2026-09-06 18:54:36
Anonymous:
DES103 r4 (Design Document r10) against PMR002 closing review: finale mirrors World and Mystery r16's merged chain and endings (fix clamps signal only); PM's audience wording; owner page says reviewed with revisions open; stale awaits-PM lines fixed; two-battery electrician drawn leak-free with one-link-per-module rule; burst nominal equals actual; PM's vertical-coil one-drip rack; world designer's alternative failure recorded; Appendix A module roster and battery entry (Q39); Q40 already met
hold the flood/design document.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Design Document
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**DES103 r3, the Design Document at revision r9 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | revised against PM's PMR002 findings 1 to 4 and criteria 1 to 11**
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**DES103 r4, the Design Document at revision r10 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | revised against PM's PMR002 findings 1 to 4, its closing review, and criteria 1 to 11**
## Read this first: one page for the owner
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**Why it might be worth making.** Crowd-survival games are good at pressure and bad at curiosity. This one makes the pressure legible, so a plan is possible, and makes understanding the thing that changes where the pressure lands. The two-minute example in section 1 is the whole argument in one hatch.
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**The recommendation, in one paragraph.** For players of automatic-weapon crowd games who want a reason to think, and for players of exploration mysteries who will accept pressure as the price of a puzzle: a survivorlike, as you asked, in which fighting the crowd yields fuel rather than experience points, and in which the genre's big moment, mowing down a packed wave, is bought with that fuel through one piece of gear, the arc, which lets your weapon's hits jump from enemy to enemy for a few seconds. Your power grows from what you find and pack into six slots, and your choices come a few times per expedition, whenever a new wave is announced and whenever you repack in a safe room, rather than from a menu of upgrades every half-minute as in most games of this kind. The distinctive experience is a district that sends its own enemies wherever a switch points, and the switch is yours. Designed length: about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four hours, plus free play and three endings. Positioning assumption, a hypothesis and not a finding: a short authored game sold next to the crowd games you named, at the prices they charge, with the mystery as the reason to pick this one. The alternatives, and what each costs, are in section 17.
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**The recommendation, in one paragraph.** For crowd-survival players who want discoveries to change how they fight and travel, with exploration-mystery players as a possible second audience rather than a second promise: a survivorlike, as you asked, in which fighting the crowd yields fuel rather than experience points, and in which the genre's big moment, mowing down a packed wave, is bought with that fuel through one piece of gear, the arc, which lets your weapon's hits jump from enemy to enemy for a few seconds. Your power grows from what you find and pack into six slots, and your choices come a few times per expedition, whenever a new wave is announced and whenever you repack in a safe room, rather than from a menu of upgrades every half-minute as in most games of this kind. The distinctive experience is a district that sends its own enemies wherever a switch points, and the switch is yours. Designed length: about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four hours, plus free play and three endings. Positioning assumption, a hypothesis and not a finding: a short authored game sold next to the crowd games you named, at the prices they charge, with the mystery as the reason to pick this one. The alternatives, and what each costs, are in section 17.
**What it costs, in scope.** One fixed district of about eight places, one enemy type with variants, seven modules, three surges per expedition, three colony decisions, and three authored mystery tiers. The one engineering risk is crowd behaviour. The one likely custom-art request is the enemy.
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**What you should know before deciding.** An independent critic has reviewed this document and found it consistent, honest about its unknowns, and readable cold; that is not evidence that it is fun, balanced or saleable, and nothing here claims so. Its central lever has two consistent versions; PM has confirmed the one written here and the other stays available (decision 3). If you would rather have a conventional level-up curve than the recommended charge-and-arc design, that is a change with a stated cost (decision 4). The enemy's name may collide with a famous game's faction (decision 7).
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**What you should know before deciding.** This document has been reviewed by an independent critic and by PM, and revisions remain open; no review is evidence that it is fun, balanced or saleable, and nothing here claims so. Its central lever has two consistent versions; PM has confirmed the one written here and the other stays available (decision 3). If you would rather have a conventional level-up curve than the recommended charge-and-arc design, that is a change with a stated cost (decision 4). The enemy's name may collide with a famous game's faction (decision 7).
**What happens if you say yes.** Nothing is built until you say so explicitly; this document does not open that gate. If you steer the premise, the rule survives and the fiction changes.
@@ 36,7 36,7 @@
**What the rule does that its inspirations do not.** Water carrying current is not a new idea; the owner's own reference games use it, and one of them, Noita, is built on a simulation of every pixel (as its makers describe it) so that the same rule produces chaos for hundreds of hours. This design deliberately does not simulate; its channels are wet or dry. What it does instead, and what the reference games do not, is make one rule answer four questions at once: what fights, what opens, where the enemy mass goes next, and how your own gear is packed, with the colony's dock as the fifth. The value is not surprise from chaos; it is consequence you can compute, so that a plan is possible and a mistake is legible. A player who has seen "wet channel plus coil equals stun" has not seen the mechanic; they have seen one of its four faces, and the game is about noticing that the other three are the same face.
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**Who this is for, and what it sits beside.** Proposed audience: players of automatic-weapon crowd games who want to think, and players of exploration mysteries who will accept pressure as the price of a puzzle worth solving. It sits beside the owner's named inspirations rather than against them: nearer to the resource-gathering crowd game in moment-to-moment feel, nearer to the room-by-room mystery in what keeps you coming back, and unlike the grid-inventory games in that the pack is small on purpose. No market claim is made here by this document; audience, price and comparables are not yet among the document criteria, and section 17 asks the owner to treat them as decisions. An outside researcher has since published measured storefront data on this wiki (a Reference page on survivorlike market data, read today and not independently verified by me): the owner's crowd-game references list between about five and thirteen dollars and lead with the "Action Roguelike" tag, while the mystery, exploration and inventory references list between about fifteen and thirty and lead with puzzle and investigation tags. Which neighbourhood this game enters is a decision with some numbers behind it and real limits on what they show; section 17 makes a recommendation and separates the observed from the predicted.
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**Who this is for, and what it sits beside.** The intended player, in PM's provisional wording: crowd-survival players who want discoveries to change how they fight and travel. Exploration-mystery players are a possible second audience, not a second equally broad promise. It sits beside the owner's named inspirations rather than against them: nearer to the resource-gathering crowd game in moment-to-moment feel, nearer to the room-by-room mystery in what keeps you coming back, and unlike the grid-inventory games in that the pack is small on purpose. No market claim is made here; this paragraph and section 17 answer PM's criterion 11, the audience and value case, with what is observed kept apart from what is predicted. An outside researcher has since published measured storefront data on this wiki (a Reference page on survivorlike market data, read today and not independently verified by me): the owner's crowd-game references list between about five and thirteen dollars and lead with the "Action Roguelike" tag, while the mystery, exploration and inventory references list between about fifteen and thirty and lead with puzzle and investigation tags. Which neighbourhood this game enters is a decision with some numbers behind it and real limits on what they show; section 17 makes a recommendation and separates the observed from the predicted.
### A two-minute example
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B S S
C C S link: B → C
```
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The battery is linked to the coil below it, correctly. But it also touches the bundle to its right, which touches the next, which touches the one below: three connected bundles, three drips, three units a minute. The battery is empty in a little over three minutes, before the second surge, and the coil is dead when it is needed. The fix is visible in the rack: move the insulation between, or leave a slot empty, and carry less.
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The battery is linked to the coil below it, correctly. But it also touches the bundle to its right, which touches the next, which touches the one below: three connected bundles, three drips, three units a minute. The battery is empty in a little over three minutes, before the second surge, and the coil is dead when it is needed. The fix is visible in the rack: move the insulation between, or leave a slot empty, and carry less. There is also a cleverer fix with no insulation at all, which PM found: stand the coil vertically in the middle column, so its non-conducting housing walls the battery off from two of the three bundles.
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```
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S C B
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S C S link: B → C; one drip, from the lower-right bundle only
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```
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Three bundles and one drip is possible; three bundles and no drip is not.
**Two loadouts with the arc**, since the recommendation rests on it. Under the link rule the arc needs a battery of its own.
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Growth comes from the world. Per expedition, two to four modules from fixed placements whose contents vary; two to six bundles from deposits; and charge from surges met on your terms. The rack caps at six slots, so power grows by composition, not by number: you leave with a cutter and an empty battery; by the second surge you usually have one powered setup; the third surge tests it. Later expeditions grow faster because the workshop lets you start with a chosen module and because you know where the placements are.
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**Charge is finite by rule.** Each organism sheds once. A surge of forty stunned in water yields four large motes, twenty units, two full batteries, if you are standing where they fall before they fade. Stragglers yield one unit each. Discharging spends a whole battery. So the electrician's loop, harvest a surge to fund the next discharge, works only against a fresh surge standing in water, and never against the same crowd twice. With one battery it breaks even: a discharge spends ten, a stunned surge of forty sheds twenty, and a single battery can hold only ten of them before the rest fade. The electrician who wants a profit carries a second battery in place of a bundle, coil, two batteries, insulation and one bundle, which is the rack tension that loadout is built on; the printed rack in section 5 is the break-even version.
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**Charge is finite by rule.** Each organism sheds once. A surge of forty stunned in water yields four large motes, twenty units, two full batteries, if you are standing where they fall before they fade. Stragglers yield one unit each. Discharging spends a whole battery. So the electrician's loop, harvest a surge to fund the next discharge, works only against a fresh surge standing in water, and never against the same crowd twice. With one battery it breaks even: a discharge spends ten, a stunned surge of forty sheds twenty, and a single battery can hold only ten of them before the rest fade. The electrician who wants a profit carries a second battery in place of a bundle, which is the rack tension that loadout is built on; the printed rack in section 5 is the break-even version. Drawn leak-free, with one more rule stated for it: a module accepts one link, so the second battery is storage until it is relinked to the coil in a shelter.
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```
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S C C
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I B B link: lower-right B → C; the other B is storage
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```
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The linked battery touches the coil and the storage battery; the storage battery touches the coil and the insulation; the one bundle touches the coil and the insulation; modules do not conduct, so nothing leaks.
**The genre's payoff moment, and the module that supplies it.** Crowd games of this kind have one defining moment: the point where your power outpaces the spawn rate and you mow the crowd down. Charge alone does not reach that point, and an outside critic was right that shipping under the genre's tag without it would disappoint the audience the tag brings. So the recommended design includes it, on the same rule: the **arc**, a one-slot module that, while linked to a charged battery, makes the cutter's hits conduct from organism to organism through a dense crowd, draining a full battery in about ten seconds. In a thin crowd it does little; in a packed surge it is the mowing moment, funded by charge you harvested from the surge before. Its bound is not the battery but the surge: each organism sheds once, so a surge can fund at most its own size in charge, chained kills shed motes too but only from organisms that have not yet shed, and between surges there is nothing to chain. A forty-organism surge cannot fund more than a few ten-second spells however well it is played, and the drain rate is set above what the cutter alone can earn, so the arc is a spend, not an engine. Numbers are proposals. It is the same conduction clause, applied to bodies.
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**The arc's fuel policy, stated as rules.** A burst is one battery: the arc draws its linked battery from full to empty in about ten seconds and stops. A battery being drawn accepts no charge, so motes collected during a burst go to another linked battery with room or expire. Organisms killed by chained hits shed motes only if they have not shed already this expedition; a stunned crowd sheds nothing further. So a burst is bounded three ways: by one battery, by the once-per-organism yield, and by needing to walk over motes inside a crowd while fighting. Recharging between bursts is possible only from organisms that have not yet shed.
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**The arc's fuel policy, stated as rules.** A burst is one battery: the arc draws its linked battery from full to empty in about ten seconds and stops. Its nominal duration and its actual duration are the same, because the battery being drawn takes no charge; pickups during a burst cannot lengthen it, only refill another battery. A battery being drawn accepts no charge, so motes collected during a burst go to another linked battery with room or expire. Organisms killed by chained hits shed motes only if they have not shed already this expedition; a stunned crowd sheds nothing further. So a burst is bounded three ways: by one battery, by the once-per-organism yield, and by needing to walk over motes inside a crowd while fighting. Recharging between bursts is possible only from organisms that have not yet shed.
**What the player can do early, in the middle, and late.** Early (expeditions one to three): cutter and one battery; the panel and the culvert; the first found coil or arc, used once. Middle (four to seven): a workshop starting module, so the harvester or the arc hauler can be assembled by the second surge; two-battery racks; the shepherd's planted beacon; the junction opened by the valve. Late (eight to eleven): the interior, valves that carry current across the district, and the relay room, where the same rule ends the game. Power grows by composition inside an expedition and by knowledge and starting choice across them; there is no number that climbs. With it, the design has the genre's spike as a spend rather than a climb, once or twice an expedition, earned and chosen. Said plainly, in the owner's own word: you asked for a survivorlike, and this is how the design is one. Without the arc it would be a routing and deduction game with automatic weapons, and by its own numbers in section 3 the player would never outpace a surge; that is why the arc is in the minimum and not on a menu. The tradeoff, stated: there is no level-up draft, so the genre's every-thirty-seconds choice is replaced by the dispatch every few minutes and the rack at shelters, and whether the mowing moments are frequent enough to carry the feel is a question for play, not for this page.
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- **Limits.** The panel powers one branch or none. A discharge needs a full battery and spends it. A field pump costs a bundle and lasts one expedition. A planted beacon runs its battery down. A stun yields once per crowd.
- **Combinations that matter.** Panel to yard plus a coil in the channel: stun and harvest an invited surge. At the junction (tier two), open the valve that joins the yard channel to the pool and light the yard at the panel: the junction circuit, which the panel never reaches directly, is energised through the water and the gate opens for as long as the yard is lit, with the yard hot behind you; the pool's lamp is an indicator, not a beacon, and draws nothing. Or leave the valve shut and discharge the coil into the pool: the gate opens for a few seconds and nothing else lights. The first needs no module; the second buys stealth. A planted beacon on the causeway's dock end plus the panel on yard: pull an entered causeway crowd off the road while the next surge goes to the yard, clearing both routes home for one interval, at the cost of a crowd gathering near the dock you will leave by.
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**A plausible experiment that fails, readably.** The player has learned that current opens the pump-hall hatch, and has set the panel to off to keep both branches quiet: both beacons dark, both doors shut, and the first surge, which entered by the sluice, spreading along the interior route with no light to hold it. The player wades into the yard channel and discharges the coil to open the hatch, reasoning that with nothing lit the crowd has no reason to come. The hatch opens. So does the yard beacon: it lights steady for the discharge, because it is on the same wet circuit. The spreading crowd, which had no lit beacon to reach, now has one, and by the precedence in section 4 it retargets and comes down the channel to the hall while the player is inside. As states: panel off; yard circuit powered by the coil for a few seconds; yard beacon steady, never flashing; crowd on the interior route, target none, then target the yard beacon; hatch open for the discharge, then shut. The lesson is legible in the light convention: steady means powered, powered means lure, and the coil powers everything the water touches. Had the crowd been holding at a lit causeway beacon instead, it would not have moved, because a nearer lit beacon keeps a crowd; the failure needs a crowd with nowhere to go, and off is how you make one. The second half of the lesson is in the cables: only the beacon that flashes chooses where a surge enters, and nothing you carry can make a beacon flash; at the next dispatch the player watches the pulse run down a thin cable, and it is not the yard's. The recovery is in section 13.
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**A plausible experiment that fails, readably.** The player has learned that current opens the pump-hall hatch, and has set the panel to off to keep both branches quiet: both beacons dark, both doors shut, and the first surge, which entered by the sluice, spreading along the interior route with no light to hold it. The player wades into the yard channel and discharges the coil to open the hatch, reasoning that with nothing lit the crowd has no reason to come. The hatch opens. So does the yard beacon: it lights steady for the discharge, because it is on the same wet circuit. The spreading crowd, which had no lit beacon to reach, now has one, and by the precedence in section 4 it retargets and comes down the channel to the hall while the player is inside. As states: panel off; yard circuit powered by the coil for a few seconds; yard beacon steady, never flashing; crowd on the interior route, target none, then target the yard beacon; hatch open for the discharge, then shut. The lesson is legible in the light convention: steady means powered, powered means lure, and the coil powers everything the water touches. Had the crowd been holding at a lit causeway beacon instead, it would not have moved, because a nearer lit beacon keeps a crowd; the failure needs a crowd with nowhere to go, and off is how you make one. The world designer's state table records the other legible failure of the same act, with the panel on causeway and the crowd holding there: nothing moves, the hatch opens for the discharge's seconds and then shuts with the surveyor inside, who cranks out; that one teaches the door's timing rather than the routing. The second half of the lesson is in the cables: only the beacon that flashes chooses where a surge enters, and nothing you carry can make a beacon flash; at the next dispatch the player watches the pulse run down a thin cable, and it is not the yard's. The recovery is in section 13.
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- **Tier one, the false refuge (expeditions one to about three).** Why the causeway is overrun. Answered in the pump hall. Changes routing for good.
- **Tier two, the junction and the interior (about four to seven).** What the last crew went in for. The junction gate is on a circuit the panel never reaches. Evidence: the valve beside it, drawn open on the inked plan and found shut; a lamp on the junction pool that lights whenever the yard channel is energised while the valve is open. Inference: joined water carries power, and therefore attraction, across the district, so the crew could open the gate from the yard without the panel. Experiment: open the valve and light the yard at the panel; the lamp on the pool lights and the gate opens, and stays open while the yard is lit, so the tier is reachable with no module at all, at the price that the yard is hot; the pool's lamp is an indicator, not a beacon, and draws nothing. The coil is the quiet way in: valve shut, a discharge in the pool, a few seconds of open gate and nothing else lit. Behind the gate: the second tally board and the crew's note of the relay room's valve sequence. Tier three stays a knowledge gate: the relay room opens by the same current rule and that note, not by a found key.
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- **Tier three, the relay (about eight to eleven).** The relay's timer, in a room at the sluice's head, is what calls the Flood. The chain, proposed here by the lead for the world designer to correct and own, uses only the existing rule. Clue: the relay room's door is on the sluice's own circuit, dead like the junction's, and the crew's note from tier two is a valve sequence with three positions drawn against the inked plan. Compare: the junction valve, already known, joined the yard channel to the pool; the sluice's head sits one pool further along the same water, behind two more valves the player has walked past. Inference: the note is the order that joins the yard's water all the way to the sluice's head, so current from a lit yard, or a discharge in the pool, reaches the door. Action: set the three valves as the note says, light the yard at the panel, and watch the sluice-head lamp; it lights when the water is joined. Consequence: the door opens while the yard is lit, the whole district's water is one energised body, so every crowd that can see a lit beacon is holding at the yard's, and the sluice itself is the way in. Inside: the timer, its three settings, and the last crew's own tally. The final choice, each an expedition-ending act that leaves a different district: **shut it**: no dispatches and no forecast; surges still come, by the sluice only, on an unannounced timer, spreading along the interior route and then both branches; the expedition still ends at fifteen minutes and the docks are still hard stops, so withdrawal is by the culvert as ever, with nothing to read but the crowd itself. **Fix it**: the panel is welded to one branch; that branch's beacon flashes at every dispatch for good, so every surge enters there and holds there while it stays lit, and the other branch never receives one; nothing is safe beyond what the press bound already promises, and the welded branch's door is open forever while the other's is shut forever. **Hold it**: leave it running; the district and the forecast are as they were. Reaching the room and choosing ends the game; nothing about the ending is paid in salvage. Free expeditions continue after any ending under that ending's rules.
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- **Tier three, the relay (about eight to eleven).** The relay's timer, in a room at the sluice's head, is what calls the Flood. The chain below is the world designer's (their revision r16, which merged this document's access chain with their relay chain); their page owns it and this section mirrors it. Prerequisites: the junction gate opened in tier two, and the crew's note from behind it, which has two sides: a three-valve order drawn against the inked plan, and the crew's own conclusion, "relay on the head channel; drain it and it stops; clamp it and it holds one line; we chose neither."
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*Reaching the room.* Notice: the relay room's door, at the sluice's head on the interior route, is on the sluice's own circuit, dead like the junction's was, with a dark indicator lamp beside it. Compare: the junction valve, already known, joined the yard channel to the pool; the sluice's head sits one pool further along the same water, behind two more valves the player has walked past, and the note's three positions match those three valves against the plan. Infer: the note is the order that joins the yard's water all the way to the sluice's head, so current from a lit yard, or a discharge in the pool, reaches the door; the same rule as tier two, one pool further. Act: set the three valves as the note says, light the yard at the panel or discharge in the pool, and watch the sluice-head lamp light when the water is joined. Consequence: the door opens while the yard is lit, and the price is that the whole district's water is now one energised body, so every crowd with a lit beacon to reach holds at the yard's, the yard is hot, and the sluice itself is the Flood's open way in behind the room.
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*Inside the room.* Notice: on the relay's face a drum turns with three marks per cycle, and the forecast countdown on the surveyor's board ticks exactly with it; at a dispatch the drum's mark passes a contact and the thin signal cable leaving the room pulses. The forecast has been this drum all along. Compare: beside the drum, a lever with three positions, cabled to the panel at the causeway head, so the panel has been a remote for this lever; a clamp hangs beside it, unused; a drain valve sits shut on the sluice-head channel that feeds the relay; the note names both and chose neither. Understand: the relay is a device under the power clause, working only while its channel carries current; the drum decides when, the lever decides where; nothing here is new, since a drain valve cuts a channel as the field pump did in the yard, a clamp fixes a lever, and the relay obeys the same rule as a hatch. Infer: three things can be done with what the player already knows, each persistent because it is done to the district and not to the player. Act: **shut**, open the drain valve; **fix**, set the lever and clamp it; **hold**, leave the room as found and record the choice at the dock. Each is one interaction; none consumes salvage; the cost was reaching the room. Consequence: the district changes for good, the expedition still ends at extraction as usual, and the colony's board records which.
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*Each ending, next expedition.* **Shut:** no dispatches and a dark forecast board; the Flood arrives only by the sluice, on an unannounced timer, as trickles that grow over the expedition rather than announced surges, and with no lit beacon to reach they spread along the interior route and then both branches; beacons, hatches and the panel still work, so a lit beacon still draws whatever is inside; existing crowds keep their targets; the expedition still ends at fifteen minutes and the docks are still hard stops, so withdrawal is by the culvert as ever, with nothing to read but the crowd itself; the held-dock choice matters less and the forecast relay repair is spent. **Fix, to causeway or yard:** every dispatch enters by the clamped branch, whose beacon flashes at every dispatch for good, and the other branch never receives a surge; the clamp fixes the signal cable only, so the panel's power positions still work, either branch can be lit or darkened at will, and no door is open or shut forever; the other branch's crowd can still be drawn there by a lit beacon or spread there when one goes dark, so its dock is safer, not safe, nothing beyond what the press bound promises; the choice is good only when the clamped branch is the one away from the held dock, and a colony that later switches its held dock has clamped the Flood onto its own road. **Hold:** unchanged, except that the colony knows the relay could have been stopped and was not, and the board records it. Reaching the room and choosing ends the game; nothing about the ending is paid in salvage. Free expeditions continue after any ending under that ending's rules.
**Early, middle, late.** Early, you learn to read light and to use the culvert. Middle, you carry power to places the panel cannot reach and learn to hold a surge where you want it. Late, the district is a machine you play, and the ending asks what you want it to do.
@@ 446,7 462,7 @@
**Presented for decision, not resolved.** The routing alternative (sight-limited beacons), with PM's confirmation of the written model recorded. The combined recommendation on combat, length and shelf (decision 4) and its alternatives, with what is observed and what is predicted kept apart. The colony's size. The rack's size. The enemy's identity, its name and the drowned-city setting. The presentation assumption.
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**An outside critique, answered where it is this document's to answer.** A critic outside the recorded team has posted a market and originality audit; PM has not yet ruled on its standing, and nothing in it is treated here as an assignment. Four of its points are design questions and are answered above on this page's own terms: what the rule does that its inspirations do not (section 1), the rack as a stated small scope (section 5), the genre's payoff moment (section 6), and the renewable after the mystery is solved with the game's honest length (section 11). Two are the owner's: the enemy's name, since the critic reports that "the Flood" is the name of a well-known existing game's enemy faction and the owner's requirement fixes the meaning of the term rather than the string, which I have not independently verified but is cheap to check and cheap to change; and whether audience, comparables and length should join the document criteria. One is PM's and the critic's to settle between them.
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**The External Critic's audit, answered where it is this document's to answer.** The team's External Critic (a member since Brief D015) posted a market and originality audit, and PM has since disposed of it in its reviews. Four of its points are design questions and are answered above on this page's own terms: what the rule does that its inspirations do not (section 1), the rack as a stated small scope (section 5), the genre's payoff moment (section 6), and the renewable after the mystery is solved with the game's honest length (section 11). Two are the owner's: the enemy's name, since the critic reports that "the Flood" is the name of a well-known existing game's enemy faction and the owner's requirement fixes the meaning of the term rather than the string, which I have not independently verified but is cheap to check and cheap to change; and whether audience, comparables and length should join the document criteria. One is PM's and the critic's to settle between them.
**Unknown until played.** Whether the deadline produces planning or anxiety. Whether fifteen minutes and three surges leave enough observation time. Whether the panic switch dominates. Whether a crowd's press and pursuit read on a busy screen. Whether "no kill experience" leaves fighting satisfying. Whether the leak rate makes the rack a decision or a nuisance. Whether ten to twelve expeditions is enough content. Nothing here is a claim of tested enjoyment.
@@ 493,7 509,8 @@
- **Module / bundle / cargo / salvage:** a module is a piece of gear; salvage is the material the colony needs; a bundle is one slot of it; cargo is the bundles in your rack.
- **Link:** the drawn connection from a battery to the one module it powers.
- **Leak / drip:** charge lost from a battery into connected wet bundles, shown as a drip per bundle.
- **Cutter:** the handheld tool that fires by itself. Needs no slot.
- **Charge / mote:** the Flood's shed energy; a mote is a dropped fleck of it.
- **Loadout:** the modules you carry and how they are arranged. Older pages say "build"; this document avoids that word because the Hub uses it for compiled software. **Loadout expression** is the way a loadout shows a strategy.
@@ 503,7 520,11 @@
## Appendix B: bookkeeping
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**Status.** DES103 r3, which is this page at revision r9, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document; r8 (d37cbf) and r7 (44984c) are page history. Revised against PM's PMR002 (Pm Reviews/Pmr002 219947; Tasks 95db05), which declined the critic's ready verdict and requested a focused revision, and against Design Review REV102 r5 (e2db8b) and External Critique EXT102 r2 (d3b19b).
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**Status.** DES103 r4, which is this page at revision r10, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document; r9 (fb6b6d), r8 (d37cbf) and r7 (44984c) are page history. Revised against PM's PMR002 and its closing review (Pm Reviews/Pmr002 4f18c7; Tasks ab97dc), Design Review REV102 r5 and r6 (e2db8b, 538724), External Critique EXT102 r2 and r3 (d3b19b, d325f9), World and Mystery r15 and r16 (dca569, 812fd6), and Clarity Q39 and Q40.
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**What r10 changes, as DES103 r4.** Section 11's finale is now the world designer's merged chain, which their page owns and this section mirrors: the access chain this document proposed in r9, their relay chain inside the room, and their endings table, with the two reconciliations they made (shut keeps the fifteen-minute window and the hard-stop docks; fix clamps the signal cable only, so intake is fixed and power still switches, and the "doors open or shut forever" wording is dropped). The intended player is stated in PM's provisional wording, with mystery players as a possible second audience. The owner page says the document has been reviewed and revisions remain open, and no longer describes a critic's finding. Two stale sentences that said criterion 11 and the critic's standing awaited PM are corrected. The profitable two-battery electrician is drawn leak-free under a stated rule that a module accepts one link, so the second battery is storage until relinked at a shelter; the burst's nominal and actual durations are stated as equal; PM's vertical-coil arrangement, three bundles with one drip, is added as the cleverer fix. The world designer's alternative failure (the hatch shutting on the surveyor inside) is recorded beside the routing one. Appendix A's module roster now lists all seven, and the battery has its own entry (Q39). Section 11's early-stop paragraph already cites no achievement figures (Q40).
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**Status as first written for r9.** DES103 r3, revised against PM's PMR002 (Pm Reviews/Pmr002 219947; Tasks 95db05), which declined the critic's ready verdict and requested a focused revision, and against Design Review REV102 r5 (e2db8b) and External Critique EXT102 r2 (d3b19b).
**Sources read for r9.** PMR002 (findings 1 to 5 and the asset follow-through); Tasks 95db05 (DES103 Ready with its evidence line; REV103 blocked on this revision; WLD102 revision requested for the finale); REV102 r5 (issues 10 to 13, of which 10 to 12 were met by r8 and 13 is met here); EXT102 r2 (X21 and X22 withdrawn); REF103 r1 (the researcher's own corrections: the "order of magnitude" and "two bands" claims retracted, sampling limits stated); Clarity r10 (no open questions).
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**Criterion 11, where it is answered.** The owner page's recommendation paragraph; section 1's audience paragraph; section 6's payoff design and tradeoff; section 11's length, early-stop and ending paragraphs; section 17's recommendation and decision 4, with the observed data, its limits and the prediction separated.
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**PM report.** Task DES103 r3 against PMR002; artifact Design Document r9 (r8 d37cbf, r7 44984c, r6 12779d, r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); PMR002 findings 1, 2 and 4 are answered on this page and finding 3 is answered as far as the lead can without the world designer's chain, which this revision proposes for them to correct; handoffs: the world designer to verify the two scenes' targets under the precedence rule and to own the tier-three chain; the critic's REV103 on this exact revision; the reader's CLR102 on the owner page; the world designer's page is aligned and the map exists in one place; no canonical decision changed; reasoning is written design against the cited revisions, no player data; two outside facts are cited with their sources and caveats (Steam's refund terms, read directly; the researcher's measured price bands, not independently verified); risks and tuning bounds are listed in sections 15 and 16; the independent critic's verdict on r3 is ready for owner review, and r4 and r5 add only the residual and the pitch layer. Next handoff: PM to accept DES102 and either open DES103 on this revision or say what more the owner packet needs; the world designer to align their page to sections 2 and 4; the critic to confirm the residual. One PM request: rule on the routing model, since it decides section 4 and both scenes, and say whether the alternative still goes to the owner as a decision.
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**PM report.** Task DES103 r4 against PMR002 and its closing review; artifact Design Document r10 (r9 fb6b6d, r8 d37cbf, r7 44984c, r6 12779d, r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); PMR002 findings 1 to 4 are answered on this page, with finding 3 now the world designer's chain mirrored here; handoffs: the critic's REV103 on this exact revision, with the per-beat ledger method they announced; the world designer to check that section 11 mirrors their r16 without drift; the reader's CLR102 on the owner page; the world designer's page is aligned and the map exists in one place; no canonical decision changed; reasoning is written design against the cited revisions, no player data; two outside facts are cited with their sources and caveats (Steam's refund terms, read directly; the researcher's measured price bands, not independently verified); risks and tuning bounds are listed in sections 15 and 16; the independent critic's verdict on r3 is ready for owner review, and r4 and r5 add only the residual and the pitch layer. Next handoff: PM to accept DES102 and either open DES103 on this revision or say what more the owner packet needs; the world designer to align their page to sections 2 and 4; the critic to confirm the residual. One PM request: rule on the routing model, since it decides section 4 and both scenes, and say whether the alternative still goes to the owner as a decision.
