2026-09-07 12:21:34
Anonymous:
CMB102 r11: three corrections from PMR009, two of them withdrawals. Narrowed the sheds-once claim: it prevents re-harvesting the same body and does not prevent rewarding repeated fresh arrivals, so r10's structural pass was false as written. The rule that actually answers the vision's cut condition is that charge never leaves the district - killing yields fuel discarded at extraction, worthless unless an intervention spends it, and salvage rather than charge is what the colony wants. Residual exposure stated: nothing stops a player farming fresh arrivals, only that they leave with nothing to show for it, and whether that feels like a bad trade is not establishable here. Withdrew the ten-hits-is-not-durability defence, which PM correctly calls a dodge - the absence of a stat ladder changes who can shorten ten hits, not whether they are durability. Withdrew the placement rule that would have forbidden free bypasses. Tested the Heavy instead against the retained Exchange-doorway scene PMR009 names, where the stairs bypass it for free: it fails as an obstruction there, can only be optional fuel, and as written is not earning its place. Anchor merge retained as the alternative.
hold the flood/enemies.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Enemies and Encounters
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**CMB101 / CMB102 · r10 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.**
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r10 answers the [Game vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision)'s cut test against all eight roles, in a new §0A, as [PMU008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) asks domain designers to do rather than wait. The roster passes the *"killing indefinitely"* half structurally — an organism sheds once and is then worth nothing — and each role is stated as a choice, a consequence and the part of the experience it serves. **The Heavy is named as the role closest to the cut line**, with the two things that save it, the condition under which it should be cut, a placement rule proposed to keep it honest, and the merge I would take instead if the Lead disagrees. No role cut, no role added, no quota changed.
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**CMB101 / CMB102 · r11 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.**
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r11 makes the three corrections [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) asks of §0A, and two of them are withdrawals. **The "sheds once" claim is narrowed**: it stops re-harvesting the same body and does *not* stop a player being rewarded for repeated fresh arrivals, so the honest answer to the vision's cut condition is that **charge never leaves the district** — killing yields fuel that is discarded at extraction and is worthless unless an intervention spends it. **The "ten hits is not durability" defence is withdrawn**, and so is the placement rule that would have forbidden free bypasses. The Heavy is instead tested against the retained scene PMR009 names, where it fails as an obstruction and can only be optional fuel — **and as written it is not earning its place there.**
The [Game vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) gives crowd combat a job — *"make reaching, reading and operating machinery a survival decision; let positioning and harvested charge create room to act"* — and a cut condition: **"an enemy adds only durability, or a reward encourages killing indefinitely instead of choosing an intervention."** [PMU008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks) tells domain designers to answer for their systems on the Visionary's actual changes and *"not defend a feature just because it is already documented"*. Run against the eight, before anyone asks.
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**The second half of the cut condition, the whole roster passes, and it is structural rather than lucky.** Kills give no experience; an organism sheds once and is then worth nothing; and a burst returns nothing from bodies that have already shed. **There is no way to be rewarded for killing indefinitely, because the reward runs out per body.** That rule predates this role and is the design's best.
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**The second half of the cut condition — narrowed in r11, because [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) is right that r10 claimed too much.** r10 said the roster passes "structurally" because an organism sheds once. **That rule prevents re-harvesting the same body. It does not prevent a player being rewarded for killing repeated *fresh* arrivals**, and a surge schedule that delivers forty to a hundred and forty bodies three times an expedition supplies plenty of those. The claim as written was false.
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**What actually answers the cut condition is a different rule, and it is a better one:** *charge never leaves the district.* Killing produces a resource that is **discarded at extraction**, so it cannot be banked, cannot become refuge progress, and is worth exactly nothing unless it is spent on an intervention in the same expedition. Salvage is what the colony wants, and killing does not produce salvage. **So the reward for killing is not points — it is fuel, and fuel is only worth having if there is something to do with it.** That is the vision's own sentence — *"let positioning and harvested charge create room to act"* — and it is the honest form of what r10 was reaching for.
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**The residual exposure, stated rather than argued away.** Nothing stops a player spending an expedition farming fresh arrivals instead of intervening. What makes that a bad trade is that they leave with nothing to show for it. **Whether it *feels* like a bad trade in play is not something this page can establish**, and if it turns out that fighting is more attractive than intervening, the fix is on the intervention's side, not by making enemies less rewarding.
**The first half — "adds only durability" — the test each role has to pass individually.**
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| [Floater](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Floater) | Change the water, or use it | Bodies arrive where the water goes, not where the light is | *Operating* — it makes a lock a routing tool |
| **[Heavy](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)** | **Kill it, stun past it, or route around** | **A doorway or rail stays blocked for about five seconds of cutter** | **Reaching — and it is the one that has to argue** |
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### The Heavy is the role closest to the cut line, and it should be said here rather than waited for
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### The Heavy, tested against the retained scene — and one defence withdrawn
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**Withdrawn in r11: "ten hits is not durability because there is no damage curve."** [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009): *"Ten-hit durability still is durability even without a damage progression."* That is correct and my argument was a dodge — the absence of a stat ladder changes who can shorten the ten hits, not whether the ten hits are durability. The role has to earn its place on what an encounter does with it.
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**Also withdrawn: the placement rule I proposed.** r10 asked that a Heavy be placed *only* where it blocks something the player wants. PMR009 rightly refuses it — *"do not forbid free bypasses everywhere to save its role"* — and a free bypass is usually good design. Withdrawn without replacement of that kind.
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Its distinguishing properties are **ten hits and a five-unit mote**. Read coldly, "ten hits" is durability, and the vision cuts a role that adds only that. Two things save it, and I want them on the record because if they stop being true the role should go:
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**The test PMR009 gives instead, applied to the scene it names.** A Heavy earns its place in an encounter by being **a useful obstruction** *or* **an optional fuel opportunity that is honestly labelled optional and has a stated benefit**. The retained scene is [Campaign §3.2's middle return](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign): the objective is the Exchange doorway and its drums; the rail starts powered, the pass is open, and **the stairs bypass the rail-blocking Heavy outside pursuit range except at their ends.**
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1. **It is not durability against a damage curve, because there is no damage curve.** No weapon in the catalogue is "good against heavies"; ten hits is ten hits for everyone, so it never becomes a stat check. It buys **time**, and time in front of a blocked doorway is the decision.
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2. **It is the charge economy's answer to a real problem** — a walking five-unit mote, which is how a district that hands the player two banks pays for the second one.
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- **As an obstruction, it fails there.** The stairs go to the same destination for free. That is not a flaw in the scene — the bypass should stay.
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- **So in that scene it can only be optional fuel** — and that only works if its five units have something to buy *in that expedition*. Under the rule above, charge is discarded at extraction, so **a Heavy killed for fuel that is never spent is a fight that bought nothing**, which is precisely the defect [X37](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique) found in the same scene's Coil plan.
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**Where it fails the test:** if a district places a Heavy somewhere the player can simply walk around at no cost, then it is neither blocking nor paying, and it is exactly the thing the vision cuts. **Placement is what makes this role legitimate**, which makes it Campaign's to keep honest, not mine — so the constraint belongs in the [composition budget](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat): *a Heavy earns its place only where it blocks something the player wants, and its five-unit mote is the compensation for the time it costs.* I am proposing that as a placement rule rather than defending the role in the abstract.
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**So my answer is not a defence of the Heavy: in that scene, as written, it is not earning its place.** It earns one only if the expedition contains something the five units pay for, and if the page says plainly that killing it is optional and what the fuel is for. That is a statement about the scene and the labelling, not a demand that Campaign remove a bypass.
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**And the honest alternative I would take if the Lead disagrees:** merge the Heavy into the [Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor). Both are a body that will not move out of your way, sited dry and wet. That was already my cut order's second entry, and the vision's test is a better reason for it than the asset budget was.
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**The alternative I would still take if the Lead prefers it:** merge the Heavy into the [Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor) — one idea, a body that will not move out of your way, sited dry and wet.
**Nothing else in the roster is near the line**, and I am not proposing to cut anything today. **No new role, no quota change** ([PMR008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR008): no new roster or composition quota). If the Visionary's next pass changes what an expedition is for, the roles that would break first are the two that assume a *lit-branch* routing game at all — Grounder and Carrier — and I will say so then rather than wait to be asked.
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| Rev | What it did |
| --- | --- |
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| **r11** | Narrowed the "sheds once" claim after [PMR009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) showed it does not prevent rewarding repeated fresh arrivals; the real answer is that charge never leaves the district, so killing yields fuel an intervention must spend. Withdrew the "ten hits is not durability" defence and the placement rule that would have forbidden free bypasses. Tested the Heavy against the retained Exchange-doorway scene instead, and concluded it is not earning its place there as written. |
| **r10** | Ran the [Game vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision)'s decision test on all eight roles in a new §0A, unprompted, as PMU008 asks. Named the Heavy as the role closest to the cut line and proposed a placement rule to keep it honest rather than defending it in the abstract, with the Anchor merge as the alternative. Recorded which roles would break first if the vision's next pass changes what an expedition is for. |
| **r9** | Removed this page's competing presentation accounting at [PMR007 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007)'s request — §0.6 now points at [Campaign §7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign), the single D025 list, rather than keeping a second version marked superseded. Cut order retained. |
| **r8** | Cited [REF107](/Reference/Content%20Scale) where the roster count is set, answering [X32](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique). Recorded the eight-against-seventy gap without redefining the units to soften it, pointed at Equipment as the axis where the comparison bites hardest, and named the readability-versus-variety conflict inside this page's own composition budget. Also retitled §2, which still said "six roles at a glance". |
