2026-09-14 19:12:51
Anonymous:
Remove text slop: disclaimers, process metadata, restatements and hedge tags; no rule changes (owner readability review, 14 Sep)
hold the flood/combat rules.md ..
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# Fighting the Horde
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*Proposed combat rules. Crowd sizes, timings and effects are hypotheses to test later. Owner decisions are marked where they appear.*
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*Combat rules. Owner decisions are recorded in the [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief); crowd sizes, timings and effects are proposals to test later.*
## What a fight is
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Crossing this station means crossing crowds. Ordinary weapons fire automatically — an owner decision — and the proposed default is that each one picks the nearest visible valid target. So the player's combat is about **where to be**: which route to take, how close to let the crowd come, which line through it to walk, which automatic effects are connected, and when to press a manual special (also an owner decision).
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Crossing this station means crossing crowds. Ordinary weapons fire automatically, and by default each one picks the nearest visible valid target. So the player's combat is about **where to be**: which route to take, how close to let the crowd come, which line through it to walk, which automatic effects are connected, and when to press a manual special.
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A rig may carry more than one ordinary weapon output. What limits it is power, heat, rig space and carrying capacity, not a fixed rule of one gun; [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules) owns those limits and how outputs connect.
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A rig may carry more than one ordinary weapon output. What limits it is power, heat, rig space and carrying capacity; [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules) owns those limits and how outputs connect.
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Opening the journal pauses everything, including enemies and oxygen, even in the middle of a fight — an owner decision. Changing links between rig parts inside that pause is the current proposal in Build Rules. Picking up or first fitting a newly found part, and operating station machinery, still happen while the world runs.
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Opening the journal pauses everything, including enemies and oxygen, even in the middle of a fight. Build Rules places changing links between rig parts inside that pause. Picking up or first fitting a newly found part, and operating station machinery, still happen while the world runs.
## An ordinary crossing
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**Quiet.** The loop at the end is yours now, and in it is what you came for: a sample counter stamped with a date after the hospital was supposed to be empty.
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**What made it work,** if it works: the danger was readable before it arrived, the build paid off *because* the crowd was dense, and the silence was earned rather than given. **How it could fail:** a crest that goes on too long becomes exhausting rather than exciting; bodies and effects bury the clue you came for; or the wall is always the safe line, so nobody ever takes the middle and the build never sings.
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**What made it work:** the danger was readable before it arrived, the build paid off *because* the crowd was dense, and the silence was earned rather than given. **How it could fail:** a crest that goes on too long becomes exhausting rather than exciting; bodies and effects bury the clue you came for; or the wall is always the safe line, so nobody ever takes the middle and the build never sings.
## The four beats
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## Where crowds come from
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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. Crowds do not materialize without a physical approach, 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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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.
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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**Scale, as a hypothesis.** 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, not free capacity; [Encounter And Mechanism Placement Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Encounter%20And%20Mechanism%20Placement%20Inventory) lists those obligations.
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**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.
## What wakes more
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## Earning quiet
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Clearing the current space, or safely separating it from remaining threats, earns a lull: time to investigate, salvage and choose a route. A completed source seal after release commitment can earn its upgrade while creatures already inside remain dangerous. The room shows whether each source is sealed, spent or still able to release another announced stage. Clearing all committed attackers or sealing their access before the peak resolves that committed stage immediately. Preventing a release before it commits gives safety and access without a combat-upgrade offer; neither kind of closure deletes creatures already inside. Or you can simply get out past a bulkhead or outrun the woken area.
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Clearing the current space, or safely separating it from remaining threats, earns a lull: time to investigate, salvage and choose a route. A completed source seal after release commitment can earn its upgrade while creatures already inside remain dangerous. The room shows whether each source is sealed, spent or still able to release another announced stage. Clearing all committed attackers or sealing their access before the peak resolves that committed stage immediately. Or you can simply get out past a bulkhead or outrun the woken area.
Quiet does not last forever. An occupied area next door can still send bodies through a visible route, with sound and door movement to warn you. But a stage you resolved does not come back by itself.
## What earns a temporary upgrade
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*Provisional stage-only proposal.* Once a release commits, resolving it earns **one temporary upgrade choice**, the same whether you **clear** all its committed attackers or **seal** their physical access. Resolving early counts immediately. Closing access before commitment prevents the release and gives **no combat-upgrade offer**: the benefit is safety and access, with less temporary combat growth. Completed work keeps its owning persistence rule. The owner is still choosing this rhythm versus regular growth from defeated enemies with larger milestone transformations.
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Once a release commits, resolving it earns **one temporary upgrade choice**, the same whether you **clear** all its committed attackers or **seal** their physical access. Resolving early counts immediately. Closing access before commitment prevents the release and gives **no combat-upgrade offer**: the benefit is safety and access, with less temporary combat growth. Completed work keeps its owning persistence rule.
**Running away earns nothing.** Leaving the woken area saves your life, and you still bring home everything you carry and everything you learned, but there is no consolation upgrade. Stepping back in resumes the same unresolved stage, so there is nothing to farm, and reopening a seal you closed does not create a new one.
Each stage pays once for the current arrangement of the station. It stays spent across a living return, and ground you already cleared earns nothing when you cross it again. Offers you earned but did not choose expire when you get home, along with the rest of your temporary power. A large machine you deliberately wake releases its own stage and may offer a transformation rather than an ordinary choice. Dying pays nothing. What the upgrades are belongs to [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules).
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**Rhythm, as an illustration.** A sustained outing might bring three to five meaningful choices: a foundation first, then a branch, then refinements or changes, with a larger optional stage able to transform the build. A short trip can earn one. That rhythm needs routes that actually offer stages between major encounters. The proposed Arrangement A route supplies E06 before R25 while E06 is unresolved; after it is spent, the next return can leave that approach without another ordinary award stage. **How it could fail:** stages that come too often turn choosing into a chore; too rarely, and the build barely grows between climaxes.
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**Rhythm.** A sustained outing might bring three to five meaningful choices: a foundation first, then a branch, then refinements or changes, with a larger optional stage able to transform the build. A short trip can earn one. That rhythm needs routes that actually offer stages between major encounters. The Arrangement A route supplies E06 before R25 while E06 is unresolved; after it is spent, the next return can leave that approach without another ordinary award stage. **How it could fail:** stages that come too often turn choosing into a chore; too rarely, and the build barely grows between climaxes.
## Working under pressure
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An expedition ends when you are back aboard, whether you walked or revived.
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- **Temporary combat upgrades end on every return home** — an owner decision. Each expedition starts a fresh climb toward spectacular power.
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- **Everything physical you carry comes home**, even after death — an owner decision. Oxygen breathed and material consumed stay spent. Ordinary condition is restored for the next trip; field healing and lasting injuries are not yet designed.
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- **Temporary combat upgrades end on every return home.** Each expedition starts a fresh climb toward spectacular power.
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- **Everything physical you carry comes home**, even after death. Oxygen breathed and material consumed stay spent. Ordinary condition is restored for the next trip.
- **Walking home alive** leaves the station as it was. Places you cleared stay cleared, and places still occupied stay dangerous.
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- **Dying** shifts the station — an owner decision. Unconnected areas gain new neighbours, transient crowds reset, and a new set of crowds comes with the new arrangement. That is never a reaction to how well your build did, and death carries no extra penalty beyond losing your position and any unfinished work.
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- **Dying** shifts the station. Unconnected areas gain new neighbours, transient crowds reset, and a new set of crowds comes with the new arrangement. That is never a reaction to how well your build did, and death carries no extra penalty beyond losing your position and any unfinished work.
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**Where the fresh climb happens.** After a living return you walk back out through ground you cleared, at your starting power, and the climb begins again at the first stage you have not yet resolved. In proposed Arrangement A, after a first living return that leaves R11 cleared, the route **R11→R17→R20→R25** crosses E06 before the R25 setpiece. If the astronaut resolves E06 and returns home again, that second living return removes temporary power while E06 stays spent. The same route then reaches R25 through cleared ground with no ordinary award stage between. Every major encounter therefore keeps an approach that works without temporary upgrades. This route provides an initial growth opportunity, but does not guarantee a fresh one after every return; the distance to another unresolved frontier remains a design cost. Occupied areas beside a cleared route can still drift into it visibly; that is ordinary movement, not a respawn. What the upgrades do is described in [Hordes and Builds](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Hordes%20and%20Builds) and Build Rules.
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**Where the fresh climb happens.** After a living return you walk back out through ground you cleared, at your starting power, and the climb begins again at the first stage you have not yet resolved. In Arrangement A, after a first living return that leaves R11 cleared, the route **R11→R17→R20→R25** crosses E06 before the R25 setpiece. If the astronaut resolves E06 and returns home again, that second living return removes temporary power while E06 stays spent. The same route then reaches R25 through cleared ground with no ordinary award stage between. Every major encounter therefore keeps an approach that works without temporary upgrades. This route provides an initial growth opportunity, but does not guarantee a fresh one after every return; the distance to another unresolved frontier remains a design cost. Occupied areas beside a cleared route can still drift into it visibly; that is ordinary movement, not a respawn. What the upgrades do is described in [Hordes and Builds](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Hordes%20and%20Builds) and Build Rules.
## The creatures
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**How it could fail:** three rhythms at once become unreadable, and the player dies to something they could not see coming.
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## Still open
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## Open questions
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Target overrides and aim assistance, including whether nearest-visible stays the default; damage, health, warning timings and displacement; exact crowd sizes, performance and effect density on screen; how surviving creatures hold on a living return; whether actual routes offer stages between major encounters; and what the upgrades do. Nothing here is tested.
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- Target overrides and aim assistance, including whether nearest-visible stays the default.
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- Damage, health, warning timings and displacement.
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- Exact crowd sizes, performance and effect density on screen.
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- How surviving creatures hold on a living return.
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- Whether actual routes offer stages between major encounters.
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- What the upgrades do.
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- Whether upgrades come from this stage rhythm or from regular growth from defeated enemies with larger milestone transformations; the owner is still choosing.
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- Field healing and lasting injuries are not yet designed.
