These are loadout intentions, not locked classes. A player can change family at shelter or on a later departure. Early/middle/late mean available decisions and knowledge, **not approved district numbers or elapsed hours**. All cell counts use the D023/Lead-adopted eight-cell [Inventory and Charge contract](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanics/Inventory%20And%20Charge); all numeric yields are conditional written examples. No build has been played, simulated, balanced or shown fun.
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**Exploration interaction.** From a service lane, target a visible loose deposit with a Driver tool shot. It creates the same bundle as close hand gathering; it neither delivers the bundle nor produces a bonus. The Hand Pump drains a compatible access channel for a walkable pickup route, but also removes its conduction path: draining the Head basin at the Lock Flight can close the door being approached. A later cable/Coil branch preserves connected water instead, paid by energizing everything on that network. Essential evidence remains intact and inspectable via the ordinary machinery path.
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**Enemy counterplay.** Pursuers from two angles defeat a committed Driver shot; Cutter is a credible better choice on the cluttered return. Spark 0ace4f adds an authored wet-route cost: a lethal shot can energize the connected water the player intended to enter. Insulation or dry firing position answers that hazard; Prod avoids the lethal trigger but gives up kill charge. Lead and Combat disagree on whether the Spark also stuns enemies; this comparison relies only on the agreed water hazard. Do not claim Driver reaches a Grounder on an elevated cable until Combat defines line of sight and height eligibility.
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**Enemy counterplay.** Pursuers from two angles defeat a committed Driver shot; Cutter is a credible better choice on the cluttered return. Spark [730ee8](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Enemies/Spark?revision=730ee8) adds an authored wet-route cost: a lethal shot can energize the connected water the player intended to enter. Insulation or dry firing position answers that hazard; Prod avoids the lethal trigger but gives up kill charge. Lead [29f5b0](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=29f5b0) now selects the power-only Spark: it stuns and sheds nothing, preserving Coil as the paid harvest/control action. Combat and Spark still need to mirror that ruling under REV104-15, so this build follows the canonical contract rather than their crossed copy. Do not claim Driver reaches a Grounder on an elevated cable until Combat defines line of sight and height eligibility.
**Why this family is not a weaker Harvester.** Its ordinary plan minimizes fighting, carries four to six bankable bundles, and treats charge as an optional escape/access reserve. Harvester's preferred plan seeks a fresh wet mass and gives that cargo space to charge storage and Arc. Breacher can adopt an expensive Coil detour but loses most of the reason it chose this family. No additional hauling tax is needed to force a difference.
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2. **First copies in the world.** Place each first tool at an inspectable service/aid/machinery cache named on its item entry. Every first cache is reachable using existing movement, free panels/valves and an alternate route; equipment improves cost or timing, never uniquely gates the associated essential clue. The first named copy is a guaranteed authored offer, not random. Campaign determines actual district/room placement and safe knowledge order; these locations are proposals, not completed geography.
3. **Repeat expedition choices.** Recommend two to four offer sites along alternate routes as an initial placement budget, carried from the source as provisional. Once a tool is known, a site's clearly labelled category offers two specified alternatives, e.g. Battery versus Siphon or Kit versus Insulation; take one and the other is unavailable for that expedition. Offers are fixed for that visit, inspectable before taking, with no paid rerolls. This adds a choice under route pressure without inventing kill XP. If there is no fit, decline or drop cargo live; fitting links still needs shelter.
4. **Middle preparation.** Retain the source workshop's choice of one discovered starting module, occupying its normal rack cells, alongside the default empty Battery. Not every visit must depend on finding the same Coil again. An alternative primary can still be found and fitted on a route; Colony decides when reliable departure selection becomes available.
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5. **Later preparation under Colony’s advanced tooling.** [COL101 / a1046d](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=a1046d) arrived during drafting. Carry its one reusable support assembly and recipe-by-inspection proposal into this interface. When advanced tooling is selected, recommend a choice for first visits: **Field tool** = one known primary plus one known module; **Circuit set** = Cutter plus up to two known modules using at most three rack cells in total. Both get the normal empty Battery; all selected gear uses actual cells. These are configurations of Colony’s tooling service, not additional facilities or free benefits beside forward pumping/observation. An issued alternative primary’s brace counts toward the equipment allowance. Selecting another service retracts the tooling extras before departure.
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6. **Response to COL-I2: recorded racks for revisits.** Agree with Colony’s narrower alternative: full-rack reissue only for a previously visited district, using an arrangement actually assembled and recorded at shelter. Cap issued equipment at six occupied cells including the default Battery and any primary brace. With EQP101’s eight-cell rack this leaves two cells for finds/cargo; it no longer means “banks nothing.” Empty banks and ordinary once-only yield remain. First visits retain the smaller packages so discovering combinations still changes that expedition; repeat investigations can choose reliability instead of forward extraction/observation. Lead 59f895 §5/10 and PM’s D023 have selected this boundary; Colony a1046d still prints six-slot/no-cargo examples and should mirror it. No newer Colony acknowledgement is claimed.
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5. **Later preparation under Colony’s advanced tooling.** [COL101 r3 / 06acdb](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Colony?revision=06acdb) now mirrors the service and issue boundary. Carry its one reusable support assembly and recipe-by-inspection proposal into this interface. When advanced tooling is selected, recommend a choice for first visits: **Field tool** = one known primary plus one known module; **Circuit set** = Cutter plus up to two known modules using at most three rack cells in total. Both get the normal empty Battery; all selected gear uses actual cells. These are configurations of Colony’s tooling service, not additional facilities or free benefits beside forward pumping/observation. An issued alternative primary’s brace counts toward the equipment allowance. Selecting another service retracts the tooling extras before departure.
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6. **Response to COL-I2: recorded racks for revisits.** Agree with Colony’s narrower alternative: full-rack reissue only for a previously visited district, using an arrangement actually assembled and recorded at shelter. Cap issued equipment at six occupied cells including the default Battery and any primary brace. With EQP101’s eight-cell rack this leaves two cells for finds/cargo; it no longer means “banks nothing.” Empty banks and ordinary once-only yield remain. First visits retain the smaller packages so discovering combinations still changes that expedition; repeat investigations can choose reliability instead of forward extraction/observation. Lead 29f5b0 §5/10 and PM’s D023 select this boundary; Colony 06acdb §§2/4 mirrors eight cells, the six-cell issued cap, empty banks, visit/recipe/record triggers and two cells left for field finds. Capital prices and first placements remain proposals, so this is interface agreement rather than PM acceptance of the catalogue.
7. **Costs and failure boundaries.** Use Colony’s proposed four-bundle once-only workshop/tooling investments as its price candidates, not a second Equipment price list. Lead must reconcile them with the different hauling capacities. Inspection records recipes even on rescue; issued gear cannot be sold, dismantled to banked salvage, or stockpiled across support changes. The set of eligible modules is the catalogue on [Equipment](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment#catalogue-and-reasons-for-its-size), subject to the ordinary rack/link/one-primary limits. A recorded rack does not include cargo or charge. First-cache paths let each family exist without buying advanced tooling. No recurring replacement payment or “full return” price is added.
This borrows inventory expression through scarce functional tools and discovery through reusable rules. It does not import a bag-shape puzzle, kill-level draft, colony upkeep loop and mystery key system merely because inspirations contain them.
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**Conditional fuel sequence, for the six-cell H rack.** Priority Coil then Arc; begin at 10/10 after earning twenty ordinary kill units locally (ten ready Coil earlier under D023). Discharge into forty fresh ordinary conducting bodies already in the connected water: stored 0/10, ten spent, twenty dropped. If two five-unit motes are reached, storage becomes 10/10; the other ten remain on the ground until faded, stolen or otherwise accounted. An Arc burst then spends its ten; end 10/0. The drawn bank accepts nothing, and the full Coil bank accepts nothing. A Carrier near a reachable charged player may still target them; neither the full bank nor local pursuit disappears because Arc ended. New arrivals outside the cast footprint remain fresh. For an isolated pulse, water power ends after two seconds while stunned survivors recover at eight; fixed supply overrides that expiry. No assumed collection speed, survival, crowd clearance or unknown late-cohort kill count is smuggled into this illustration.
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**Current campaign integration costs.** Collector 29ece6 §4 asks a Coil to power a five-second winch. Two seconds in Lead 59f895 cannot complete that continuous action. Recommend a hand-cranked ratchet that retains progress, with the Coil advancing only two seconds of the existing work and the player cranking the rest; no second battery, recipe or repeat visit should be required. Campaign owns adoption and must state the mechanism/cost. Keep its forty-second manual alternative; do not certify the current sluicegate claim that it can “never release early,” since that manual route is already written. World 9aab5e’s after-Stop salvage reserve clock conflicts with Lead 59f895’s free permanent baseline return; equipment loadouts follow the baseline and cannot make a Coil, Pump, recipe or payment necessary to get home. Lead/World/Colony own that reconciliation.
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**Current campaign integration cost.** Collector [75c09e §4](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector?revision=75c09e#4-two-loadouts-two-kinds-of-control) still asks one two-second Coil pulse to run a five-second powered winch continuously. Recommend a hand-cranked ratchet that retains work: the pulse advances two seconds and the player cranks the remaining three seconds at the threatened outfall, while the existing roughly forty-second all-manual route remains free. This preserves the spend-versus-exposure choice without requiring a second battery, recipe or repeat visit; Campaign owns adoption and exact wording. The former Stop/refuge conflict is closed: Lead 29f5b0, World d108c1 and Colony 06acdb all preserve free dry/manual return while powered services die on the announced cascade. Equipment adds no payment or recipe gate.
## Experimentation versus sorting and strict upgrades
