previously defeated crowds and previously earned temporary awards do not permanently spend combat, but each renewed group still needs a named unsealed source and current open walking route; a fully sealed branch with no such route stays quiet.
- **Permanent changes remain.** Unlocked doors, selected room connections, completed permanent work and permanent source seals keep their states. The new population must use sources and routes consistent with those changes.
- **Walking home alive** keeps the current room arrangement. It still leads to a new expedition with renewed crowds.
- **Dying** shifts the unjoined station as well as ending the expedition. Unconnected areas gain new neighbours. Death carries no extra penalty beyond losing your position and any unfinished work; the new crowd is never a reaction to how well your build did.
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That margin assumes the player avoids both Siphon tether drain and the Breath Banks' extra-drain lanes as described above, and that coupling is not interrupted. The display shows the actual suit and vessel oxygen, transfer progress and any added drain. The table is a proposed pacing example; delays and interruptions spend its margin. The reserve marker warns when actual suit oxygen crosses its set level. R12's stocked travel air sits on the rescue branch and remains rescue preparation, not assumed personal supply. No local refill is counted, and the default reserve marker remains only a warning. [Survival And Loadout](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Survival%20And%20Loadout) owns these provisional quantities and transfer rules.
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## After every local source is sealed
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This reversible paper pass covers one harder state of the same living-return arrangement: R11's quarantine grille, both R17 ward doors and both R25 feeding mouths are permanently shut; R17's internal passage is open. It does not reopen or relocate any of them. To keep the source physical, this pass requires one explicit current walking adjacency beyond the mapped route: **R27's outward threshold meets R35 Receiver Vault Approach's entry threshold**. R35's two side-wall mouths remain unsealed. No new room, source or aperture is implied.
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| | Earlier open-local-source pass | All three local source sets shut |
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| **What the player sees** | R17's ward previews and R25's crowded mouths announce pressure beside each fight. | Empty ward windows and locked mouths prove the permanent work. Scrapes, bodies facing shipward and successive threshold movement point away from those seals toward R20, R25 and the open R26→R27→R35 continuation. |
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| **Where the horde is and arrives** | Fresh groups stand in R17's gallery and wards; the R25 crest emerges from its mouths. | At the one-time expedition start, part of R35's finite 80–150-body side-mouth group has already walked the open R35→R27→R26→R25→R20→R17 route. One band stands in R17's long lane, one occupies the R20-to-R25 approach, and two rear bands remain between R26 and R35. During play they move only through the visible thresholds after warnings; nothing refills behind the player. |
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| **Growth and major payoff** | Three R17 bands provide one Tune before R25; a mouth band plus a Bellback answer readies the transformation. | The R17 band yields mark one, the R20-to-R25 band mark two, and the first band warned across R26→R25 yields mark three. Its threshold commitment sets **horde engaged**. The ordinary no-equipment answer to Bellback still works, so the transformation becomes attainable before that band breaks, with the second rear band and any uncleared bodies left as its proving ground. |
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| **What the completed work buys** | The R11 seal removes one source; the R17 passage can skip the ward bands or shorten the return. | Three sealed source sets remove every local side injection and turn the pressure into one readable outward column. The passage still lets the player bypass the R17 band and forgo its mark, or shortens the earned-quiet return after clearing. It is two-way and does not make pursuit impossible. |
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Those four bands are one allocation of R35's existing main group, not four new releases and not an extra copy of E10. The source preview and later R35 state show the main side-mouth population correspondingly spent in this expedition; reaching R35 does not restore it. R35's separate far-wall stage remains dormant unless its existing Caller completes the call. On the next expedition after a **living return**, the unchanged adjacency lets the still-open R35 mouths initialize a fresh finite allocation once. Immediate re-entry, loading and retreat do not.
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The route still protects discovery. Clearing or separating the forward band earns the old R17 panel lull; clearing the next band earns the R20 counter lull; clearing the gallery pressure earns its far-wall mark. No timer or success-reactive wave ends those windows. The closed local apertures remain quiet throughout.
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After a **death**, an unjoined R27→R35 boundary can move with the external neighbour and becomes historical; this rule does not silently keep R35 connected. A newly visible source-bearing neighbour may populate the familiar route only after its own source, apertures, walking path, finite allocation and warnings receive an authored mapping. If no such source is currently connected, R17, R20 and R25 stay quiet and the fresh climb begins at the next unsealed frontier. This explains the named death case without claiming every shifted layout is solved.
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**Strongest alternative and cost.** Make the sealed familiar route permanently quiet and renew combat only at the first still-open source host beyond it. That is the clearest possible expression of permanent safety and requires no migration rule. Its cost is that a known route no longer supplies a fresh combat climb, the shortcut becomes mostly travel compression, and the player reaches the next major fight with less opportunity to make a new build develop. The migration pass preserves that climb but carries the opposite risk: stretching R35's group across several rooms may weaken R35's own setpiece and make source ownership hard to read. Its band allocation, spacing and warnings therefore remain reversible paper targets, not established fun or balance.
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## The creatures
[Combat And Enemy Roster](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20And%20Enemy%20Roster) owns each creature's warning, action and recovery. In a crowd they play distinct parts. **Pressers** are the slow majority that fills the lane. **Flankers** are the fast packs on side routes. **Callers** wake the next stage. A **Boltspitter** demands a ranged line, a **Clampcrawler** occupies the control you are working, and a **Veilbearer** briefly hides the crowd behind it. Three special creatures — **Bellback**, **Shutterback** and **Glass Siphon** — change force, cover or your oxygen clock enough to deserve a featured entrance.
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The stage pours from both mouths at once. The Bellback's wave shoves a dozen bodies onto one plate, the ribs swing, and the floor tips under you. A cautious player seals one mouth early, shelters at the rib and crosses on the Bank's quiet beat. A player with a crowd build steps into the neutral lane, lets the stage come to them — and releases.
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The gallery remembers the first committed mouth band and the first valid Bellback answer in either order. On the baseline path the astronaut waits for the cone to lock, steps behind the fixed rib and lets the wave release harmlessly into structure. That counts even though the brace was not interrupted. Defeating Bellback first also counts; a later mouth commitment completes the same once-per-expedition milestone without a replacement enemy. It is not victory music: later bands and most of the gallery still remain. Taking the offer changes how the current rig meets that density; refusing or deferring it leaves the baseline route intact.
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The gallery remembers its first committed band from a valid local mouth or mapped outer source route and the first valid Bellback answer in either order. On the baseline path the astronaut waits for the cone to lock, steps behind the fixed rib and lets the wave release harmlessly into structure. That counts even though the brace was not interrupted. Defeating Bellback first also counts; a later valid band commitment completes the same once-per-expedition milestone without a replacement enemy. It is not victory music: later bands and most of the gallery still remain. Taking the offer changes how the current rig meets that density; refusing or deferring it leaves the baseline route intact.
In the quiet after, the chamber is still live. Freeing one rib takes two cutter releases, each a job that stays done once finished, and seating the pin then fixes that rib for good while the other still swings. On the far wall a mark matching the sample counter turns an old record into a lead.
