2026-09-07 15:34:11
Anonymous:
Vision: connect owner station premise to first sortie and two builds
hold the flood/brief.md ..
@@ 49,6 49,53 @@
The Visionary shapes and protects this owner-set identity; the Lead integrates the design. Existing specialists develop their domains against these facts. [Tasks](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) assigns one connected first-sortie design: oxygen, horde/build choices, a discoverable clue, a survivor/rescue opportunity and return/revival consequences, followed by a reason to venture out differently. This is a written design, not a prototype. [Team](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Team) defines responsibilities. Discussion stays in [project chat](/chat/); current rules and consequential unresolved choices stay in articles.
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## Visionary working design — first sortie and two portable builds
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**Proposal beneath the owner-set premise; details are reversible.**
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**Identity in one sentence:** *Hold the Flood* is a build-crafting survivorlike about an astronaut forced into a forbidden station, pushing farther on finite oxygen while a horde thickens, discovering portable component interactions and alien rules, and sending survivors back to a ship that slowly becomes a home.
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**Feeling:** isolation and dwindling breath; curiosity strong enough to risk one more room; the catharsis of a machine assembled under pressure suddenly erasing the mass; relief when the airlock closes and someone else is alive inside it. The theme is **knowledge turns survival into rescue**. Power matters because it buys time, reach and another person—not because a number rose.
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### First sortie — get the flight coupler and answer a life sign
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The emergency docking damaged the ship's flight controls. A scan locates a compatible two-cell **flight coupler** in the station's Dock Service Hub and one human life sign in a sealed booth beside it. The current goal is plain: **retrieve the coupler and return to the ship**. The survivor is a visible optional rescue, not a surprise fail condition. The warning, the silent station and the reason death returns the astronaut to the ship remain mysteries.
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The suit's main oxygen tank is filled freely aboard the ship and does not occupy the equipment rack. Away from the ship, oxygen drains at a steady displayed rate. A one-cell station canister refills a fixed displayed amount and is consumed; taking one sacrifices component, salvage or return capacity. The HUD marks the estimated direct-route return reserve without pretending unknown rooms are safe. Running out causes a clearly identified hypoxia death. Damage death is identified separately; both wake the astronaut aboard the ship.
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The astronaut steers while their equipped weapon fires automatically. The Flood enters in a continuous, visibly escalating mass rather than waiting in puzzle rooms. Kills and dangerous caches provide charge. The direct corridor reaches the coupler fastest but passes the densest spawn; side routes take oxygen and expose component caches, canisters, the survivor and a safe service bench. Pressure asks one repeated question: **turn back with what you have, or spend breath to become strong enough to bring home more?**
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At a powered service bench, action pauses and the player may install a recovered component into open rack space, replace one, or keep it as cargo. Links and the resulting action are previewed before commitment; no inventory sorting occurs while dodging. A scanned pattern persists in the notebook after death and lets the ship's ordinary repair bench refit that recovered type on later departures, but does not create free copies. Carried components, salvage and the coupler drop at the death location; opened routes, scanned patterns and survivors already launched to the ship remain. These persistence rules are proposals; the revival cause is not.
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### The same coupler objective, two materially different builds
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The eight-cell rack is a working size, not owner canon. The main suit tank and basic Cutter sit outside it. Both cache branches are signposted by recognizable hardware rather than random upgrade names, so route choice can pursue a family while exact component variants still reward exploration.
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| Path | Acquisition and rack | Reusable interaction | Oxygen pressure, payoff and weakness |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| **Portable storm** | Take the exposed transformer branch, recover Coil (2), Arc (1) and two Batteries (2), and fit them at its service bench. Carrying the coupler (2) commits seven cells; the final cell is an oxygen canister, Kit or salvage—never all three | Coil creates a short induction field centered on the astronaut. Firing Arc during Coil's two-second stun window empties both full banks and gives each stunned ordinary body in the field one lethal strike. It works in any room; conductive flooring may enlarge the field but is not required | The player must spend oxygen reaching the long cache branch, collect twenty charge near the horde and step close before firing. The reward is a portable screen wipe and clear escape window. Heavy, Crust and bodies outside the field survive; without Arc, Coil only makes space, and without Coil, Arc keeps its ordinary cap. The cargo-heavy rack has almost no rescue margin |
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| **Lure and lance** | Take the signal-store branch, recover Portable Beacon (1), Rivet Driver and brace (1), and one Battery (1). With the coupler, five cells are committed, leaving three for oxygen, Kit, salvage or a rescue cost | The Beacon draws reachable ordinary Flood toward one point. While it is lit, the Driver automatically targets the densest line between astronaut and beacon and pierces that line. This works in any corridor or open floor with sight and a reachable lure; no authored apparatus is required | The payoff is sustained lane-clearing and more carrying range, not a wipe. The player spends less oxygen on acquisition but must maintain position while the Beacon drains, then retrieve it or abandon it. Heavy/Crust block the line; flankers, broken sight and an empty bank collapse the formation. It is safer for exploration until the geometry fails, when it has no panic clear |
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The storm path buys burst with breath, twenty charge and nearly the whole rack. The lure path buys time and cargo with attention and positional risk. Both can solve the Hub, both develop during ordinary horde play, and both remain useful on later station decks. Neither is a key for one room. Exact damage, charge, cells and oxygen duration remain tuning proposals.
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### Rescue, discovery and the reason to go out again
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The trapped survivor is inside a sealed maintenance booth connected to a one-person transfer capsule. The player may leave them safely in the booth and return later, or spend one found oxygen canister to pressurize and launch the capsule to the ship. No escort AI, hidden timer or permanent off-screen death is assumed. Once launched, that survivor remains aboard even if the astronaut dies afterward.
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The first fair language discovery is practical, not a cipher. Angular **control script** repeats beside air seals, vents and service benches; each symbol is paired with a visible machine state, so a safe bench lets the player infer “seal” before risking it at an airlock. That observation is recorded as a hypothesis and works anywhere the symbol recurs, opening an oxygen-saving return route. A visually distinct **witness language** appears on personal objects and memorial surfaces; it carries names, testimony and history, never basic control instructions. The rescued survivor recognizes that the scripts serve different purposes but cannot translate the second one completely. Alien-language rules remain World design proposals and require non-color-only presentation; no bespoke glyph art is authorized.
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Back aboard, the coupler restores only enough control to show that another flight component is missing; the ship cannot leave yet. The rescued person occupies a real cabin, speaks about the station as lived experience and changes the next lead. The ship refills the suit without charging currency. The next reason to venture out is both practical and human: find the missing flight component, more oxygen capacity and evidence explaining why the station warned the astronaut away—and decide whether another life sign is worth a longer route.
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### Vision test and exclusions
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Every active mechanic must change at least one of five decisions: how long to stay on finite oxygen; how to survive the growing mass; which portable interaction to pursue; what carrying space to surrender; or who/what reaches the ship. Discovery must change a later action, route, loadout, interpretation or relationship. The colony is authored survivors and visible ship changes, not population production, oxygen upkeep or jobs busywork.
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Retain provisionally: automatic horde combat; finite expedition oxygen with unlimited ship refill; equipment-versus-cargo space; enemy-earned charge; readable component caches; safe field fitting; portable cross-component rules; persistent observations/routes; revival with an unknown cause; optional recoverable rescues; two languages with different jobs. Retire from the active foundation: encoded songs, drowned-world dependency, Choir as a room-specific build proof, mandatory water machinery, shelter-only build development, recurring colony chores and any explanation of revival before evidence earns it.
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This is a written player-experience contract, not evidence of fun, balance, readability, performance, feasibility or duration. The owner has fixed the astronaut/station facts, not approved the proposed coupler, survivor transfer, rack size, components, persistence or language roles.
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**Vision continuity checkpoint — 2026-09-07.** Project-room messages **61–65** were handled individually after cursor 60; last successfully processed message ID: **65**. [Build Paths dd4746](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths?revision=dd4746), [Equipment 579de8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment?revision=579de8), [TRL-WB1 6faf48](/Disagreement%20Register/Echo%20Relay?revision=6faf48) and [Clarity 0c17e7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Clarity%20Questions?revision=0c17e7) were read. Message 63 supplies the governing premise above; message 65's setting-neutral submission is superseded by this station-specific revision, while its portable build distinction survives. Earlier continuity remains in [Brief e2e390](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=e2e390).
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## Earlier proposals and decision history
Earlier team-authored proposals, the prior inspiration analysis and numbered decision log remain intact in [the preceding Brief revision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=e2e390). They are historical evidence, not competing current instructions. Continuing owner constraints are restated above; where an older decision conflicts with this premise, the owner's current premise wins. Historical reviews remain in [PM Reviews](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews).
