2026-09-07 21:51:10
Anonymous:
Integrate reviewed death comparison with qualified costs
hold the flood/death and persistence.md ..
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# Hold The Horde — Death and Persistence
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**Status.** A provisional comparison for review, not owner-approved. The [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) requires that death returns the astronaut to the ship for a reason hidden in the station; that cause is not addressed here. Damage and oxygen depletion both kill — that is fixed; oxygen quantities are not. Map structure, rescue logistics and colony systems remain undecided. Every claim below about how these rules would shape play is a prediction, not an observation.
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**Status.** PM provisionally integrated this written comparison after focused review and author response. The cache is the current working proposal, not an owner requirement or validated gameplay choice. Its minimum useful-expedition dependency remains open. The [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) requires that death returns the astronaut to the ship for a reason hidden in the station; that cause is not addressed here. Damage and oxygen depletion both kill — that is fixed; oxygen quantities are not. Map structure, rescue logistics and colony systems remain undecided. Every claim below about how these rules would shape play is a prediction, not an observation.
## Recommended rules: recoverable cache, retained record
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| Equipment and salvage acquired during the expedition | Banked on arrival | Held in the cache; never banked by dying |
| Stored clues | Retained | Retained |
| Relevant world changes | Discovered locations persist; entity state may reset | Identical |
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| A person rescued during the expedition | Joins the colony only if actually sent to the ship | Not retroactively rescued; situation unresolved |
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| A person rescued during the expedition | Joins the colony only if actually sent to the ship | Remains in the colony if already sent; otherwise remains an unresolved station situation |
## The next choice after each outcome
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Rollback has real strengths. It protects an assembled build from confiscation, which serves expressive play directly, and it produces no gear-recovery errands and no compounding, because the player resumes with the capability they left home with.
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**Why the cache is still recommended.** Under rollback, whatever was carried from the ship comes back intact, so the loadout decision carries no consequence at death and bringing more equipment is free. The brief's required tradeoff is equipment against salvage in one pack; rollback protects one side of it outright, while the cache makes that same decision the thing death acts on.
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**Why the cache is still recommended.** Both arrangements retain the inventory tradeoff: bringing more equipment leaves less space for salvage. Rollback removes the risk of losing access to equipment brought from the ship; the cache adds that risk to the same loadout choice. The cache is preferred here because choosing what to carry also determines which capabilities may become unavailable after death. That is an additional cost, not something the brief requires, and it may discourage the expressive builds the game also wants.
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**Deliberate death is not a point of difference.** Under either arrangement, a player who has recorded what they came for, whose pack holds little they need soon, and who is far from home on thin oxygen, may find dying preferable to walking back. Only the aftermath differs: rollback returns the gear and destroys new material, the cache keeps everything and charges a journey. Whether that behaviour is acceptable is untested and not settled here.
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**Deliberate death can be attractive under either arrangement.** Under either arrangement, a player who has recorded what they came for, whose pack holds little they need soon, and who is far from home on thin oxygen, may find dying preferable to walking back. Only the aftermath differs: rollback returns the gear and destroys new material, the cache keeps everything and charges a journey. Whether that behaviour is acceptable is untested and not settled here.
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A third arrangement, returning everything carried including newly acquired salvage, is excluded: it banks new material for free, making deliberate death strictly better than returning.
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A third arrangement returns everything carried, including newly acquired salvage. It would bank new material on death and could make dying an attractive shortcut. This comparison instead favors requiring live return to bank new material; that is a design preference, not proof that deliberate death would always be better under the third arrangement.
## Accepted costs
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Recovery needs more than a place name: contents must persist as they were and the site stay locatable. Four situations are distinct and should not be collapsed.
- **Available** — the cache can be reached, carried and returned with the capability now aboard. Retrieval is a genuine choice against other objectives.
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- **Deferred** — not reachable yet, but perhaps later as reach or capability grows. The cache waits; setting it aside costs nothing.
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- **Deferred** — not reachable yet, but perhaps later as reach or capability grows. The cache waits without decay. Deferring avoids an immediate recovery trip, while its equipment remains unavailable and its salvage unbanked.
- **Abandoned** — the player judges the contents not worth the trip. This must remain credible.
- **Compulsory** — retrieval is possible but no reasonable alternative exists. This is the failure state, and the condition that would reopen the preference.
