2026-09-08 16:35:11
Anonymous:
PM focused information closeout: source fidelity and scoped estimates
hold the flood/player information.md ..
@@ 9,7 9,7 @@
- **Direct observation** — what the astronaut can presently sense, including the face of an instrument they are standing at.
- **The player's own records** — what they framed and committed, with the place and the life it was taken in.
- **Attributed testimony** — a survivor's statement, their stated basis, and what is their interpretation.
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- **Instrument and software reports** — a computed result shown as that instrument's claim with its limit stated. The ship's R-3 bearing is one: it reports a live pressure pulse in a direction, and it cannot distinguish a failing sensor from a quiet ward.
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- **Instrument and software reports** — a computed result shown as that instrument's claim with its limit stated. The ship's R-3 bearing is one: it reports a live pressure pulse in a direction, without distance or a walking route. Its detailed reliability and failure reporting remain to be designed; the separate pressure receiver's failure modes are not automatically this instrument's rules.
These are provenance labels, not four separate screens, and the line between them is not always sharp — a dial the astronaut reads is both an observation and an instrument's claim. What must never blur is **reading versus conclusion**.
@@ 51,7 51,7 @@
**Confirmation / refusal.** Each completed bolt is a visible physical checkpoint that persists. Cancelling loses the unfinished stage and nothing else. An ordinary weapon with no valid target holds fire and says so by showing no highlight; it is not broken, and the fix is positioning.
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**Undecided, and shown as undecided.** Whether the player may override or reselect the automatic target is not settled in Combat Rules or the Brief. This article does not decide it; if an override exists it needs its own readable state, and the display above assumes none.
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**Design decision pending; this is not text shown to the player.** Whether the player may override or reselect the automatic target is not settled in Combat Rules or the Brief. This article does not decide it; if an override exists it needs its own readable state, and the display above assumes none.
**Cannot infer.** Whether the breadcrumb is still walkable, whether an unexplored passage is shorter, or how much oxygen the way home will take. It records where the astronaut's feet went and promises nothing else.
@@ 67,7 67,7 @@
### 5. The short crossing, and returning alive
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The route from the airlock to R-3 has now been walked in this arrangement and in this life, which is the condition First Survivor sets for offering the crossing.
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The short route from the airlock corridor through one junction to R-3 has now been walked in this arrangement and in this life, which is the condition First Survivor sets for offering the crossing. If that short geometry is absent, this scene waits rather than expanding into an escort route.
**Sees.** One rescue state at a time, each named with the physical fact that established it: **Waiting**, **Prepared** (travel air connected and confirmed, next segment traversed, abort refuge stocked), **In transfer**, **At abort refuge**, **Sent** (aboard, airlock closed). A canister committed through the equipment sleeve leaves the manifest at commitment, visibly.
@@ 87,7 87,7 @@
**Action.** Go out again and find out where things are.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** The bearing reappears as a current direction, never a path. Historical records and live instrument reports are drawn differently and are never merged into one view.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** The bearing reappears as a current direction, never a path. Historical records and live instrument reports are drawn differently; showing them together must not present historical positions as current ones.
**Cannot infer.** Anything about the new arrangement that has not been walked or sensed from where the astronaut stands. No revealed neighbour list, no map filled in off-screen, no hint that a direction is now correct.
@@ 100,12 100,12 @@
| Carried vs installed | Item marked *carried* or *installed at a named place* | Retrieve by walking to it | Retrieval costs exposed world time | Whether retrieving it is worth it |
| Weapon ready, target present | Readiness plus one highlighted target | Reposition | Automatic launch spends readiness | Which target is tactically best; whether override exists (undecided) |
| Weapon ready, no target | Readiness, no highlight | Reposition | Holds fire; nothing is wasted | Where a target will appear |
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| Storage part | Stored charge and saturation | Spend it on a manual release | Release starts a new wave | Whether now is the moment |
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| Storage part | Stored charge and saturation | Configure its chosen release trigger; manually release only when so configured | A manual release starts a new wave; a rig-triggered release retains that packet's wave | Whether now is the moment |
| Noisy staged work | Stage, checkpoints, cued entrance, bracing caller | Continue, cancel, defend | Completed checkpoints persist; unfinished stage is lost | How many will actually come |
| Journal open | Frozen view and stored records | Pin, highlight, annotate | Nothing completes; readiness does not advance | Meaning, correctness, translation |
| Route walked this life | Reverse breadcrumb to last anchor | Follow it back | Records passage, not safety | Continued access or oxygen cost |
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| Route from an earlier life | Same record marked historical | Read it, plan from it | Never merged with live reports | Whether it still connects |
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| Instrument report | Direction and the instrument's stated limit | Act on it | It survives shifts because it is sensed now | Distance, route, walkability, sensor health |
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| Route from an earlier life | Same record marked historical | Read it, plan from it | Clearly distinguished from live claims | Whether it still connects |
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| Instrument report | Current reading and that instrument's stated limit | Act on it | A fresh measurement is a current claim; earlier reports remain historical | Distance, route, walkability or sensor health beyond what it actually reports |
| Rescue | One named state and the fact behind it | Prepare, move, abort | Only a closed airlock reads Sent; abort names who called it | Whether the next segment will hold |
| After death | Carried manifest aboard; the room now beyond the airlock | Resume | Installed and consumed items stay as they were | The rest of the new arrangement |
@@ 123,7 123,7 @@
## The short rescue, and its open question
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Rescue state reports **what has been confirmed**, and separates confirmation from outcome. The five states above are all established by a physical fact the player witnessed.
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Rescue state reports **what has been confirmed**, and separates confirmation from outcome. Each state label retains whether its basis was directly witnessed or confirmed by the survivor or an instrument, with that report's limit. A survivor's flow confirmation is not silently promoted to the astronaut's direct observation.
**Unresolved, and labelled rather than papered over:** the ordering of a death-triggered shift against an in-progress transfer is not settled, and First Survivor now marks it as an assumption rather than a rule. The interface consequence is concrete. If the astronaut dies mid-transfer, the display must report the **last confirmed state** and mark the survivor's present location and outcome **unconfirmed** — it must not assert that they reached a refuge, because no current article establishes that they did. That is a sixth state in all but name, and it needs an owner decision before it can be specified rather than described.
@@ 143,7 143,7 @@
Both estimates below are kept visible because they cover **different deliverables**, and neither is adjusted to agree with the other.
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**The outline's row.** [Whole Game Outline](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Whole%20Game%20Outline) allows **8–16 author role-hours** for the UI and accessibility information contract: paper states and flows with no usability claim. That is the deliverable this article is. Most of that allowance is already spent on it; I estimate **4–8 further author role-hours** to close it out, this response included.
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**The outline's row.** [Whole Game Outline](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Whole%20Game%20Outline) allows **8–16 author role-hours** for the UI and accessibility information contract: paper states and flows with no usability claim. That is this article's first-pass deliverable. The allowance is a planning estimate, not a timesheet. The author's later **4–8-hour closure estimate** was made before submitting the consolidated response and included that response; it must not be added as remaining work after PM preparation closeout.
**The larger deliverable my earlier figure described.** My first estimate — 8–14 design days plus 3–5 — was a broader scope, bundled authoring with review, and was given in days. Restated at six productive role-hours per day, and rescoped to authoring only:
@@ 153,9 153,9 @@
| Journal and manifest structure at screen level — structure, not screens or art | 8–14 |
| Accessibility option list with defaults and their interactions | 6–10 |
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Author subtotal **26–44 h**; adding focused review and author response at roughly a third gives **33–59 role-hours**, about 6–10 days at that rate. **This is a reduction from my first figure**, and the reduction comes from separating the first-pass contract (the outline's row, largely done) from the inventory that follows it, and from removing review effort I had silently folded into an authoring number.
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Author subtotal **26–44 h**; a roughly one-third allowance of **9–15 h** for focused review and author response gives **35–59 role-hours**, about 6–10 days at that rate. Allocation of that combined allowance between reviewer and author remains to be estimated. **This is a reduction from my first figure**, and the reduction comes from separating the first-pass contract (the outline's row, largely done) from the inventory that follows it, and from removing review effort I had silently folded into an authoring number.
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**Conditional increment.** If the shift-timing question is answered such that survivor-location uncertainty becomes a real state, the information-layer work is **8–14 author role-hours**: the state itself, its cues, and its effect on route and roster displays. Down from 3–5 days, because I previously included rescue-rule design that is not mine to do and should not be counted here.
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**Conditional increment.** If the shift-timing question is answered such that survivor-location uncertainty becomes a real state, the information-layer work is **8–14 author role-hours**: the state itself, its cues, and its effect on route and roster displays. Down from 3–5 days, because I previously included rescue-rule design that is not mine to do and should not be counted here. This conditional author range excludes separately estimated independent review.
These are estimates of writing and reviewing by someone with no implementation experience of this project. They are not a schedule, and they cover no engineering, art or validation.
