- **Carrying space:** equipment competes with spare oxygen and discoveries.
- **Power:** the link preview refuses a configuration whose possible concurrent operating demand exceeds the rig's visible supply. Mutually exclusive link states and buffered charge/discharge states are checked separately rather than summing every theoretical maximum; any state that can truly overlap must fit. A transformed projectile continues reserving supply until its finite flight ends.
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- **Heat:** a named action reserves its complete heat at commitment rather than spending secretly per victim. Without headroom an automatic actuator holds ready and a manual command refuses before spending charge. Once accepted, movement, cover or an absorber may shorten the physical effect without refund.
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- **Heat:** a named action reserves its complete heat at commitment rather than spending secretly per victim. Without headroom an automatic actuator holds ready and a manual command refuses before spending charge. Once accepted, movement or cover may shorten the physical effect without refund; no hop, rebound or fragment performs another hidden heat check.
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When a full store makes a climax available, a visible manual-ready hold protects the required actuator's next natural-ready instant before automatic fire can consume it. Pressing while the actuator is busy arms only that next opportunity and can be cancelled. Acceptance spends; cancellation, refusal or letting the brief shown opportunity lapse spends nothing and releases ordinary fire. This occurs in play, not through a journal relink, and never grants readiness.
Multiple outputs therefore buy coverage and spectacle by consuming the same capacity that could support defence, oxygen or a more focused chain. Ordinary fire stays mostly automatic. Facing, movement and proximity determine what the actuators can reach; the player reserves button presses for labelled specials such as a barrier, shove or stored discharge.
@@ 58,7 60,7 @@
Spectacular builds need effects that can travel, branch and return. A blanket “each part resolves once and every return stops” makes that fantasy disappear. The proposed replacement is a visible finite **route budget**: depending on the named effect it may count routes, hops, bodies, rebounds, penetration distance, flight time, fragments or bloom reach.
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An automatic launch, manual special, enemy strike or environmental event begins one causal sequence. A part or temporary upgrade gives that sequence only its inspected allowances. An Arc hop or branch consumes its route/body allowance; a disc consumes travel, time, rebound and body allowances; a lance and bloom consume their finite penetration and reach. A return can revisit compatible parts only when its named effect actually provides a signal output; Arc Emitter's ordinary physical arc does not. Cover, an absorber, missing targets or budget exhaustion ends that branch visibly.
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An automatic launch, manual special, enemy strike or environmental event begins one causal sequence. A part or temporary upgrade gives that sequence only its inspected allowances. An Arc hop or branch consumes its route/body allowance; a disc consumes travel, time, rebound and body allowances; a lance and bloom consume their finite penetration and reach. A return can revisit compatible parts only when its named effect actually provides a signal output; Arc Emitter's ordinary physical arc does not. Cover, missing targets or budget exhaustion ends that branch visibly.
A descendant cannot refill the allowance that created it, refresh its own readiness, release its in-flight supply reservation early or mint power from itself. Forking divides or copies only the kind of event its inspected rule names; stored charge and consumed salvage remain real inputs. A later automatic firing cycle, a new manual special or a separate enemy attack starts a new sequence with its own budget. This allows a disc to rebound several times or an Arc to sing across a dense crowd without an undefined loop that runs forever in an empty room.
@@ 80,11 82,11 @@
## Three ordered transformations, not recipes
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**Storm Choir — 7 carrying / 7 mounted spaces.** Base short chain → Echoing Arc's added routes → Thunderhead's full-store three-head storm and lance. The player crosses toward connected density and chooses the release. Spacing, insulation and hard cover interrupt routes; it runs hot and has no Barrier. A front absorber can make a costly setup feel wasted if the preview is unclear.
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**Storm Choir — 7 carrying / 7 mounted spaces.** Base short chain → Echoing Arc's added routes → Thunderhead's full-store three-head storm and lance. The player crosses toward connected density and chooses the release. Spacing and hard cover interrupt routes; it runs hot and has no Barrier. A moving gap or structural rib can make a costly setup feel wasted if the shown connected regions were ignored.
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**Ricochet Foundry — 7 carrying / 7 mounted spaces.** Base ordinary shot plus manual shove → Rebound Disc's automatic bank → Fragment Wake's terminal fan → Foundry Drop's full-store master disc and fan. Manual Trigger→Nozzle moves eligible bodies or loose cover; it never steers the disc. Open space, soft surfaces and absorbers kill routes. Spending the shove on setup may remove the escape tool; an absorber can end the disc without its fan.
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**Ricochet Foundry — 7 carrying / 7 mounted spaces.** Base ordinary shot plus manual shove → Rebound Disc's automatic bank → Fragment Wake's terminal fan → Foundry Drop's full-store master disc and fan. Manual Trigger→Nozzle moves eligible bodies or loose cover; it never steers the disc. The preview distinguishes a hard face with a clear reflected line from a terminal face and shows the fan cone. Open space, soft/irregular surfaces and poor reflected lanes shorten routes. Spending the shove on setup may remove the escape tool; a fan that opens into fixed cover may reach almost nobody.
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**Gravity Furnace — 8 carrying / 8 mounted spaces.** Automatic pressure shots plus outward stride pulses → Inward Draft's rear pull → Furnace Burst's full-store lance and bloom. The player runs a wake into a chosen line, then fires or escapes. Heavy bodies and hard cover resist or divide the effect; ranged attackers keep firing. Holding for a larger knot brings danger closer, and a blocked bloom may feel much smaller than the gathered crowd.
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**Gravity Furnace — 8 carrying / 8 mounted spaces.** Automatic pressure shots plus outward stride pulses → Inward Draft's rear pull → Furnace Burst's full-store lance and bloom. The player runs a wake into a chosen line, then fires or escapes. Hard cover divides the effect and ranged attackers keep firing. Bellback's pressure wave can scatter the wake; this proposal also lets a clear Inward Draft displacement interrupt its brace as a Nozzle response. Holding for a larger knot brings danger closer, and a blocked bloom may feel much smaller than the gathered crowd.
These are ordered behavioural ladders, not XP thresholds, guaranteed pickups or a selected reward frequency. They work under either open growth alternative: resolved-stage choices, or regular defeated-enemy growth with larger milestones. They use only existing reusable parts and temporary effects that all expire on return. The player may hybridize them, stop early or use the same parts for defence or station machinery. The meaningful question is what the machine does in this expedition and what it costs, not whether the player completed an authored set.
