Commit 86770d
2026-09-07 21:55:34 Anonymous: Draft connected-grammar build rules| /dev/null .. hold the flood/build rules.md | |
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| + | # Build Rules |
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| + | **Status:** Provisional design for focused review. The Owner Brief requires expressive powerful combinations, meaningful horde combat, and equipment competing with salvage for inventory space. It does not settle the build system, starting equipment, oxygen quantities, progression or whether spare canisters share equipment space. Everything below except those requirements and the owner-confirmed journal pause is proposed. |
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| + | ## Proposed core: a connected effect grammar |
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| + | The player carries one finite rig. Its spaces hold active equipment parts; ordinary salvage and inactive parts occupy the same overall carrying capacity. An installed part occupies space once, not once as cargo and again as equipment. The exact grid, shapes and capacity are open. A suit tank supplies limited portable oxygen; carrying additional canisters in general capacity is a proposal, not an owner requirement. |
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| + | Parts expose a small public grammar rather than hidden recipes: |
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| + | - A **trigger** notices an event such as manual activation, impact or stored heat becoming ready. |
| + | - A **payload** carries a known state such as charge, heat, force or fragments. |
| + | - A **modifier** transforms, stores or branches a signal or payload. |
| + | - An **actuator** produces the world effect: projectile, arc, barrier or shove. |
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| + | The player arranges parts in the active area and draws only compatible directed links between visible ports. A part may fill more than one role, so acquiring it can reopen several old arrangements. Inspection states each part’s verified individual behavior and compatible port types. The interface previews the next local link and flags an invalid connection; it does not calculate the final build or announce an undiscovered multi-part outcome. |
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| + | At the ship, rearrangement is safe. In the station, installing, removing or rewiring a part is a deliberate world action while oxygen and threats continue. The journal still pauses the rest of the game as the owner requires, but consulting a recorded diagram cannot complete a rig edit. |
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| + | ## Resolution and readable limits |
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| + | Each activation creates a causal wave that travels along directed links. Within that wave, a part resolves at most once; a returning signal stops instead of looping forever. Several impacts created by one actuator may fill one visible accumulator, but cannot repeatedly retrigger the same path during that wave. Stored charge or heat can carry between waves, with its state and saturation visible. This permits buildup and explosive release without an invisible infinite loop. Exact capacities, rates and damage are deliberately unspecified. |
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| + | If a connection cannot accept a payload, nothing is silently discarded: the link is visibly invalid before commitment. If a valid part saturates, it holds, vents or passes overflow according to its stated rule. Surprising power should come from consequences the player can trace, not exceptions hidden in item descriptions. |
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| + | ## Illustrative parts |
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| + | These eight parts demonstrate the grammar; they are not a final catalogue or starting loadout. |
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| + | | Part | Known individual behavior | Different uses it opens | |
| + | |---|---|---| |
| + | | Pulse Projector | A trigger launches its attached payload; without one it fires a weak force pulse | Starter actuator; carries heat or force; supplies impacts | |
| + | | Impact Dynamo | An impact event emits a charge signal once per causal wave | Projectile engine; barrier counter; salvage-chain bridge | |
| + | | Fork Relay | Sends an incoming signal to two valid outputs | Splits offense/defense; charges storage while firing | |
| + | | Capacitor | Stores charge across waves and releases it on a chosen trigger | Burst damage; emergency barrier; delayed combo timing | |
| + | | Thermal Lens | Converts incoming charge into heat attached to the next compatible payload | Burning projectile; heated barrier; deliberate vent setup | |
| + | | Arc Emitter | Converts charge into arcs across nearby targets | Horde clearing; capacitor burst; secondary Fork output | |
| + | | Barrier Plate | A trigger creates a directional barrier; strikes against it produce impact events | Defence; Dynamo trigger surface; route-holding tool | |
| + | | Salvage Cycler | Consumes selected salvage and emits its visible material response | Conductive charge, pressure force or brittle fragments | |
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| + | Finding a Capacitor is therefore not a prescribed upgrade. The player can replace an immediate Arc connection with stored burst, bank Barrier energy, or route one Fork branch into storage while the other fires. Installing it now costs room that could carry salvage or an extra canister; carrying it home unopened preserves later options but supplies no present combat power. |
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| + | ## Three materially different paths |
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| + | **Cascade lance.** Pulse Projector → Impact Dynamo → Fork Relay. One branch feeds Arc Emitter; the other stores charge in the Capacitor. The immediate branch clears dense ordinary hordes while repeated activations prepare a later discharge. Thermal Lens can turn the stored release into a heated projectile rather than another arc. Sparse separated targets interrupt the chain, but the build is allowed to overwhelm a packed horde when its conditions are met. |
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| + | **Counterwall reactor.** Barrier Plate turns defence into the primary trigger surface. Horde impacts against the barrier feed Impact Dynamo, then Capacitor. The player chooses whether to spend accumulated charge refreshing a defensive output or send it to Arc Emitter. This is the surprising combination: the wall is not only protection but a readable engine powered by holding a dangerous line. It fails when attacks bypass its facing or arrive too slowly to justify the committed parts; no artificial damage penalty is added. |
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| + | **Salvage storm.** Salvage Cycler supplies portable payloads. Conductive scrap feeds Arc Emitter; a pressure vessel goes through Pulse Projector as a broad force shot; brittle material creates fragments. Impact Dynamo and Fork Relay let a material effect charge a second output and the Capacitor, but the once-per-wave rule stops a fragment burst from multiplying itself without limit. This path spends colony-bound salvage for present survival. Hoarding starves it; careless firing destroys return value. Enemy manipulation may help cluster a wave, but the experiment is composing equipment and materials, not controlling enemies. |
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| + | All three reuse parts while asking different questions: sustain a chain, convert defence into power, or consume cargo for adaptable effects. A newly found Fork, Lens or Capacitor changes more than one path because its ports describe possibilities rather than membership in an archetype. |
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| + | ## Acquisition, commitment and return |
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| + | Found equipment is readable at the individual level before installation. The player may install it in the field, carry it as inactive cargo, leave it, or discard another object. Installation can unlock immediate power but commits active area, carrying space and world time. Salvage returned to the ship supports the colony or later work only as those separate systems eventually define; this article assigns no currency or automatic upgrade value. |
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| + | Hordes test whether a build creates space, sustains output and protects an oxygen-limited return. They also create opportunities for dense-target chains and barrier impacts. A build that erases ordinary hordes after deliberate acquisition and composition can be a successful payoff, not automatically a balance failure. Real limits come from its causal shape, carried cost, acquisition conditions and situations it does not address. |
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| + | The return decision remains legible: keep the installed rig and sacrifice newly found salvage, dismantle a part to carry a discovery, spend salvage through the Cycler, or turn back before oxygen margin becomes unsafe. If spare canisters later use separate capacity, the equipment-versus-salvage decision still holds, but its link to oxygen weakens. |
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| + | ## Minimum useful expedition after a cached loadout |
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| + | Death may leave all carried gear in a cache under the current separate death proposal. Build Rules therefore depends on a minimum sortie that does not recreate the lost build for free. Proposed ship-issued suit baseline: |
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| + | - a refillable integral tank providing limited portable oxygen; |
| + | - navigation and the owner-required pausing journal; |
| + | - a low-output emergency projector/cutter for basic defence and common interactions. |
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| + | These baseline functions do not expose build ports and cannot join a cascade. They let the player scout, record, evade, take an alternate objective or search for replacement parts; they do not guarantee that a guarded cache is recoverable. Additional canisters, active build parts and valuable tools still occupy whatever capacities their later systems assign. This is an equipment-system dependency, not settled starting gear, a replacement economy or an explanation of revival. |
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| + | ## Credible alternative: multi-tag synergies |
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| + | Instead of directed links, each part could carry semantic tags such as heat, impact, branching and barrier. Compatible pairs or sets would activate authored effects automatically; arrangement would mostly manage carrying space. This is easier to explain, bounds interaction testing and prevents causal loops. Multi-tag parts can still create choices. |
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| + | Its cost is prescription. Once combinations are listed, a found part tends to complete an intended set rather than transform several existing machines. The connected grammar is preferred because the player authors the causal path and can understand why a ridiculous outcome occurred. That preference accepts higher interface, authoring and consistency burdens. |
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| + | Reopen it if a representative catalogue cannot keep three-step chains readable without solving them for the player, if legal connections repeatedly create dominant or incoherent outcomes despite the once-per-wave rule, or if supporting cross-part interactions makes each new part too expensive to author and verify. Written design cannot establish readability, balance, fun or production feasibility. |
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| + | ## Counterexample and consistency check |
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| + | - **Infinite feedback:** a signal returning to a resolved part stops; persistent accumulators receive at most one contribution per source wave. |
| + | - **One obvious upgrade:** Capacitor, Fork and Lens each have offensive, defensive and storage placements with different carried costs; no path is declared numerically superior. |
| + | - **Cycler consumes the entire tradeoff:** it cannot consume the protected objective accidentally, and spending ordinary salvage loses return value. Other paths remain effective without cargo fuel. |
| + | - **All gear cached:** the suit baseline permits a useful expedition but not automatic cache recovery. The player can defer, abandon or seek new equipment elsewhere. |
| + | - **Paused rewiring exploit:** only the journal pause is owner-required. Field rig changes remain world actions and cannot be completed from its paused diagrams. |
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| + | Remaining dependency: the exact capacity model, part availability, cache rules and ship storage determine whether abandonment and recombination stay credible. No owner preference is required before focused review; none of these proposals changes the design-only phase. |