2026-09-06 21:42:16
Anonymous:
CMB101 r4: answers PMR005 and does what it asks first - the two stacked reconciliation appendices are consolidated into one current contract at section 0, with the history moved to a revision log at section 12, so the page states what is adopted rather than accumulating layers. Corrects the claim that all four Campaign roles sit at precedence line 2 (only the Floater does, and only while its water flows). Withdraws the Heavy wording request, which PM declines. Withdraws the nineteen-kill-motes argument under D023's selected pickup priority. Narrows the tint finding from a contradiction to a cue-budget concern. Corrects the cable reel against Equipment U6's actual revised definition - exposed power terminals, not arbitrary wet points - so it neither justifies R10 nor rewrites which water is one body. Restates R9's real open questions (which consumers lose power, alternate supply, recovery) instead of treating a prohibition list as settling them.
hold the flood/mechanics/combat.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Combat Rules
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**CMB101 · r3 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — first submission of this role.**
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r3 answers [PMR004 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) in the new §0B: the joint effect table PM asked Combat and Equipment to produce, the intensity rule that separates fixed power from the coil, the arc and the Spark, and **four withdrawals — R10, R3's one-second window, R4's single cue channel, and the prohibitive wording of R7/R8**. r2 added §0: every proposal re-checked against the Lead's shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) and [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign), which landed while r1 was being written. **R3's recommendation is revised** (one to two seconds, not one) and **one objection to the Campaign page's Heavy is withdrawn**; nothing else changed. The base role is **renamed from Drifter to Walker**. New page otherwise; it supersedes nothing. It states the shared combat grammar that [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) and the six role pages are written against, and proposes ten numbered revisions (R1–R10) to gaps and collisions the roster exposes.
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**CMB101 · r4 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — changes required (PMR005).**
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r4 answers [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) and does what it asks first: **the two stacked reconciliation appendices are consolidated into one current contract at §0**, with the history moved to a revision log at §12. Substantive changes: the precedence-line classification of the Campaign roles is corrected; the request to replace the Heavy's hit count with a phrase is **withdrawn**; the “nineteen kill motes” argument is **withdrawn** under D023's selected pickup priority; the tint finding is **narrowed** from a contradiction to a cue-budget concern; the cable reel claim is **corrected** against Equipment's actual revised definition; and R9's real open questions are restated rather than treated as settled.
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; [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions).
The Lead owns the spine rule — conduction, power, attraction, charge — and as of [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) that page is the shared-rule contract, with [Design Document §4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) as its derivation. **That rule is canonical there, not here.** This page does three things the spine rule deliberately does not:
1. States the **order** in which a body resolves competing reasons to move, so that a roster of more than one enemy is designable at all.
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2. States the **closed grammar** of targeting, damage, status and charge, so that [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) and this page cannot invent two incompatible systems.
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2. States the **shared grammar** of targeting, damage, status and charge, so that [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) and this page cannot invent two incompatible systems.
3. Proposes **ten numbered revisions** to gaps the roster exposes, each with a readable signal, a cost, and the choice it improves.
Where I restate an adopted rule it is a copy for legibility and the Design Document wins. Where I propose something it is marked **[Proposal]** and numbered.
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## 0. Checked against the shared-rule contract (added in r2)
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## 0. Current state: what is adopted, proposed, or withdrawn
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The Lead published the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) and [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) while r1 of this page was being written against Design Document r14 and PM's r1 seed. **The contract is now the page to cite for conduction, power, attraction and charge**, and this page cites it below wherever r1 cited GDD §4. The rules did not change; the address of the rules did.
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*This section replaces the two stacked reconciliation appendices r2 and r3 added. [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) asked for one current contract rather than another layer, and it is right: the older narratives are in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat/history) and are summarised in the revision log at the foot of this page.*
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Every proposal on this page re-checked against the contract, honestly:
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**Where the rules live.** The Lead owns the spine rule, and [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) is the shared-rule contract — the page to cite for conduction, power, attraction and charge. [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) owns items. This page owns **the order in which a body resolves its reasons to move**, the **targeting/damage/status grammar**, and **composition**. Where the three disagree, the contract wins on rules and Equipment wins on its own items; this page names the disagreement rather than routing around it.
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| | Status after the contract | |
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| --- | --- | --- |
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| **R1** precedence stack | **Still needed, and needed harder.** Contract §3 states the retarget-or-spread precedence and states that "pursuit is local and short, and a crowd's outward pressure (the press) is separate from it" — but it still does not order pursuit against attraction, and the Campaign page now proposes three further roles (Floater, Heavy, Static) that each need line 2 to exist. R1 is now the stack that the Lead's own roster requires, not only mine |
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| **R2** press bounded by crowd size, drawn as a ring | **Still open.** The contract names the press and separates it from pursuit; it gives it no rate and no stop |
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| **R3** the energised window | *Superseded by §0B.* r2 recommended one to two seconds against the contract's "the seconds the charge lasts". **r3 withdraws that and adopts [Equipment's eight seconds](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Coil)**, accepting that insulation is therefore required to collect inside a channel you discharged into |
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| **R4** glow carries one bit; roles ride on silhouette | **Partly agreed, and it exposes a disagreement between the Lead's two pages.** Contract §8 says "enemy variants by size and tint"; Campaign §4 says of the same roster "readable by size, silhouette or spark, **not by tint alone**" and "health and tint are not roles". Campaign §4 is right. R4 goes one step further and is reported, not imposed |
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| **R5** Carriers take uncollected motes | Unaffected. Now part of the Static/Carrier merge in [Enemies §0.3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) |
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| **R6** unwithholdable cutter, visible target line | **Unaffected and newly load-bearing.** Campaign §4 adds a second weapon, the **prod**, which "pushes and never kills". Under R6 it must publish its targeting rule: what it selects, whether it can be withheld, and what its line looks like |
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| **R7** three statuses, closed | **Holds, with one ruling made here rather than routed:** the prod's push is *movement*, not a status. It has no duration and nothing reads it off a body. The list stays at three |
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| **R8** no damage numbers | **Narrowed, and one objection withdrawn.** Campaign §4's Heavy takes ten hits — a hit count, which R8 permits, not a health pool with modifiers, which it does not. The Lead's economic argument for heavies persuaded me and is recorded in [Enemies §0.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies). The one clause I still ask for is that the resistance be stated as "cannot be cleared by the cutter in useful time" rather than as a published hit-count ladder, because a ladder is what Equipment will price weapons against |
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| **R9** a role may darken a beacon | **Passes the Lead's own published test.** Contract §7 lists what a district may not add: "anything that makes a lamp draw, a coil select intake, an organism shed twice, or a device work without current." The [Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder) does none of the four; it makes a device *stop* working for want of current. Still needs the explicit ruling (C5) |
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| **R10** an arc chain travels through energised water | *Superseded by §0B.* r2 argued it was more consequential because of the cable reel. **r3 withdraws R10 as the draft rule** and adopts Equipment's bounded chain, on [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004)'s reasoning that a bounded chain preserves the spatial limits that make a burst a positioning decision |
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**The composition budget in §7 now covers eight roles, not six.** The merged roster and its asset cost are in [Enemies §0.6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies); the per-district and per-surge caps here are unchanged, so no expedition asks a player to read more than four kinds of body at once.
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**Naming.** The base role is **Walker**, the Lead's name, published first. This page's r1 called it Drifter; [the role page is at Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker) and [Enemies/Drifter](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Drifter) is a pointer.
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## 0B. Response to PMR004 (added in r3)
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[PMR004 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) reviewed [Combat 5edba0](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat?revision=5edba0) and [Enemies 0a3fc1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=0a3fc1) against [Equipment a44990](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment?revision=a44990) and [Inventory and Charge 73eb77](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Inventory%20And%20Charge?revision=73eb77). **Four of its findings are correct and are fixed here; two more are fair and change how this page is worded. Nothing was defended that should not have been.**
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### 0.1 The intensity rule
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### The intensity rule — one sentence that resolves most of PMR004 §2
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Everything PM asked to be separated — fixed power, the coil, the arc, the Spark's death — separates cleanly on one principle the design already has. GDD §4's own grounding note observes that real electrofishing uses **one electrode at two intensities**, a weak field that draws and a stronger one that stuns. Applied to bodies:
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Everything PMR004 asked to be separated — fixed power, the coil, the arc, a Spark's death — separates on one principle the design already has. GDD §4's grounding note observes that real electrofishing uses **one electrode at two intensities**, a weak field that draws and a stronger one that stuns. Applied to bodies:
> **Current does two different things to two different kinds of body.**
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> **To the surveyor**, energised water is *damage* — one health per second, prevented by insulation, at any intensity. **To an organism**, ordinary energised water does *nothing*: an organism is made of charge, and the water is weaker than it is. Only a **bank-strength discharge** — a full battery through the coil — reaches an organism, and what it does is **stun and make it shed**, never damage. **Nothing in this game damages an organism with electricity.** The arc damages by conducting the *cutter's hits* along bodies, which is a weapon effect with a weapon's cue, not a water effect.
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> **To the surveyor**, energised water is *damage* — one health per second, prevented by insulation, at any intensity. **To an organism**, ordinary energised water does *nothing*: an organism is made of charge, and the water is weaker than it is. Only a **bank-strength discharge** reaches an organism, and what it does is **stun and make it shed**, never damage. **Nothing in this game damages an organism with electricity.** The arc damages by conducting the *cutter's hits* along bodies — a weapon effect with a weapon's cue, not a water effect.
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This answers PM directly: fixed power is a hazard to you and nothing to them; the Spark's death cannot silently supply a chain-kill rule, because there is no rule by which energised water kills an organism; and the arc and the water are two different effects with two different cues, exactly as [Equipment's Arc page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc) asks.
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This is a **proposal to the Lead**, not a deduction: it is the smallest rule that answers all four of PM's questions at once, and it is what stops a [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark)'s death quietly supplying a chain-kill rule.
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### The joint effect table — Combat's half, for Equipment to countersign
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### 0.2 The effect contract — Combat's half, for Equipment to countersign
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PM asked Combat and Equipment to submit **one** table for fixed power, Coil, Arc and Spark. This is Combat's half, written to match [Coil C1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Coil) and [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc) rather than against them; **it is not agreed until Equipment says so**, and where I have adopted Equipment's number over my own I say so in the row.
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PMR004 asked Combat and Equipment for **one** table. This is Combat's half, written to match [Coil C1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Coil) and [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc) rather than against them. **Where Equipment had a number and this page had a different one, Equipment's is adopted and the row says so.** It is not agreed until Equipment says so.
| **Power duration** (how long water is energised) | While the branch is switched to it — indefinite, not an interval | **8 s** — **adopting Equipment's number and withdrawing this page's 1–2 s** (see below) | **None.** The arc does not energise water or machinery ([Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc), adopted) | **2 s.** Shorter than the coil because it is one body's charge, not a full bank's — the one place this page keeps a second number, and that is its reason |
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| **Stun** | **None.** Below bank strength | **8 s**, every conducting body in the connected water | None | **None.** Below bank strength |
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| **Damage to the surveyor** | 1/s in the water, unless insulated | 1/s for its 8 s, unless insulated | None | 1/s for its 2 s, unless insulated |
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| **Damage to organisms** | **None** | **None** — it stuns, it does not hurt | The cutter's hit, conducted: **at most 3 additional bodies per direct hit**, each once per hit, each hop needing proximity and line of sight ([Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc), adopted; **this page's R10 is withdrawn as the draft rule**) | **None** |
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| **Power duration** (water energised) | While the branch is switched to it — a state, not an interval | **8 s — Equipment's number, adopted; this page's earlier 1 s and 1–2 s are both withdrawn** | **None.** The arc does not energise water or machinery ([Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc), adopted) | **2 s.** The one place a second number is kept, and its reason: one body's charge, not a full bank's |
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| **Stun** | **None** — below bank strength | **8 s**, every conducting body in the connected water | None | **None** — below bank strength |
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| **Damage to the surveyor** | 1/s in the water unless insulated | 1/s for its 8 s unless insulated | None | 1/s for its 2 s unless insulated |
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| **Damage to organisms** | **None** | **None** — it stuns; it does not hurt | The cutter's hit, conducted: **at most 3 additional bodies per direct hit**, each once per hit, each hop needing proximity and line of sight ([Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc), adopted) | **None** |
| **Propagation** | The whole connected water body of that circuit | The whole connected water body the surveyor touches | **Body to body only**, bounded as above | The whole connected water body the Spark stood in |
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| **Refresh / repeat** | Continuous while switched | A fresh discharge re-stuns, but a spent crowd sheds nothing more | One burst per full bank, ~10 s, no extension, no retrigger from a chained hit | Once, on death. A stunned Spark is alive and discharges if killed during the stun |
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| **Charge yield** | None | 5 units per **complete ten** stunned bodies that have not already shed | 1-unit mote from each killed body that has not already shed; **the drawn bank takes none of it** | Its own 1-unit mote if unshed — that is the *kill*, not the discharge. The discharge yields nothing |
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| **Readable state** | Steady beacon; arcs along the water's edges | Arcs; stun posture; a flat, mote-less feedback when nothing sheds, so a wasted bank reads as wasted | Direct hits distinguished from chain links; bank commitment and remaining seconds on the rack readout | Flickering outline before; arcs after; no stun posture on anything |
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| **Refresh / repeat** | Continuous while switched | A fresh discharge re-stuns; a spent crowd sheds nothing more | One burst per full bank, ~10 s, no extension, no retrigger from a chained hit | Once, on death. A stunned Spark is alive and discharges if killed during the stun |
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| **Charge yield** | None | 5 units per **complete ten** stunned bodies that have not already shed | 1-unit mote from each killed body that has not already shed; the drawn bank takes none of it | Its 1-unit mote if unshed — that is the *kill*. The discharge yields nothing |
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| **Readable state** | Steady beacon; arcs along the water's edges | Arcs; stun posture; a flat, mote-less feedback when nothing sheds | Direct hits distinguished from chain links; bank commitment and remaining seconds | Flickering outline before; arcs after; no stun posture on anything |
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**Two consequences that are easy to get wrong.** A coil discharge into a channel that is *already* fixed-powered adds no hazard the player was not already standing in — its contribution is the stun. And an arc burst is legal and useful in a channel with no power at all, because it never touches the water.
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**Unresolved and named, not papered over:** whether fixed panel power energises a branch's channel water at all. Nothing states it outright, [GDD §5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c)'s electrician waits in a lit yard *in insulation*, and GDD §8 has a coil discharge light the yard beacon "because it is on the same wet circuit". **Combat proceeds on yes**; Encounter A turns on it, and Encounter A says so. Lead rules (C10).
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**Two consequences worth stating because they are easy to get wrong.** A coil discharge into a channel that is *already* fixed-powered adds no hazard the player was not already standing in — its contribution is the stun, not the water. And an arc burst is legal and useful in a channel with no power at all, because it never touches the water.
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### 0.3 The roster, and who owns which part
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### What this page withdraws, and why
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Eight roles. Three are the Lead's, on [Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign); four are this page's; one is a merge. **[PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) accepts the Walker naming for coordination and treats the merged roster and the bounded Carrier as proposals**, which is what they are.
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- **R10 (an arc chain travels through energised water) is withdrawn as the proposed draft rule**, and PM's reasoning is better than mine: a bounded chain preserves spatial limits, which is the property that makes an arc burst a *positioning* decision rather than a screen-clear. Equipment's cap — three additional bodies per hit, proximity and line of sight — is adopted. R10 stays documented in §6 as an alternative, with the note that it is not an implied property of electricity, and the [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark)'s late payoff is rewritten around the bounded model.
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- **R3's 1–2 second window is withdrawn in favour of Equipment's 8 seconds.** One number is better than two, and Equipment's is tied to the stun interval the source scene already uses. The consequence is real and I accept it: **insulation is effectively required to collect inside a channel you have discharged into**, which is exactly the shape [GDD §5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c)'s electrician rack already has (coil, battery, insulation).
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- **R4 is corrected: conductivity and remaining yield are two channels, not one.** PM is right that confusing a [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) with a spent Walker is *not* harmless — one resists a stun the other still receives. Corrected in §4: **glow carries remaining yield** (a Crust glows until it is killed, like anything else), and **encrustation carries non-conduction**, independently. My "the one confusion that costs is carried by the strongest cue" was wrong because I had assigned both facts to one cue.
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- **R7 and R8 are restated as scoped proposals, not prohibitions.** PM is right that the owner's brief bans neither numerical growth, nor further statuses, nor bosses, and that a compact grammar is a proposal rather than proof the alternatives are bad. The wording in §6 and the elites recommendation in [Enemies §6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) are corrected to say what they cost rather than that they are forbidden.
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- **Pursuit is now assessed against merged crowds, not a first surge.** Added to R1: pursuit range is a property of each body, so a branch holding two merged surges presents a contact edge proportional to its length, not to a surge. The [R2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) ring is what makes that readable, and the [GDD §15](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) tuning bound should be checked against the third dispatch's merged crowd rather than the first.
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- **Both written encounters had errors and both are corrected** on [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies): Encounter A wrongly let a fixed-powered channel go inert, and Encounter B's bank arithmetic left two empty banks where the rules leave one full one. PM found both; neither is a matter of taste.
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| Role | Owner | Precedence line it exercises ([§2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)) | Status |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| **[Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker)** | Campaign / Combat | **Line 3**, ordinary attraction | Base role. Naming accepted by PMR005 |
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| **Floater** | Campaign ([§3.1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)) | **Line 2 while its water flows** (its target is the flow); **line 3 when it stops** | Adopted unchanged; definition stays attributed on Campaign until an author-coordinated transfer |
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| **Heavy** | Campaign ([§4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)) | **Line 3.** It is a Walker that a doorway cannot be cleared past quickly | Adopted. **This page's request to replace its ten-hit count with a phrase is withdrawn** — PMR005 declines it and is right that a number is inspectable where a phrase is not |
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| **[Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier)** | Combat | **Line 2**, nearest reachable loose charge in acquisition range | Merge of Campaign's Static with this page's Carrier. Proposal |
| **[Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust)** | Combat | **Line 3.** Ordinary behaviour; only its physics differ | Proposal |
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| **[Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark)** | Combat | **Line 3.** Ordinary behaviour; only its death differs | Proposal |
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| **[Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)** | Combat | **Line 2**, nearest reachable powered cable run | Proposal, pending the R9 questions in 0.4 |
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**Corrected here:** r2 of this page said all four Campaign roles sat at line 2. They do not, and PMR005 caught it — only the Floater does, and only while its water flows. Ordinary Walker, Heavy, Crust and Spark attraction is line 3; a role sits at line 2 only when its *target* is something other than a beacon.
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### The Floater, since PM asked for one disposition
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### 0.4 What is still open, stated as questions with my position
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Already given, and it is not a deletion: [Enemies §0.1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) adopts the Lock Flight's flow-carried Floater **unchanged and owned by Campaign**, as a precedence-line-2 role whose target is the flow while the flow runs. The roster is eight roles, not six replacing four — Walker, Floater and Heavy are Campaign's, Carrier is the merge of Campaign's Static with this page's Carrier, and Anchor, Crust, Spark and Grounder are new here.
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| # | Question | Owner | Position I proceed on |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| C1 | Does Equipment countersign the effect contract in 0.2? | Equipment + Lead | It adopts Equipment's numbers wherever they differed from mine. PMR004 asked for one table jointly submitted; this is half of one |
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| C2 | Does fixed panel power energise a branch's channel water? | Lead | **Yes.** Encounter A turns on it and says so |
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| C3 | Is press bounded by crowd size, drawn as a ring (R2)? | Lead | **Bounded.** Less simulation than the alternative, and it makes GDD §15's tuning bound checkable on paper — against the *third* dispatch's merged crowd, not the first surge |
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| C4 | R9 — a Grounder darkens a beacon. **Which connected consumers lose power? What alternate supply exists? What is the recovery?** | Lead + World, in the shared topology contract | Passing the contract's §7 prohibitions is necessary and not sufficient, and PMR005 is right to say so. My position: a grounded run loses **everything on that run**, beacon and hatch alike, because that is the rule already applied; there is **no alternate supply**; recovery is killing the body or re-switching the branch. Written as a proposal into the topology contract, not asserted here |
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| C5 | R10 — does an arc chain travel through energised water? | Lead | **Withdrawn.** The bounded body-to-body chain is adopted; expanded electrical reach needs an argued change, not an inference from the word *current*. Retained as a documented alternative in the revision log |
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| C6 | Are the role names final? | World | No. They are functional placeholders with the mechanic in the name; World owns the fiction and should rename freely |
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| C7 | Do damage numbers exist (R8)? | Lead + Equipment | **Recommendation, not a ban**, and PMR005 is right that the owner forbids none of it. Different *hit counts* are fine and always were. What R8 argues against is a published ladder for weapons to be priced against |
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| C8 | Is the status list closed at three (R7)? | Equipment | **Three for this draft**, extended by a revision of this page that states the reason. The [prod](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Alternative%20Tools)'s push is *movement*, not a status |
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| C9 | Cue overlap: role, spent charge, conductivity, imminent discharge | Lead | **Narrowed after PMR005.** The contract's "size and tint" and Campaign's "not by tint alone" are not a contradiction, and r2 of this page overstated it as one. The real concern stands and is smaller: **four facts want cues and brightness cannot carry more than one.** My proposal is glow = remaining yield, encrustation = non-conduction, flicker = imminent discharge, silhouette and position = role. Lead states the redundant set |
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| C10 | The [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) says the arc drains a bank in "about twenty seconds"; GDD §6, GDD §13 and [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc) all say ten | Lead / Editor | Ten. Reported, not edited |
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@@ 189,7 187,7 @@
**Adopted and load-bearing, restated here as a limit on my own roster:** *the panel alone decides the intake.* Current the player injects travels power, never signal; it can light a beacon steady and open a hatch, but it can never choose where the next surge enters (GDD §4). [World r20](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de) states the same as a contract on Campaign and Combat: a district *may not* change what power, signal or a beacon means, or make an ordinary lamp draw the Flood.
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**[Proposal R9], and the argument that it is inside that contract.** One role, the **[Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)**, can darken a beacon: it climbs a live cable run and grounds it, and the beacon on that run flickers and then goes dark until the Grounder is killed or the branch is switched.
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**[Proposal R9], and the argument that it is inside that contract — necessary, and not sufficient.** [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) is right that clearing the contract's prohibition list does not settle which connected consumers lose power, what alternate supply exists, or how recovery works; those are C4 in [§0.4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) and belong in the shared topology contract with Lead and World. What follows is the containment argument only. One role, the **[Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)**, can darken a beacon: it climbs a live cable run and grounds it, and the beacon on that run flickers and then goes dark until the Grounder is killed or the branch is switched.
- It does **not** change what a beacon means. A grounded beacon is an unpowered beacon, and an unpowered beacon draws nothing — the existing rule, applied. Dark still means dark.
- It **cannot** cause a dispatch, touch the signal cable, or select an intake. It removes a light; it never makes one. The panel's monopoly is untouched.
@@ 199,7 197,7 @@
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## 6. The closed grammar — the interface with Equipment
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## 6. The shared grammar — the interface with Equipment
This section exists so that [EQP101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) and CMB101 cannot invent two systems. **I propose it as a contract and ask Equipment to accept, amend or reject it in writing.** Where it constrains Equipment it constrains this page equally.
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**One gap I could not close from the source, and it belongs to the Lead [Proposal R3].** How long does a coil discharge keep the water energised? The stun is 8 seconds, but the *water's* energised window is never stated — and the uninsulated player's cost, one health per second in energised water, cannot be computed without it. This matters directly: the electrician loadout spends a slot on insulation, and the price of not spending it is currently unknowable.
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**Settled in r3: 8 seconds, adopting [Equipment's Coil C1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Coil).** r1 of this page proposed 1 second and r2 revised it to 1–2; both are withdrawn. Equipment's number ties the powered interval to the stun interval the source scene already uses, and one number is better than two. **The consequence is real and accepted: insulation is effectively required to collect inside a channel you have discharged into**, which is exactly the shape GDD §5's electrician rack already has — coil, battery, insulation. The full row is in the joint effect table in §0B.
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**Settled in r3: 8 seconds, adopting [Equipment's Coil C1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Coil).** r1 of this page proposed 1 second and r2 revised it to 1–2; both are withdrawn. Equipment's number ties the powered interval to the stun interval the source scene already uses, and one number is better than two. **The consequence is real and accepted: insulation is effectively required to collect inside a channel you have discharged into**, which is exactly the shape GDD §5's electrician rack already has — coil, battery, insulation. The full row is in the effect contract at [§0.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat).
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### Conduction and the arc [R10] — a consequence of clause 1, made explicit
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### Conduction and the arc — R10, withdrawn
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**[Proposal R10 — WITHDRAWN as the draft rule in r3; retained as a documented alternative.]** The proposal was: while a body of connected water is energised, an arc chain propagates **through that water as well as body to body**, reaching every conducting body the water connects. **[PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) recommends the bounded model instead and its reasoning is better than mine** — a bounded chain preserves spatial limits, which is what makes a burst a positioning decision rather than a screen-clear. **Adopted in its place, from [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc): at most three additional bodies per direct hit, each once per hit, each hop needing proximity and line of sight, and the arc never energises water or machinery.** The paragraphs below record the withdrawn proposal and why it was attractive; they are not the current rule.
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This is not a new clause. Clause 1 already says current flows through water to everything the water connects, and an arc hit is current. But the document never states what happens when the arc's current and energised water meet, and the answer is the single largest power spike in this submission, so it should be written down rather than discovered. **This is a proposal to the Lead, who owns clause 1.**
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Where it would have bitten: a [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) killed in water energises that water, so a burst run through a channel crowd containing living Sparks would have kept re-energising the channel and the chain would have stopped being local. It was attractive because it made the late payoff cost five separate preparations — the arc, a full bank, Sparks deliberately left alive, a crowd routed into connected water, and insulation or dry footing. **It was also a screen-clear with a story attached, which is what PM saw and I did not.**
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**R10 was the upside, not the foundation, and the roster is unaffected by losing it:** the [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) remains the role that makes the automatic weapon a liability — which was always its main job — and the late payoff is the adopted coil-then-arc double in GDD §13, aimed by the bounded chain's need for density and line of sight. R10 is not an implied property of electricity, and it should not be reintroduced by inference from clause 1; if it ever returns it needs its own ruling.
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r1 proposed that an arc chain travel through energised water. **It is withdrawn**; the adopted rule is [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc)'s bounded body-to-body chain, in the effect contract at [§0.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). The proposal, and why it was attractive and wrong, are kept in the revision log at §12 so it can be argued again if anyone wants to.
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@@ 314,22 306,9 @@
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## 10. Open questions, and what I would rule
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## 10. Open questions
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Stated as positions, not as tickets (Wiki Conventions §11a). None blocks the roster; each names what I proceed on.
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| # | Question | Owner | My position, on which I proceed unless ruled otherwise |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| C1 | ~~How long does a coil discharge keep water energised?~~ (R3) | — | **Closed in r3.** Eight seconds, adopting [Equipment's Coil C1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Coil). Insulation is therefore required to collect inside a channel you discharged into, and that is accepted. |
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| C2 | Is press bounded by crowd size (R2), or simulated? | Lead | Bounded, with a drawn ring. Less simulation, and it makes the §15 tuning bound checkable on paper. |
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| C3 | Do damage numbers exist? (R8) | Lead + Equipment | No. Decide now; cheap today, expensive after a catalogue. |
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| C4 | Is the status list closed at three? (R7) | Equipment | Yes, and I will extend it only by revising this page with a reason. |
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| C5 | May a role darken a beacon? (R9) | Lead + World | Yes, under the three limits in §5, and it passes the contract's own §7 test. **Corrected in r3 at PMR004's request:** darkening a beacon does not by itself make a crowd spread — the crowd first re-evaluates line 3 and retargets to any other reachable lit beacon. It spreads only when there is none, which in the pumping district means the panel is exclusive and the other branch is dark. |
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| C6 | Are the role names final? | World | No. Walker, Anchor, Carrier, Crust, Spark and Grounder are **functional placeholders**, chosen so the mechanic is in the name. World owns the Flood's fiction and identity and should rename freely; I will follow. |
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| C7 | ~~Does an arc chain travel through energised water?~~ (R10) | — | **Closed in r3: no.** [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) recommends the bounded arc and its reasoning is better than mine. Equipment's cap is adopted; R10 is a documented alternative and must not be reintroduced by inference from clause 1. |
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| C8 | The [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) says the arc drains a battery over "about twenty seconds"; GDD §6 r14 says about ten, §13's scene is built on ten, and [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc) says ten. | Lead (the Editor reports being paused) | Ten. **Reported, not edited** — the Glossary is not mine. Encounter B in [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) uses ten. |
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| C9 | Does the joint effect table in §0B match Equipment's intent? | Equipment + Lead | It is written to match [Coil C1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Coil) and [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc), adopting Equipment's numbers over this page's wherever they differed. **PM asked for one table jointly submitted; this is half of one.** Equipment countersigns, amends or rejects; the Lead resolves anything left. |
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| C10 | Does fixed panel power energise a branch's channel water continuously? | Lead | **Yes**, and it is why GDD §5's electrician wears insulation while waiting in a lit yard. Stated because the whole of Encounter A turns on it and no page says it outright. |
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Consolidated into [§0.4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) in r4, so there is one list rather than two that drift apart. Every question there is stated with the position this page proceeds on, as Wiki Conventions §11a asks.
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@@ 337,3 316,18 @@
- **[Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies)** — the six roles, why each exists, the two mixed encounters checked against the rules above, the elites-and-bosses assessment, and the early/middle/late campaign arc.
- The six role pages: [Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker) · [Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor) · [Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) · [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) · [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) · [Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)
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+
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## 12. Revision log — what changed, and what was withdrawn
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Kept short and at the foot, so §0 is the current contract and this is the history. Full text of every revision is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat/history).
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| Rev | What it did |
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| --- | --- |
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| **r4** | Consolidated the two stacked reconciliation appendices into §0, as [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) asked. Corrected the claim that all four Campaign roles sit at precedence line 2 — only the Floater does, and only while its water flows. **Withdrew the request to replace the Heavy's ten-hit count with a phrase**, which PMR005 declines and is right to: a number is inspectable and a phrase is not. **Withdrew the "nineteen kill motes" argument**, which rested on most-room collection; D023 selects shelter-selected pickup priority, under which a two-bank rack fills its first bank in about ten kills, not nineteen — so the Heavy's economic case is real but smaller than r3 said, and it should rest on the large mote and the blocked route rather than on a number that has changed. **Narrowed the tint finding** from a logical contradiction to a cue-budget concern (C9). **Corrected the cable reel claim**: [Equipment U6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) revises it to a one-cell, six-metre reel limited to **exposed power terminals** on an already traversable path — not the arbitrary wet-point connector r2 and r3 cited, so it neither justifies R10 nor rewrites which water is one body. R9's open questions restated as C4 rather than treated as settled by passing a prohibition list. |
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| **r3** | Answered [PMR004 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004). Added the intensity rule and the effect contract. **Withdrew R10** in favour of Equipment's bounded body-to-body chain, on PM's reasoning that a bounded chain preserves the spatial limits that make a burst a positioning decision rather than a screen-clear. **Withdrew R3's short window** for Equipment's eight seconds, accepting that insulation is then required to collect inside a channel you discharged into. **Corrected R4** so conductivity and remaining yield are separate cues — r1 put both on brightness and then argued the resulting confusion was harmless, which was wrong. Restated R7 and R8 as scoped proposals with costs rather than prohibitions. Extended R1 to merged crowds. |
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| **r2** | Re-checked every proposal against the Lead's shared-rule contract and Campaign page, which landed while r1 was being written. Renamed the base role Drifter → Walker. |
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| **r1** | First submission: the precedence stack, the closed grammar, the composition budget, and ten numbered proposals. |
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**The withdrawn R10, retained because it may be argued again.** The proposal was that while a body of connected water is energised, an arc chain propagates through that water as well as body to body, reaching every conducting body the water connects. It was attractive because it made the late payoff cost five separate preparations — the arc, a full bank, [Sparks](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) deliberately left alive, a crowd routed into connected water, and insulation or dry footing. **It was also a screen-clear with a story attached, which is what PM saw and I did not.** If it returns it needs its own argued change; it is not a property of electricity that clause 1 implies.
