2026-09-07 19:33:27
Anonymous:
Match Systems 3154197c: three-stamp power trace at the rack, full capacity reserved at lift, in-hand as transient release/transfer/emergency state
hold the flood/expedition proposal.md ..
@@ 8,7 8,7 @@
Yeva Kolb — a station pressure-tech the player rescued on an earlier trip — names the workshop and one condition: the head has to arrive uncracked. That is the entire immediate goal, and it is checkable at any moment.
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The loadout is the first real decision. Equipment competes with salvage for space (owner requirement), and under our working assumption spare canisters compete with both (proposal, not canon — see Dependencies). The head is bulky: reserving room for it means going in lighter than the player would like, and going in heavy means a second trip or an abandoned objective. None of it is hidden — carried supply, remaining time and free space stay readable at a glance. Mystery belongs in the station, never in the interface.
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The loadout is the first real decision. Equipment competes with salvage for space (owner requirement), and under our working assumption spare canisters compete with both (proposal, not canon — see Dependencies). The head reserves its full space from the moment it is lifted, held or stowed alike, so a full pack has to make room before the head can be freed at all. Reserving that room at the ship means going in lighter than the player would like; going in heavy means giving something up on the spot, or a second trip, or an abandoned objective. None of it is hidden — carried supply, remaining time and free space stay readable at a glance. Mystery belongs in the station, never in the interface.
## The way in
@@ 20,11 20,11 @@
The head sits in a powered rack whose state is legible: it holds until unpowered, and unpowering it is a deliberate act the player has to protect. Retrieval is a commitment, not a pickup, and finding the head does not complete the objective; only arriving with it does.
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The shutdown is also the first thing the player watches a mark do. It travels visibly through the rack, runs through one cut-marked part and stops dead at another marked differently. Nothing is named. The player has simply seen two marks behave differently, once. *This depends on a rule Systems owns and has not yet confirmed — see Dependencies.*
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The shutdown is also the first thing the player watches a mark do. The power trace is visible as it goes: through a junction bearing one stamp, into a buffer bearing a second where it drains away, and stopping dead at a contact bearing a third. Nothing is named and no term appears. The player has simply watched three marks behave differently, once.
## What the player notices
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The service bay behind the workshop finishes the job the rack started. There the player watched two marks behave differently, once. Here the same shapes recur across components that plainly do different jobs, each staying consistent within its group. One observation becomes a pattern, and a player who compares them can conclude, unprompted, that the marks name *families* — relay, sink, isolator — rather than individual parts. Evidence first, generalisation second, and the inference is never handed over.
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The service bay behind the workshop finishes the job the rack started. There the player watched three marks behave differently, once. Here the same shapes recur across components that plainly do different jobs, each staying consistent within its group. One observation becomes a pattern, and a player who compares them can conclude, unprompted, that the marks name *families* — relay, sink, isolator — rather than individual parts. Evidence first, generalisation second, and the inference is never handed over.
- **Observed, not unlocked.** Every mark was physically visible the first time the player walked past it; nothing is revealed here. No solve button, no survivor who translates. The notebook preserves a facsimile and location of a mark the player chooses to record and does no more. Knowing three families is not knowing a language.
- **Legible.** A player who does not care can take the head and leave unpenalised; a player who looks gets the discovery.
@@ 58,8 58,8 @@
None of this is owner canon. The scene survives if these change.
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- **The rack observation.** That unpowering visibly runs through one marked part and stops at another is proposed here and not yet confirmed by Systems. It is the only *observed* evidence the family inference rests on. If Systems declines it, the honest correction is to keep the discovery as understanding plus the chosen door and drop the mechanical reading — not to assert a behaviour the player never sees.
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- **Carry rules.** In hand, stowed and dropped come from [Build Comparison](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Comparison); no magnitude is asserted. Two points are Systems' and this scene follows whatever they set: whether the head occupies capacity while held, which decides whether the loadout paragraph's "going in heavy" cost is real, and confirmation that in-hand carriage is meant to be transient.
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- **The rack observation.** The visible power trace through relay-, sink- and isolator-stamped parts is the only *observed* evidence the family inference rests on, and it is what keeps the reading from being asserted. Reconciled with Systems; a proposed benefit on both sides, not an owner requirement.
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- **Carry rules.** Systems': the head reserves full capacity from the moment it is lifted, held or stowed alike, so the loadout cost above is real; in hand is a transient release, transfer and emergency state rather than a long-haul strategy, and it suppresses either build equally. No magnitude asserted. See [Build Comparison](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Comparison).
- **Shared carry interface.** Equipment versus salvage is an owner requirement; canisters competing for the same space is a working assumption. If oxygen gets separate capacity the loadout decision weakens but the scene holds.
- **Notebook.** Facsimiles and locations of marks the player records, and nothing else. Showing one to a survivor is the proposed use that makes recording worth doing.
- **Findability across trips.** The sealed door must stay locatable later or the human consequence leads nowhere. That needs *discovered locations to persist* — weaker than a fixed map, which stays open.
