2026-09-07 12:21:34
Anonymous:
CMB102 r10: lift the principle under X37 and PMR009 section 2 out of the single scene it was found in and state it as a composition rule. Charge never leaves the district, so an encounter whose only product is charge is worth its cost only if that expedition contains something the charge pays for; a fight that yields fuel with nothing to burn it on has bought nothing however well written. Asks a district page for one line when an encounter is placed for yield rather than obstruction - name what the yield buys that expedition and say the fight is optional - and explicitly does not ask for free bypasses to be removed. Belongs on this page rather than a district's because every harvest interaction Combat owns produces the same discardable resource. A check on writing, not a new mechanic, and nothing added to what a player must learn.
hold the flood/mechanics/combat.md ..
@@ 1,7 1,7 @@
# Hold the Flood — Combat Rules
-
**CMB101 / CMB102 · r9 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.**
-
r9 makes the two qualifications [PMR008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR008) asks of §7. **The readability claim is restated as a design judgement about a screen nobody has seen**, not a prediction — the cap of two is a first guess, no page can measure it, and if play shows four kinds are legible then raising it is a one-line change I would take. **"A combination costs nothing" is struck**: it costs no new *asset*, but it costs authoring, a shared-rule diff, a checked expedition and a reviewer's per-beat pass, which is the scarcest resource here. No roster or quota change.
+
**CMB101 / CMB102 · r10 · 2026-09-07 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review.**
+
r10 lifts the principle under [X37](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique) and [PMR009 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009) out of the one scene it was found in and states it as a composition rule: **charge never leaves the district, so an encounter whose only product is charge is worth its cost only if that expedition contains something the charge pays for.** It is a check on how an encounter is written, not a new mechanic, and it applies to every harvest interaction this page owns. Enemies §0A carries the matching corrections — including two withdrawals — at [r11](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies).
Sources read: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6, 8, 12–16 and Appendix A; the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) and its r1 seed 8afc3c; [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign); [Design Document r15 5f9fbb](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=5f9fbb); [Design Review REV104 r1 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882); [Enemies c63228](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=c63228); [Cutter](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter); [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment); [World and Mystery r20 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de); [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief); [Design Index dd01c7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index?revision=dd01c7); [Tasks eb8c03](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=eb8c03); [PMR003](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR003); [Design Review REV103 r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review); [Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief) D013/D016/D019–D021; [Reference/Content Scale REF107](/Reference/Content%20Scale); [External Critique EXT102](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique); [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions).
### A fight that yields only charge must have somewhere to spend it
+
+
**Proposed as a composition rule, from [X37](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique) and [PMR009 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR009).** The critic found a written plan whose fight *"returns with charge that is discarded at extraction"* against an objective the player could have walked to. PM accepted it narrowly, as a gap in a written value comparison rather than proof about a built game. **The general form belongs here, because it is a rule about encounters and not about one district:**
+
+
> **Charge never leaves the district.** So an encounter whose only product is charge is worth its cost **only if that expedition contains something the charge pays for** — a hatch, a gate, a stun the route needs, a burst the doorway needs. A fight that yields fuel with nothing to burn it on has bought nothing, however well it is written.
+
+
**What this asks of a district page, in one line:** when an encounter is placed for its *yield* rather than for blocking a route, name what the yield buys in that same expedition, and say plainly that the fight is optional. When it is placed to block, a free bypass elsewhere is fine and usually good — **the point is not to remove bypasses, it is to stop counting a fight as content when it buys nothing.**
+
+
**Why this belongs to combat rather than to the districts.** Every one of this page's harvest interactions — the coil's mass shed, the [Heavy](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)'s five-unit mote, the [Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier)'s stolen motes — produces the same discardable resource, so the same question applies to all of them, and it is the question the [Game vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) is asking when it says harvested charge should *"create room to act"*. **It is a check on the writing, not a new mechanic**, and it adds nothing to the rules a player has to learn.
+
**A district's shared-rule diff** — the check [REV103 r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) pre-registered for REV104 — should, for combat, name: which roles are present, which precedence line each exercises, what announces it, and what the player can do about it with the equipment available at that point in the campaign. A district that cannot fill that in has decoration, not encounters.
---
@@ 391,6 401,7 @@
| Rev | What it did |
| --- | --- |
+
| **r10** | Added the composition rule under X37 and PMR009 §2: a fight yielding only charge must have somewhere in that expedition to spend it, because charge is discarded at extraction. Stated as a check on writing rather than a new mechanic, and explicitly not a demand that districts remove free bypasses. |
| **r9** | Qualified the two §7 claims [PMR008](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR008) names: the readability argument is a design judgement about an unseen screen rather than a prediction, with the cap's number admitted as a first guess and reversible in one line; and "a combination costs nothing" is corrected to "costs no new asset", since it still costs authoring, a rule diff, a checked scene and a reviewer's pass. Roster and budget unchanged. |
| **r8** | Cited [REF107](/Reference/Content%20Scale) in §7, at the place the composition budget caps within-district depth, answering [X32](/Hold%20the%20Flood/External%20Critique) on the page it names rather than on the one that merely discusses roster size. **Kept the cap** and said why — legibility is the thing every reviewer credits — while conceding what the cap actually costs: depth has to come from situation rather than from bodies on screen, and no design-phase page can show that reads as richly. Recorded contract r7's adoption of R12 and R13 as proposed, and its assignment of R11 to this page; C13 and C14 closed, C15 added. |
| **r7** | Cleared the four live-copy defects [PMR007 §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR007) names: the paragraph after §0.2 that still called fixed-powered water unresolved and recommended the opposite rule, §6's Stunned row still admitting a Spark death, §6's charge paragraph still using most-room collection where D023/E3 selects player-set priority, and the R3 paragraph still calling C2 open. **Countersigned [EQP102's three approaches](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths)** in a new §12, checking their ledger and their use of targeting, press and pursuit. Supplied two rules their scenes needed and this page lacked: **R11**, the cutter's tie and target stickiness, and **R12**, line 4 generalised so a crowd spreads from where it is rather than from a branch it has been pulled off. Proposed **R13**, that a held crowd follows a moving beacon. |
