2026-09-10 12:17:38
Anonymous:
Outcome 52: replace player information with readable experience-led reference aligned to accepted mechanics
hold the flood/player information and options.md ..
@@ 1,173 1,118 @@
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# Hold The Horde — Player Information and Options
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# What the Astronaut Sees and Controls
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**Status.** First-pass inventory of the main player cues, actions and refusals, a prose structure for the journal and manifest, and a proposed controls/options set. It is not screens, art, an implementation, a usability or conformance claim, a complete string/glyph/dialogue inventory, or an owner selection of any pending question. Every binding, default and number is a first-pass choice, not a balanced or validated one.
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This is the proposed player-information design for Hold The Horde. Ordinary weapons fire mostly automatically and manual specials remain deliberate button presses—owner decisions. The journal pauses enemies and oxygen—also an owner decision. The exact display, target assistance, bindings, visual language and stage-only upgrade rhythm remain proposals. Nothing here claims tested readability or accessibility.
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Read live: Brief `4b0a3bcb…`, [Player Information](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Player%20Information) `34f8d4a0…` (accepted first-pass parent, not repeated here), [Survival and Loadout](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Survival%20And%20Loadout) `892afa4a…`, [Equipment Catalogue](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment%20Catalogue) `737b3cfd…`, [Combat and Enemy Roster](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20And%20Enemy%20Roster) `f1fe0d9a…`, [Save and Content State](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Save%20And%20Content%20State) `438cdf35…`, [Station Room and Module Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Station%20Room%20And%20Module%20Inventory) `d4ef2497…`, [Home and Colony Loop](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Home%20And%20Colony%20Loop) `5bff3436…`, [Two Language Discovery Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Two%20Language%20Discovery%20Map) `df0f48f5…`, [Story and Ending Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Story%20And%20Ending%20Map) `03c9cb8e…`, [Cast and Short Rescue Map](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Cast%20And%20Short%20Rescue%20Map) `6456406b…`, [Equipment Acquisition and Rig Growth](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment%20Acquisition%20And%20Rig%20Growth) `f5f6d768…`. [Encounter and Mechanism Placement Inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Encounter%20And%20Mechanism%20Placement%20Inventory) `5c1a9ad6…` is preparation-closed and is used for hosted warning and withdrawal-reset needs; its counts and placements remain team proposals, not owner selections, and nothing here treats them as chosen.
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## One fight, one discovery and a way home
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**Four prohibitions this layer accepts.** No unseen knowledge is made current. No alien script is translated automatically. No loot is unloaded, sold or absorbed without an explicit player transition. No cost is hidden behind an affirmative colour: any commit that spends, consumes, hands over, installs or puts an object out of reach for this trip states that in words on the preview itself, at the same weight as the confirming control.
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The astronaut enters a pressure hall carrying a later **7 C / 7 A Storm Choir** and one proposed 2 C oxygen canister. Six physical parts are mounted: Threat Sensor, Pulse Projector, Impact Dynamo, Fork Relay, Arc Emitter and Capacitor. The suit shows **9/10 C carried**, **7/8 A active**, the exact oxygen in the suit and canister, and one free carrying unit for a discovery.
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## Cue priority and coexistence
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Before anything attacks, the hall explains where danger will come from. A ward vent bucks in its frame. A door beyond it rattles. Bodies press against the glass, and the music leaves a gap in the same direction. These cues create anticipation without drawing an enemy from nowhere. When the finite release begins, the vent and its route stay marked at their physical positions; the display does not replace them with a generic “wave” banner.
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Six bands, highest first. **Bands 1–4 may all be live at once and must never suppress, dim or overdraw one another**; they are separated by fixed position on the display, not by colour and not by taking turns.
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The Sensor outlines the nearest valid hostile in its shown arc. Projector's readiness sits beside that outline. When both conditions are true, it fires automatically. Its impact makes the clamped Dynamo flash once and send charge through Fork: Arc lights across a dense group while Capacitor rises from 0 toward 4 U. The player does not need to read a connection diagram while moving. They see the useful consequences on the objects themselves:
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1. **Body in jeopardy** — suit tank reaching the fixed or player-set reserve mark; condition near death. Anchored, never suppressed by anything.
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2. **Commitment at an observed condition** — a staged action, oxygen coupling or survivor transfer that is live while one of three named facts is true: the astronaut is displaced out of reach of the control, a creature is within reach of that control, or the coupling has been broken. These are observations, not a forecast that failure is imminent.
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3. **A locked threat with a direction** — a wind-up already committed at the astronaut: Boltspitter's final rail click, Clampcrawler's jaw-flash lock, Bellback's planted cone, a Caller's completing brace.
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4. **What the player acts with** — ordinary readiness and its selected valid target; manual special availability and facing.
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5. **Refusals** — shown at the moment of the attempt, never deferred and never silent.
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6. **Persistent facts** — carried/installed labels, join state, roster counts, evidence provenance. Available on inspection or in the journal rather than continuously. **Bands 1 and 4 never fall into this band and are never suppressible by any option:** tank level, the reserve mark, condition and actuator readiness are always present.
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- Projector ready or recovering, with its current target;
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- Capacitor's four-step fill;
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- Arc heat and the **two remaining Echoing Arc extensions**;
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- the rig's current operating mode and whether its visible supply can support it;
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- the manual Thunderhead control, unavailable until storage and receivers are ready.
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**One cue in each band carries the direction marker.** When two band-3 threats are locked at once, both keep their own body cue, but only the nearer committed one takes the single peripheral direction marker; the other is still shown at its source. This is a deliberate choice against drawing two competing arrows, and it is the thing most likely to be wrong in play.
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The crowd thickens. A Flanker commits from the side gallery and its body tell gains the one peripheral direction marker. The suit reaches the player's labelled oxygen reserve at the same time, but the reserve remains anchored beside the tank; it never replaces the threat cue and never claims to know the cost or safety of returning. Projector keeps cycling. Echoing Arc widens the discharge, spends one visible echo per extension and adds heat. Arc creates no charge and does not silently refill Capacitor.
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**The clutter cut.** During world time the field display does **not** carry the rig diagram — ports, links and the explanation of which branch a packet reached. **Every actuator's own readiness and selected target stay visible**, because readiness is band 4 and is never suppressed. Also kept: the manual special's facing, and storage saturation as a state change rather than a running meter. The full diagram is one input away in the paused journal. **Sacrificed:** the branch explanation — why a part that was ready still did nothing this wave. **Kept:** every individual part state needed to act, and the evidence to work the rest out afterwards.
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When Capacitor reaches 4 U, Thunderhead becomes available. The temporary effect provides two visible, mutually gated modes on the same mounted parts: normal charging and manual burst. The player presses the special once. The rig visibly gates ordinary charging, spends the real 4 U, routes the burst through Fork to Arc and Projector, adds its stated heat, then restores normal charging automatically. The player does not open the journal to fire or restore the build. A refusing receiver is named at that part; descendants cannot recharge the same burst through Dynamo.
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## The main cue and action inventory
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The finite stage ends when all attackers committed to that release are cleared, or when the player completes a physical seal that ends their access. Early success counts without waiting for a peak. Sealing can earn the same proposed choice while already-arrived creatures remain dangerous; quiet requires clearing or safely separating the present space. Escape earns nothing and re-entry resumes the same unresolved stage.
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Forty-one states in nine bands. "Non-colour" and "non-audio" name the form that must carry the same information when colour or sound is unavailable.
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The temporary-upgrade offer opens in a pause. It shows two behaviour changes, not percentages: what mounted part changes, what the player will do differently, the added heat/power/echo cost, and one situation where the choice fails. Selecting one option returns to the exact frozen moment. An unchosen offer expires on return aboard. Stage-only choices are explicitly provisional while the owner considers regular defeated-enemy growth with larger milestone transformations; no meter or threshold for that alternative is invented here.
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### Body and supply — 6
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Silence reveals the reason for entering the hall: a sample counter stamped with a date after the hospital was supposed to be empty. Framing and committing the record takes live world time. Once captured, opening the journal pauses everything. The player can zoom, compare it with Yeva's photographed wall and write “same fitting?” in their own words. The game records the images, places, dates and who said what; it does not promote the note to truth.
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| State | Where sensed, provenance | Non-colour / non-audio form | Action, and the refusal |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Suit tank level | Worn instrument, direct reading; proposed **0–12 O**, with ordinary breathing shown at **1 O per 30 seconds** | Filled bar with exact numeric O and a labelled player-set reserve notch | None; it is a reading |
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| Reserve level reached | Worn instrument, from the level alone. **Player-set reserve defaults to 4 O and is labelled as such — never a calculated cost of getting home** | Exact notch reached plus a persistent text state naming it a reserve; no colour change alone | None forced; nothing auto-returns. It cannot be shown as a route estimate |
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| Tether attached, with its radius | The Glass Siphon's own visible tether; ordinary drain is separately shown | Tether drawn to its source with its radius; the raised drain shown as a second, separately labelled rate | Break the tether by leaving the radius or ending it; breaking stops only the extra drain and refunds nothing |
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| Selected canister and fill | Manifest and coupling control; proposed ordinary-full **8 O**, prepared-full **12 O**, exact partial, and empty **0 O**, all at proposed **2 C** | Exact O plus four distinct labelled fills, not one gradient; prepared-full marked as its own state | Couple/decouple; coupling is world time. Uncoupled while out of reach |
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| Coupling transfer in progress | The act itself, in world time; up to proposed **3 O per 30 seconds** while breathing continues | Exact suit/vessel amounts and incremental amount already moved; ceiling or empty stop named immediately | Cancel keeps what transferred; damage alone does not cancel. Transfer stops at suit 12 O or vessel 0 O and untransferred gas stays put |
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| Condition and displacement | Direct, on being hit | Condition step plus a distinct displacement mark | None; displacement can lose an unfinished stage |
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### Equipment, capacity and rig — 6
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| State | Where sensed, provenance | Non-colour / non-audio form | Action, and the refusal |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Carrying capacity used/free | Manifest; proposed opening **10 C** shared total | Two exact numerals, used and free, never merged with area | Pickup, retrieval or departure over capacity **refuses before commitment**, item left visibly where it was |
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| Active rig area used/free | Manifest; proposed opening **4 A** separate figure | Exact occupied/free spaces, not a percentage | Install refuses on full area; moving a part to inactive cargo frees area, not capacity |
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| Carried vs installed vs dropped | Manifest sections; installed and dropped entries name their place | Section membership plus explicit "installed at / dropped at", no icon-only distinction | Reclaim by walking there; reclaim refuses on capacity, leaving it installed |
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| Ordinary readiness and selected target | Per designated ordinary actuator, direct | Readiness as a discrete filled state; the selected target carries an outline marker, not a tint; a sealed reservation is separately marked until its one launch resolves | Reposition before reservation to change the candidate. **No valid target holds fire, and shows no marker**; a reserved wave reaching the designated actuator executes once |
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| Manual special availability and facing | Per control, direct | Availability state plus a facing wedge drawn from the astronaut | Activate. A release with no acceptable receiver refuses **before** starting a wave or spending stored charge |
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| Stored charge and saturation | Per Capacitor, exact proposed **0–4 U**; detail on inspection | Exact U in the journal; full/overflow-vent state announced in text | Configure proposed **2 U** release. Below 2 U or first-receiver refusal retains charge; after first acceptance, later refusal does not refund it |
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### Paid rewire and controller eligibility — 3
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Later, a rescue begins only after a short route has been walked and prepared and is demonstrably quiet or separated. The status says who confirmed the travel air, where the abort refuge is and whether the survivor is waiting, prepared, in transfer, at refuge or Sent. The person opens their own door and walks the short crossing while the astronaut holds one exposed junction. It is not a long escort and does not require killing every creature if a shown quiet bypass or persistent local closure made the route safe enough.
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| State | Where sensed, provenance | Non-colour / non-audio form | Action, and the refusal |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Field edit in progress | The act, in world time | Stage shown; the journal cannot finish it | Cancel commits nothing; the last completed arrangement stands |
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| Direct-link validity | Preview between two accessible ports | Valid shows a directed connector with an arrowhead; invalid refuses with the reason named in words | Commit or abandon; an invalid link costs nothing. This checks the proposed direct edit, not a future graph or outcome |
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| Controller eligibility | Structural inspection under [Mechanical Interfaces And Opening Quantities](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanical%20Interfaces%20And%20Opening%20Quantities) | Names the Sensor- or qualifying Stride-sourced path and its one designated ordinary actuator; a second independent ordinary-launch path is marked illegal | Commit or abandon. This is topology legality only: it does not simulate Fork allocation, receiver readiness, targets or future outcomes. Unrelated manual/non-launch sources remain legal |
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The airlock shuts. Noise, heat and urgency fall away. Walking home leaves this arrangement intact: the resolved stage remains spent and cleared ground remains clear. The physical rig, canister contents and committed record remain; every temporary combat upgrade and pending offer ends. Whether stored Capacitor charge survives return is still unresolved and is not answered by the upgrade reset. If the astronaut had died, carried property would still return, but the unconnected station would shift once. Home is relief, then curiosity: inspect the new record, talk to the person who recognizes it, refill, and decide what one carrying unit should hold next time.
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### Work, commitment and withdrawal — 4
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## The attention promise
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| State | Where sensed, provenance | Non-colour / non-audio form | Action, and the refusal |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Work stage and completed checkpoints | The mechanism, direct | Discrete completed marks, each one a separate mark | Continue, cancel, leave. Cancel loses only the unfinished stage |
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| Commit preview with its actual spend | Before any consuming commit | The exact spend written in words beside the control, same weight as the confirm | Confirm or decline. Protected objectives refuse selection outright. **It states the spend only** — it never predicts Fork candidates, future graph behavior or which downstream parts will accept |
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| Interruption | Cancel, displacement out of reach, occupied control | Names which of the three occurred, and what was preserved | Re-approach; damage alone never cancels |
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| Withdrawal boundary and reset | Crossing a named physical host face | The face itself is the boundary; re-entry begins from the shown neutral warning | Cross to reset a temporary phase; completed work is never reset |
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The player should be able to move, anticipate danger, enjoy the build and choose a special without opening a menu. Detail exists, but it has an address.
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### Threat — 3
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| Attention level | Always or briefly visible | Available on inspection or in the paused journal |
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|---|---|---|
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| **Survive now** | Exact suit oxygen, labelled reserve notch, condition, extra drain/tether, committed threat tells and the current interaction interruption | Earlier drain history, canister comparison and why a past work stage stopped |
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| **Steer the fight** | Physical source apertures and arrival direction; each automatic actuator's source, target and readiness; manual-special facing/availability; current heat, storage and finite echoes | Full links, alternate power modes, branch acceptance history and detailed U allocation |
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| **Commit deliberately** | Work checkpoint, exact spend or handover, capacity/area refusal and the object that will move or be consumed | Property history, installed/dropped locations and comparison with another loadout |
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| **Understand later** | A new discovery, completed seal, spent stage or rescue-state change appears once at its source | Provenance, historical routes, testimony, notes, station joins and detailed diagnostics |
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| State | Where sensed, provenance | Non-colour / non-audio form | Action, and the refusal |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Hostile present, aware or unaware | Sight, facing, movement | Posture and facing; awareness as a distinct silhouette state | Move, look, avoid. Looking and journal use raise no alarm |
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| Locked wind-up aimed at the astronaut | The creature's own visible tell | The tell itself plus a peripheral edge marker at its bearing | Break line, place the barrier, displace, accept the hit |
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| Alarm source, Caller brace, answering entrance | Source lights/motion; the entrance itself | Source mark plus a bearing marker for the entrance that will answer | Stop the source or the brace; a completed call moves only existing adjacent groups |
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Critical facts never depend on colour, sound, tiny in-world text or a single flash. Optional detail may be reduced; survival and action state may not.
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### Place and evidence — 7
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### When several urgent cues collide
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| State | Where sensed, provenance | Non-colour / non-audio form | Action, and the refusal |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Current room and observed entrance | Direct, from where the astronaut stands. After a shift the ship's direct neighbour is still fixed R01; any changed free frontier beyond R01 or its joined group becomes current knowledge only when actually observed | Named room plus the entrances actually seen; R01's unchanged identity and an observed new frontier use the same form | Walk out and look. Nothing lists an unobserved neighbour, shows through a closed airlock or turns a historical route into current guidance |
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| Reverse breadcrumb this life | Passages actually traversed | A back-trail to the last anchor, marked "traversed this life" | Follow it; it promises no present safety and no oxygen cost |
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| Historical route or adjacency | An earlier life's record, dated by arrangement | Marked historical in words and drawn in a different line weight | Read and plan; it never re-labels itself current |
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| Unknown route | Nothing | Nothing drawn; absence is the honest answer | Go and look |
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| Capture in progress | The framing act itself, in world time | The frame drawn plus discrete commit progress | Cancel yields no record; nothing is partially filed |
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| Committed record and provenance | The capture; the record thereafter | Place, arrangement/life, source kind and factual limit on the record | Capture is world time and atomic — interrupted before commit yields nothing |
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| Instrument report: ship pressure bearing, receiver value | **Read live at the ship console aboard.** A committed field copy is a recorded reading stamped with observation time and arrangement/life, not a live update. Its bearing is from the collar anchor, never a direction recalculated from the astronaut's current position | An anchor-labelled bearing arrow, drawn unlike a route line; a labelled receiver-value snapshot. Both say recorded rather than live while away from the console | Use it as evidence and recheck at the console. Unchanged geometry does not prove that a pressure source or receiver value remains unchanged. It gives no distance, path, safety, current field telemetry or distinction between sensor failure and a quiet ward |
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Tank and condition keep fixed positions. Every locked threat keeps its own body tell. Only the nearest committed threat receives the single peripheral direction marker; another remains visible at its source. The active manual special, each automatic actuator's readiness/target and a live work interruption stay visible rather than taking turns.
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### Station joining — 5
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This is a proposal with a known failure. In the Storm Choir hall, reserve oxygen, two locked attacks, a full Capacitor, two hot parts and a capture prompt can all become active together. Drawing six equal arrows, banners and meters would bury the corridor and make the spectacular build feel like paperwork.
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| State | Where sensed, provenance | Non-colour / non-audio form | Action, and the refusal |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Face signature family A / B / R | Inspection of the face | The count is the form: one, two or three repeated marks, in three distinct outline shapes. Amber/blue/red are decoration on top | Attempt a join where a face is currently adjacent |
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| Flow direction, and transform faces | The face; a local test pulse | Arrowheads into or out of the face; a transform face shows both its named sides | Run the local test; it reports present behaviour only |
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| Join attempt result | The latch preview at the seam | Refusal draws the actual reason — for two outputs, two arrowheads meeting head to head | A mismatch refuses, spends no pulse, changes no existing join |
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| Walking / latched / diagnostic | Three separate readings at the same place | Three separately labelled states, never one combined indicator | Walk, latch, release, re-power. Losing diagnostic power never un-latches |
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| Roster counts | The gallery display, an instrument report | Three numerals: joined, discovered-unjoined, anonymous | None. It names no room, face, route or location |
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The design response is hierarchy, not silence: oxygen/condition stay anchored; one threat receives the peripheral bearing; other threats keep strong source-local tells; charge, heat and echoes cluster on the relevant rig parts; the context prompt yields to a locked attack but remains at the physical object; and branch diagnostics move to inspection. Effect-density damping reduces particles, never enemies, timing or state. This response itself needs later authorized observation: if players still miss the second threat or the ready special, the hierarchy—not the player's attention—must change.
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### People and home — 5
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## What the journal may and may not do
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| State | Where sensed, provenance | Non-colour / non-audio form | Action, and the refusal |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Rescue state | The witnessed physical fact behind it | One of five words from the shared rescue contract — waiting, prepared, in transfer, **at abort refuge**, Sent — with that fact named | Prepare, signal, hold, abort. **Either party may abort, and the display names who did** |
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| Confirmation provenance | Whether the astronaut saw it or the survivor reported it | Stated on the state itself; a survivor's flow confirmation stays theirs | None; it is never promoted to direct observation |
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| Unconfirmed outcome | Death during transfer | Last confirmed state kept, present location and outcome marked unconfirmed in words | Nothing asserted. Delivery, refuge, loss and safety are all withheld. Under the conditional [Death Shift And Rescue Continuity](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Death%20Shift%20And%20Rescue%20Continuity) proposal, the world outcome resolves before geometry moves, but its local closure tell is not transmitted aboard. Only later observation can update this knowledge; no receipt or safeguard selection is implied |
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| Home project state | The fixture aboard | Four labelled states: unavailable, setup incomplete, commissioned, person not participating now; collar additionally shows branch-ready/incomplete-unreadable/cleared, bench shows secured vessel and exact O | Inspect, commission in world time, clear/postpone. An incomplete collar buffer is never readable or capturable; clearing discards it. A later successful poll provides a wholly new sample with both branches complete in that same attempt. Bench shows 8 O ordinary versus 12 O prepared without predicting route sufficiency |
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| Participant readiness | The person's own visible signal | Their signal, plus a subtitle when it is speech | The astronaut acts after it; nothing begins on their behalf |
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Opening the journal freezes enemies, oxygen, projectiles, readiness, warnings and unfinished world work, and completes none of them. Comparing records, writing notes, choosing a temporary offer and changing compatible links among already mounted accessible parts happen in the pause under the current proposals. Picking up, mounting or removing a physical part; operating a mechanism; transferring oxygen; moving into a view; and framing or committing a capture happen in live world time.
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### Story and late state — 2
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The journal has five simple places:
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| State | Where sensed, provenance | Non-colour / non-audio form | Action, and the refusal |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Isolation coupling: live or isolated | The coupling's own tell, at the room | Tell present or dark, stated in words; historical story records stay dated and separate | Re-seat, leave, postpone — world-time work. No remote "safe" verdict appears |
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| Departure readiness, pending owner choice | Ship functions actually installed | A list of actual functions, not a progress bar | Inspect. If the departure package is adopted, undocking carries an explicit preview of the **in-world** irreversibility — leaving the field ends revival and closes station exploration in this continuity. Whether the player may save or continue beforehand is a separate unanswered save-policy question, and the preview must not imply it is settled |
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1. **Records** — committed stills and readings with place, arrangement, time, source and factual limit.
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2. **Comparison** — player-pinned records, zoom and manual highlights; optional lookalike suggestions are labelled software-generated.
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3. **Notes** — freeform, revision-preserving and never parsed, graded or scored.
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4. **Testimony** — who said what, whether they saw it and what remains their interpretation.
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5. **Places** — rooms actually entered, completed work, installed objects and routes actually traversed, each dated to its arrangement.
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## The journal and the manifest, in prose
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Places is a list, not an omniscient map. A reverse breadcrumb shows passages traversed this life to the last known anchor. It promises no current safety and no oxygen cost. A ship receiver bearing or other distant instrument report is live only while inspected at that instrument; a carried copy is a dated record, not tracking. Neither a log, unchanged geometry nor a matching mark proves that a route is walkable, connected or safe. Unknown geography remains blank until observed.
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**The pause.** Opening the journal freezes every world-time process — enemies, oxygen, readiness, projectiles, mechanisms, warnings and work stages — and completes none of them. Note editing is available there because it changes no world state. Capture, rig edits, oxygen transfer and any payload change stay in world time and cannot be finished from a paused page. **Whether any other screen pauses is a proposal here, not an owner requirement:** the proposed default is that the manifest pauses aboard and does not pause in the station, and that the options screen pauses everywhere. **Tradeoff:** the proposed options pause gives another way to stop encounter pressure while choosing settings. It allows controls to be changed without enemies advancing during configuration. The already selected journal pause remains unchanged. That default needs owner reaction.
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## Manifest and property
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**Journal sections — five.** *Records* holds committed captures, each carrying its place, its arrangement and life, its source kind and its factual limit. *Comparison* pins records side by side for zoom and hand-highlighting; every link says player-linked, and an on-request lookalike suggestion is labelled software-generated. *Notes* is freeform, revision-preserving and never parsed, graded or scored. *Testimony* holds attributed statements with speaker, stated basis and what is that person's interpretation. *Places* lists rooms actually entered, and for each: what was completed there, what is installed there, which joins are known, and the routes recorded to and from it — every route stamped with its arrangement.
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The manifest never silently unloads, drops, sells or absorbs anything. It has four sections:
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*Places* is a list, not a map. It has no spatial layout, because a layout would draw geography the astronaut has not walked.
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- **Worn:** integral tank, navigation, journal and emergency cutter; outside C/A.
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- **Active rig:** each mounted part pays its C once and its A while active.
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- **Inactive cargo:** carried property pays C and no A.
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- **Elsewhere:** an object installed, dropped, lent or left at a named observed place; it uses no carried capacity because it is not carried.
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**Navigation and the working flow.** One list, one detail, and every entry reachable from the place it concerns and back again. The flow is capture → note → comparison → revisit: the player commits a still in world time, annotates it in the pause, pins it against another record, and later returns and captures a **new** state beside the old one. A revisit never overwrites an earlier record; the earlier one becomes historical evidence rather than a corrected fact.
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Capacity and rig area are separate exact numbers. A pickup or mount that would exceed either refuses before commitment and leaves the object where it is. A preview that consumes material, hands over an object, installs it outside the carried set or spends stored charge says exactly that beside the confirm control. Invalid links and unsafe concurrent power modes refuse without changing the last valid arrangement.
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**Live versus stored.** Worn tank, condition and capacity instruments keep sensing while worn. The breadcrumb records personally traversed passages this life; it is not a fresh reading of their safety. Ship and other fixed instruments — a pressure receiver, face test pulse, gallery roster or coupling tell — show a live value only while inspected there. A committed copy, including a ship-anchored bearing carried into the field, remains a time-stamped record in the stored band and never refreshes itself. Walking away ends the fixed instrument's live view; unchanged arrangement alone cannot keep its signal or value current. Recording is still a world-time action.
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## Complete information obligations
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**Provenance and the player's own hand.** Every item says which of four things it is — direct observation, the player's own record, attributed testimony, or an instrument/software report — and carries that source's known limit. The player's annotation is visibly theirs and is never mixed into the evidence it sits beside.
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This reference merges the old repeated cue inventories. “Direct” means observed on the object or action now; “recorded” means dated evidence, not current truth.
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**The manifest — four sections.** *Worn* sits outside both figures: tank, navigation, journal, cutter. *Active rig* charges each part its own stated cost once — one carrying unit and one rig space for the opening parts, two and two for Arc Emitter, Salvage Cycler and Vector Nozzle. *Inactive cargo* charges carrying capacity only. *Elsewhere* lists what is installed at a named place, dropped at a recorded place, or seated in a home project — **and shows no capacity at all, because it is not carried.** Each entry names what it is, where it came from, and what it costs of each figure. Used and free are shown for capacity and for area separately, never merged into one number.
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| Domain | Required states and provenance | Required presentation and refusal |
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|---|---|---|
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| **Body and oxygen** | Exact suit O; player-set reserve defaulting to proposed 4 O; condition/displacement; Glass Siphon tether, radius and separately labelled extra drain; selected canister with exact O and partial/ordinary-full/prepared-full/empty state; incremental coupling progress | Numeric O plus filled form and labelled notch; condition step; physical tether; exact transfer already moved. Transfer stops at suit ceiling or empty vessel, keeps committed increments, and damage alone does not cancel. Reserve never becomes a return estimate. |
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| **Carrying and rig** | Used/free C and A; active, inactive, installed and dropped location; each actuator's connected source, selected target and readiness; manual facing/availability; Capacitor 0–4 U and saturation; component heat; finite echoes; current temporary upgrades and pending offer; normal/burst mode and possible concurrent demand against supply | C and A never merge. No-target holds only that actuator. Refusal names capacity, area, port, receiver or power mode. Every return aboard removes temporary upgrades and pending offers while preserving physical-property rules. Stored-charge survival remains undecided. |
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| **Equipment editing** | Physical pickup/mount/removal state; direct link validity; every mutually exclusive/gated operating mode and its peak demand | Physical work runs live and may be interrupted; mounted-link preview/edit is paused. Invalid or unsafe proposal changes nothing. Preview explains structure and demand, not future combat outcomes. |
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| **Work and reward stage** | Mechanism stage, completed checkpoints, exact commit/spend, interruption cause; physical crowd source; finite stage uncommitted/unresolved/spent; seal state separately from present-space quiet | Cancel/displacement/occupied control loses only unfinished work; damage alone does not. Early clear/seal pays under the provisional stage model; lane suppression, escape, re-entry, return and load do not create a reward. Reopening the same seal cannot repay. |
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| **Threat and crowd** | Hostile awareness/facing; locked wind-up and bearing; Caller/alarm; answering physical aperture and arrivals already committed | Body motion/shape plus directional form and named sound subtitle. Stopping a source prevents only uncommitted arrivals; already committed arrivals remain. No unseen spawn or generic omniscient warning. |
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| **Place and evidence** | Current room and entrances directly seen; breadcrumb traversed this life; historical route/adjacency; unknown route; capture progress; committed record with provenance; fixed-instrument live report versus carried snapshot | Current and historical use different line forms and words. Interrupted capture yields no record. Instrument report names its anchor, time and limit and gives no distance, path, safety or remote diagnosis. |
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| **Station joining** | A/B/R face family; flow direction and transform sides; join attempt result; walking, latch and diagnostic-power states; joined/discovered-unjoined/anonymous roster counts | Family uses mark count and outline, direction uses arrowheads, not colour alone. Mismatch refuses without spending or changing a join. Walking, latch and diagnostic remain three separate readings. Roster names no unseen room or route. |
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| **Rescue and home** | Waiting, Prepared, In transfer, At abort refuge, Sent; who confirmed each fact; unconfirmed outcome; project unavailable/setup incomplete/commissioned/person absent; participant readiness | Status uses words and the witnessed basis. Either party's abort is named. Death during transfer never invents delivery, loss or safety; world truth and astronaut knowledge remain separate. Home fixtures show exact incomplete/ready state and never predict route safety. |
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| **Story and departure** | Isolation coupling live/isolated; installed functions relevant to departure; any in-world irreversible consequence if a departure proposal is adopted | Direct local tell plus words. No universal progress bar or remote “safe” verdict. Departure preview cannot imply that save/continue policy or the ending is already selected. |
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**Refusal and commit preview.** Capacity or area overflow refuses before commitment and leaves the object visibly where it was; nothing is ever silently dropped or absorbed. Unloading is always an explicit one-instance transition the player performs. A commit that consumes, hands over, installs or puts something out of reach names its exact consequence in words on the preview. Structural rig validation may reject a second independent ordinary-launch path, but neither that validation nor the direct-link preview predicts the path's future targets, branch candidates, thresholds or outcome.
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## Controls and accessibility proposals
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## Proposed controls, options and defaults
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Bindings and defaults are proposals, not a compliance claim. Every option must preserve the information in the table above.
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Proposals. Bindings and values are first-pass choices, not balanced or validated, and nothing here is an accessibility certification.
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| Option | Proposed default | Information and action rule it preserves | Presentation cost accepted | Owner reaction |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Full remap; no required three-input combination | On | Every action stays reachable, so no cue is informative but unusable | More states to keep legible per control path | No |
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| Hold or toggle for staged work and oxygen coupling | Hold | Same stages, same interruption rules either way | Toggle weakens the felt tension of holding under pressure | No |
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| Text scale and contrast | Medium scale, high contrast available | No essential fact exists only as a small painted in-world label | Larger text crowds a compact suit display | No |
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| Colour-independent A/B/R and flow forms | On, always | Family is carried by mark count and outline shape; direction by arrowheads | Busier faces; every new signature must be authored with a form | No |
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| Subtitles for speech and named non-speech sounds | On | Survivor speech and warnings remain readable as attributed statements | Text volume during an encounter | No |
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| Directional markers for essential audio | On | A locked wind-up and an answering entrance keep their bearing | Risks giving more spatial certainty than the sound does; tuned to match, not exceed | **Yes** |
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| Flash, shake and effects intensity | Medium | The underlying state cues are unchanged at any setting | A damped build reads as less spectacular | **Yes** |
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| Horde visual density damping | Off | Enemy count, behaviour and difficulty are untouched | Plausibly reduces the build payoff for players who need it | **Yes** |
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| Target marker emphasis | Persistent outline | The selected-target marker remains visible in band 4 at every setting; optional detail can be shown on inspection | Stronger emphasis adds clutter in a crowd | No |
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| Field display density (the clutter cut) | Reduced | Bands 1–5 always present, readiness included; only the branch explanation moves to the pause | At reduced density the reason a ready part did nothing is diagnosed after, not during | **Yes** |
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## Four paper walkthroughs
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**1. The Fork, installed or carried, at the noisy stage.** On arriving at Cargo Turn, four opening parts plus one canister use 6 of 10 carrying units and all 4 rig spaces. Picking up the loose Fork raises carrying use to 7; installing that same carried Fork moves it to *Elsewhere* and returns use to 6, with rig area still 4. Keeping it packed uses 7. On installation, the board's own source supplies the power, and the Fork passes that one board pulse to both compatible outputs so the rack and the patient-bay shutter hold together. Keeping it packed leaves the lane open. At the final fastener four things go live at once: the stage's completed marks, the Caller's brace, a Presser's locked strike, and the tank reaching its labelled reserve notch. **The priority decision:** the reserve notch takes its anchored position and does not flash over anything; the locked strike takes the single direction marker because it alone has a bearing; the brace stays visible at its source without a second arrow. Nothing is suppressed and nothing is merged. Barrier's own readiness is visible throughout, at reduced density as at full. What reduced density withholds is why a ready Barrier still did nothing on a given wave — the branch explanation — and that is one pause away. This four-cue case needs no new creature: the Caller and Pressers are the placement's existing population.
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**2. A spend, then a refusal downstream.** The player selects conductive scrap for the Cycler, which is linked through Fork to Arc Emitter and Capacitor. The commit preview states one thing in words: *this consumes the selected scrap permanently.* It does **not** say which branches will accept, because that would be predicting an assembled rig's outcome, which the parent forbids. What the player has instead is individually observed: Arc Emitter shows its own readiness on itself, Capacitor shows its own saturation, and the links were validated one at a time when drawn. Reading them is the player's work, and the reduced-density display keeps exactly those readings.
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The confirm control is not coloured to suggest approval. On confirmation the scrap is spent and each receiver checks locally as the wave arrives: Arc refuses because it is not ready, Capacitor accepts. **Acceptance and refusal are shown on resolution, at each part, not forecast beforehand** — and a later refusal rewinds nothing and refunds no consumed material. The failure is legible as *that receiver refused*, not as salvage vanishing, because the spend was named before commitment and the refusal is attributed to the part that made it.
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**3. An old route, and a transformer that refuses.** After a death the arrangement advances. In *Places*, the route captured in the previous arrangement is drawn in historical weight and says so; the roster reports joined, discovered-unjoined and anonymous counts and names nothing. The player walks to a seam where two faces are now adjacent, and the latch preview draws two arrowheads meeting head to head: both are outputs. No pulse is spent and no existing join changes. Inspecting the reversible gallery shows its current mode and its two named sides as a **present** local reading, in the live band, which cannot be filed as evidence without a capture. The player may change the mode; walking joins are untouched, which the three separate readings state plainly.
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**4. A crossing that ends unconfirmed, and a bench that is not ready.** The rescue reads *prepared* — travel air confirmed **by the survivor**, abort place stocked, route walked this life — and the display keeps that "by the survivor" attached. The door opens: *in transfer*. The astronaut dies mid-crossing. The display holds the last confirmed state and marks present location and outcome **unconfirmed**; it asserts no abort, no delivery, no loss and no reunion, because the conditional safeguard's local closure tell is not transmitted aboard. Under that proposal the world outcome resolves before the shift; knowledge waits for later local observation. If that safeguard is not selected, the transfer-death outcome remains unresolved. Aboard, the packing bench shows *setup incomplete*: one contribution is complete and the other is not, so no prepared-full canister exists and none appears in the manifest. Postponing costs nothing and no state changes because time passed.
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## Self-check, counts and gaps
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**Counts after this revision.** 41 inventoried states in 9 bands (6 body/supply, 6 equipment/capacity/rig, 3 rewire/eligibility, 4 work/commitment/withdrawal, 3 threat, 7 place/evidence, 5 station joining, 5 people/home, 2 story/late); 5 journal sections; 4 manifest sections; 10 proposed options; 4 walkthroughs; 6 cue-priority bands. Three states were added — the tether and its radius, capture-in-progress, and the ship instrument report.
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**Checked.** No cue is shaped like a conclusion: the reserve mark is a level, not a route cost, and band 2 fires on named observations rather than on a forecast. No preview evaluates an assembled rig; acceptance and refusal are shown at each part on resolution. Conservation: no cue implies one object in two places, *Elsewhere* shows no capacity, and each part is charged its own stated cost once. Pause: nothing reachable in the journal completes a world-time process. Provenance: every state names its source and limit, and survivor confirmation is never promoted to direct observation. Actions: every row's action exists in a named source article rather than being invented here. Accessibility: every band 1–5 state has a stated non-colour and non-audio form.
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| Option | Proposed default | Non-negotiable result | Cost to watch |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Full remapping; no required three-input chord | On | Every action and pause remains reachable | More control paths to explain |
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| Hold/toggle choice for staged work and oxygen coupling | Hold | Same checkpoints, interruption and commitment | Toggle may reduce physical tension |
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| Text scale and contrast | Medium; high contrast available | No critical fact lives only in tiny scenery text | Larger text competes with the field view |
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| Colour-independent A/B/R, flow, readiness and danger | Always on | Shape, count, outline, motion and words carry meaning | More authored variants |
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| Subtitles for speech and named non-speech sounds | On | Speaker/source and warning meaning remain attributed | Text load during crowds |
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| Directional markers for essential audio | On | Locked threat and answering aperture retain bearing without exceeding the source cue | Can imply false precision if oversized |
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| Flash, shake and effect intensity | Medium | State timing and warnings survive every setting | Spectacle may feel softer |
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| Horde visual-density damping | Off | Enemy count, behaviour, collision and difficulty are unchanged | Lower visible mass can weaken the fantasy |
| Field-detail density | Reduced | Survival, threats, per-actuator readiness/target, manual special, source, heat/echo/storage and active interaction remain; branch history moves to inspection | A refusal may be diagnosed after the moment |
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**Strongest case.** The player can act under pressure from bands 1–4 without opening anything, and can reconstruct *why* afterwards from provenance that was never merged away. **Its cost:** a busy display with a hand-authored priority ladder, and a real risk that four simultaneous cues is three too many.
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General options-menu pausing remains undecided. Only the journal pause is owner-selected. If another menu pauses, the option must say so consistently rather than create a hidden safer pause.
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**One credible simpler alternative.** A single context line: show only the most relevant action and one state, chosen by context. It is far cheaper, has no ladder to author, and is calmer to read. Its cost is exactly the moment this design exists for — the return margin and a locked strike cannot co-present, so the player cannot weigh a survival cost against a threat while acting, and provenance collapses into a prompt. Worth adopting if the ladder proves unreadable, and I would want that observed rather than argued.
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## Open decisions and validation boundary
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**Gaps, left open rather than invented.** Target override or reselection is unchosen. General menu pause is proposed only. The protected rescue safeguard remains unselected; its conditional retreat-before-shift order is supplied by the current continuity proposal. Wider survivor loss, save policy, the final joining mechanism and whole-station completion behaviour remain owner or design decisions; hosted warning and reset needs use preparation-closed Encounter33, with its design proposals still distinct from owner selections. Specific mapping deltas belong to the global-04 and placement alignments. A complete cast dialogue, glyph, string and full state-transition inventory is later work, not this article.
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Still open: stage-only versus regular defeated-enemy growth; target override and aiming assistance; exact power/heat/echo values; general menu pause; save slots; survivor-transfer safeguard; final station-joining and departure rules; and the exact visual/audio treatment for every creature, mechanism and part.
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**Scope note — what this delivers and what remains.** This is the parent inventory's **first component**: the finite state list with provenance, non-colour and non-audio forms and refusals, plus the journal/manifest structure and the option set with defaults. It is **not** a new envelope and no hours are subtracted on the strength of it, because a first-pass list is not the exhaustive one the estimate covers. What remains inside that 35–59 role-hours: a cue-by-cue form specification for every authored creature, mechanism, face and fixture rather than the 41 representative states here; the per-screen structure below section level; option interactions with each other; and the failure-message wording. Those must be deduplicated against survival cue work rather than added to it. No implementation, prototype, simulation, playtest, asset, framework or platform decision is proposed or performed here, and nothing above establishes that any of it is legible, usable or enjoyable.
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This design can require that information be present and traceable. It cannot establish that a player notices it, that six simultaneous cues are tolerable, that a horde remains readable under effect density, or that the options preserve excitement. Those claims require a later authorized implementation and observation phase.
