2026-09-15 13:09:21
Anonymous:
Complete sealed-route population and growth sequence
hold the flood/combat rules.md ..
@@ 97,7 97,7 @@
- **Temporary combat upgrades end on every return home.** Unchosen temporary offers expire too. Each expedition starts a fresh climb toward spectacular power.
- **Everything physical you carry comes home**, even after death. Oxygen breathed and material consumed stay spent. Ordinary condition is restored for the next trip.
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- **Eligible combat routes receive a fresh finite population for each new expedition.** Renewed fighting supplies fresh temporary growth after living returns and revival alike. Previously defeated crowds and previously earned temporary awards do not permanently spend combat, but each renewed group still needs a named unsealed source and current open walking route; a fully sealed branch with no such route stays quiet.
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- **Combat areas refill for each new expedition.** Renewed fighting supplies fresh temporary growth after living returns and revival alike. This source-based proposal implements that owner direction only through authored allocations from named unsealed sources and current open walking routes. A sealed branch without such a mapped route stays quiet in this pass while combat and growth move to another current frontier; coverage of every shifted arrangement remains unresolved, not an owner-confirmed exception.
- **Permanent changes remain.** Unlocked doors, selected room connections, completed permanent work and permanent source seals keep their states. The new population must use sources and routes consistent with those changes.
- **Walking home alive** keeps the current room arrangement. It still leads to a new expedition with renewed crowds.
- **Dying** shifts the unjoined station as well as ending the expedition. Unconnected areas gain new neighbours. Death carries no extra penalty beyond losing your position and any unfinished work; the new crowd is never a reaction to how well your build did.
@@ 134,22 134,22 @@
## After every local source is sealed
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This reversible paper pass covers one harder state of the same living-return arrangement: R11's quarantine grille, both R17 ward doors and both R25 feeding mouths are permanently shut; R17's internal passage is open. It does not reopen or relocate any of them. To keep the source physical, this pass requires one explicit current walking adjacency beyond the mapped route: **R27's outward threshold meets R35 Receiver Vault Approach's entry threshold**. R35's two side-wall mouths remain unsealed. No new room, source or aperture is implied.
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This reversible paper pass covers one harder state of the same living-return arrangement: R11's quarantine grille, both R17 ward doors and both R25 feeding mouths are permanently shut; R17's internal passage is open. It does not reopen or relocate any of them. It proposes a **second ordinary walking threshold in R27**, on the wall away from its exchanger release, cooling fixture and Mara's clean abort apron; this is added geometry, not an already established exit. In this arrangement it meets R35 Receiver Vault Approach's existing entry threshold. It is separate from R27's R face, creates no network signal or room, and leaves R35's pillars, side-mouth controls, far hatch and R36 opening in their present relation. Live pressure through it must be cleared or separated before R27 can qualify as Mara's clean abort; the new threshold grants no shorter rescue.
| | Earlier open-local-source pass | All three local source sets shut |
|---|---|---|
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| **What the player sees** | R17's ward previews and R25's crowded mouths announce pressure beside each fight. | Empty ward windows and locked mouths prove the permanent work. Scrapes, bodies facing shipward and successive threshold movement point away from those seals toward R20, R25 and the open R26→R27→R35 continuation. |
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| **Where the horde is and arrives** | Fresh groups stand in R17's gallery and wards; the R25 crest emerges from its mouths. | At the one-time expedition start, part of R35's finite 80–150-body side-mouth group has already walked the open R35→R27→R26→R25→R20→R17 route. One band stands in R17's long lane, one occupies the R20-to-R25 approach, and two rear bands remain between R26 and R35. During play they move only through the visible thresholds after warnings; nothing refills behind the player. |
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| **Growth and major payoff** | Three R17 bands provide one Tune before R25; a mouth band plus a Bellback answer readies the transformation. | The R17 band yields mark one, the R20-to-R25 band mark two, and the first band warned across R26→R25 yields mark three. Its threshold commitment sets **horde engaged**. The ordinary no-equipment answer to Bellback still works, so the transformation becomes attainable before that band breaks, with the second rear band and any uncleared bodies left as its proving ground. |
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| **What the completed work buys** | The R11 seal removes one source; the R17 passage can skip the ward bands or shorten the return. | Three sealed source sets remove every local side injection and turn the pressure into one readable outward column. The passage still lets the player bypass the R17 band and forgo its mark, or shortens the earned-quiet return after clearing. It is two-way and does not make pursuit impossible. |
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| **What the player sees** | R17's ward previews and R25's crowded mouths announce pressure beside each fight. | Empty ward windows and locked mouths prove the permanent work. Two separated standing groups in R17, then scuffs, shipward-facing bodies and successive threshold movement, point outward through R20, R25 and R26→R27→R35. The ship side of the shut R11 grille stays empty. |
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| **Proposed population** | R17 and R25 use their own local groups. | R35's side-mouth volumes receive a new provisional **220–370-body finite total** for this arrangement. **40–60** have migrated into two R17 bands; **20–30** form one R20-to-R25 band; **80–130** form two R25 bands, including exactly one Bellback standing across the rib; and **80–150 remain at R35 at once**, preserving its present receiver-hall occupancy. These ranges add exactly to 220–370. They are one conserved allocation, not copies. |
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| **Growth and payoff** | Three R17 bands provide one Tune before R25; a mouth band plus a Bellback answer readies the transformation. | On the full long route, the two R17 bands pay marks one and two and the R20 approach band pays mark three. The player can take the first Tune in the paused journal during the counter lull before R25. A first 40–65-body gallery band then crosses R26→R25 after a visible warning; commitment sets **horde engaged**. The ordinary rib answer, faced Barrier or defeat answers Bellback, making the major ready before that band breaks. A second 40–65-body band remains behind it. |
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| **What completed work buys** | The R11 seal removes one source; the passage can skip the ward bands or shorten return. | All local side injections are gone, so pressure is one readable outward column. The passage bypasses both R17 bands at the cost of two marks, or shortens the earned-quiet return. It is two-way and does not prevent pursuit. |
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Those four bands are one allocation of R35's existing main group, not four new releases and not an extra copy of E10. The source preview and later R35 state show the main side-mouth population correspondingly spent in this expedition; reaching R35 does not restore it. R35's separate far-wall stage remains dormant unless its existing Caller completes the call. On the next expedition after a **living return**, the unchanged adjacency lets the still-open R35 mouths initialize a fresh finite allocation once. Immediate re-entry, loading and retreat do not.
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The paid sequence is concrete without becoming a gate. With the existing Storm Choir example, the pre-gallery Tune can add **Echoing Arc**, so ordinary shots branch visibly through the first dense R25 band. Answering Bellback can then ready **Thunderhead**; its manual stored-charge burst breaks roughly forty well-packed ordinary bodies while the surviving first band and second rear band keep the transformed rig relevant. Another compatible rig receives its own offers, and the no-upgrade baseline can still cross with the rib and ordinary fire. The major is never delayed until a Tune is taken.
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The route still protects discovery. Clearing or separating the forward band earns the old R17 panel lull; clearing the next band earns the R20 counter lull; clearing the gallery pressure earns its far-wall mark. No timer or success-reactive wave ends those windows. The closed local apertures remain quiet throughout.
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The renewed Bellback is explicitly one body in the R35-owned R25 allocation. A Bellback defeated on the prior expedition stays defeated there; the next expedition initializes exactly this one before departure, and no other Bellback appears if it is defeated early. This is a proposed composition rule for this mapped source, not a global special-enemy exception. R35's 80–150 simultaneous occupancy is preserved rather than treated as its total, so its later fight is not weakened in head count. The cost is the newly proposed 220–370 total, longer-lived population state and added R27 threshold; their clarity, space and performance are unvalidated. R35's separate far-wall stage still requires its existing Caller and is not included in the total.
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After a **death**, an unjoined R27→R35 boundary can move with the external neighbour and becomes historical; this rule does not silently keep R35 connected. A newly visible source-bearing neighbour may populate the familiar route only after its own source, apertures, walking path, finite allocation and warnings receive an authored mapping. If no such source is currently connected, R17, R20 and R25 stay quiet and the fresh climb begins at the next unsealed frontier. This explains the named death case without claiming every shifted layout is solved.
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Clearing or separating each forward group preserves the R17 panel and R20 counter lulls; the R20 Glass Siphon and Breath Bank remain live mechanism hazards until handled even when creatures are absent. Clearing gallery pressure preserves the far-wall discovery lull. No timer, load or re-entry refills those spaces. The safe ship, R11 rescue leg and limited quiet first-latch lesson are unchanged.
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**Strongest alternative and cost.** Make the sealed familiar route permanently quiet and renew combat only at the first still-open source host beyond it. That is the clearest possible expression of permanent safety and requires no migration rule. Its cost is that a known route no longer supplies a fresh combat climb, the shortcut becomes mostly travel compression, and the player reaches the next major fight with less opportunity to make a new build develop. The migration pass preserves that climb but carries the opposite risk: stretching R35's group across several rooms may weaken R35's own setpiece and make source ownership hard to read. Its band allocation, spacing and warnings therefore remain reversible paper targets, not established fun or balance.
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A **living return** with the same arrangement initializes this allocation once again. After a **death**, the unjoined R27→R35 relation may move and becomes historical. Another named source may feed the route only after its own allocation, walking path and warnings are authored; otherwise this corridor stays quiet while the owner's fresh combat and growth direction is served at another current frontier. That conditional coverage is a limitation of this proposal, not a settled exception. **Strongest alternative:** keep the completed corridor quiet and place an equivalent ordinary climb and major opportunity at the first open frontier. It can preserve build development, but on a different itinerary; the accepted cost is losing fresh combat on the familiar route and reducing the R17 passage mostly to safe travel. The migration pass instead risks a harder-to-read distant source and a larger active population budget. Neither direction has established fun, balance, readability or performance.
