2026-09-08 16:20:36
Anonymous:
PM focused outline closeout: preserve opening locations, join units and estimate coverage
hold the flood/whole game outline.md ..
@@ 4,11 4,11 @@
## The whole-game spine
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The recurring rhythm is: leave the ship with a deliberate rig and finite carried oxygen; enter a station whose useful connections may differ after death; observe a local system while surviving its horde; spend shared carrying capacity on tools, oxygen and findings; then return with parts, people or knowledge that changes what can be attempted next. Death returns all still-carried property to the ship, leaves consumed, installed, dropped or handed-over things where they are, and changes the station. Home is a place to prepare with authored survivors, not a passive upgrade menu.
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The recurring rhythm is: leave the ship with a deliberate rig and finite carried oxygen; enter a station whose useful connections may differ after death; observe a local system while surviving its horde; spend shared carrying capacity on tools, oxygen and findings; then return with parts, people or knowledge that changes what can be attempted next. Death returns all still-carried property to the ship and changes the station. Consumed resources remain spent; installed, dropped or handed-over things remain outside the carried return set without duplication. Home is a place to prepare with authored survivors, not a passive upgrade menu.
| Layer | Expedition goal and pressure | New player action | New interpretation earned |
|---|---|---|---|
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| **Opening: one part, two machines** | At Cargo Turn, remove the isolation bridge that the ship needs and bring it aboard. A loose Fork Relay found there may be deployed so the service rack and patient-bay shutter remain powered, costing time and leaving the part installed; keeping it instead preserves the part but consumes carrying space. | Read trigger-to-payload causality, decide whether to deploy the loose part or keep it, survive the resulting shutter state, and learn which property returns after death. | Station infrastructure and combat equipment obey related rules; a “key” can also be a build component. This is the selected Option A direction, while exact rooms, timing and starting rig remain proposed. |
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| **Opening: one part, two machines** | Find the loose Fork Relay at Cargo Turn, then remove the isolation bridge at Collar Control and bring the bridge aboard. The Fork may be deployed so the service rack and patient-bay shutter remain powered, costing time and leaving the part installed; keeping it instead preserves the part but consumes carrying space. | Read trigger-to-payload causality, decide whether to deploy the loose part or keep it, survive the resulting shutter state, and learn which property returns after death. | Station infrastructure and combat equipment obey related rules; a “key” can also be a build component. This is the selected Option A direction, while exact rooms, timing and starting rig remain proposed. |
| **Early expeditions** | Reach R-3, complete one short cooperative survivor rescue, recover an initial part set under the replaceable found-parts default, and test builder service marks against doors, air and power. | Reconfigure a three-part rig, decide what occupies pack capacity, complete one prepared crossing with the survivor, and record observations rather than receive a translation. | The hospital still has operational logic; people remember it incompletely; the journal preserves evidence, not truth. |
| **Middle expeditions** | Pursue several regional objectives: stabilize a useful route, recover proposed ship-repair assemblies, investigate patient transfers, and bring a small authored cast home. Hordes make stopping to observe costly. | Choose between competing viable builds, lend and reclaim parts aboard, use local language predictions, exploit persistent room-group connections, and—only under the replaceable voluntary-treatment default—decide whether to try treatment. | “Corruption” may be a deliberate change to the astronaut rather than a death tax. This is a question the player can investigate, not a settled explanation or a rule forbidding other personal consequences. |
| **Apparent ending layer** | Under the optional departure assumptions, assemble enough recovered ship function to leave and explicitly preview that departure is irreversible and ends revival. | Depart and receive a coherent apparent close, or postpone departure and keep investigating. No secret counter or hidden death threshold removes either choice. | Escape solves the astronaut’s immediate problem but does not explain the hospital, its disappearances, or the source of revival. Departure, credits timing and field-limited revival all remain owner decisions. |
@@ 55,7 55,9 @@
| Language discovery chains, split across at least two languages | 4 | 8 | 12 |
| Colony projects with a person-specific consequence | 5 | 9 | 14 |
| Major mystery or personal investigation chains | 4 | 7 | 11 |
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| Persistent-connection opportunities, including the final station-scale use; mechanism TBD | 2 | 4 | 6 |
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| Special converter sites or authored connection challenges; mechanism TBD, not the total number of ordinary joins | 2 | 4 | 6 |
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The 2/4/6 connection count refers to special authored sites or challenges only. It is not a cap on ordinary joins or an estimate of total graph edges; all placed playable rooms remain within the eventual station-wide connection goal.
Even the STRETCH column does not justify 30, 90 or 100–200 hours. Counts still missing include oxygen canister and carrying-capacity variants, starting loadout alternatives, resource sinks, objective reuse, branch scenes, clue permutations and technical state combinations. Measurements still missing include average expedition and revisit length; how often death creates a genuinely new route rather than repetition; clue discovery and correction rates; viable-build count after dominance testing; horde encounter variety; dialogue/state volume per survivor; gating and backtracking costs; accessibility pacing; and the proportion of players who pursue secrets. Only later implementation, play evidence and production costing can relate inventory to duration or feasibility.
@@ 75,13 77,13 @@
| Corruption/treatment consequences | Systems | All bands; rules only | Resurrection and Corruption; owner corruption choice | Access, consent, benefits, hazards, reversibility and ending interaction are explicit; ordinary death is not silently made a punishment | 5–9 h |
| Survivor cast and rescue/home arcs | Design Lead | SMALL; 5 cast arcs/3 scenes each, no final dialogue | First Survivor; Rescue Rules; Coming Home | Each has a distinct short rescue, contribution, relationship change and bounded knowledge | 12–22 h |
| Two-language discovery map | Design Lead | SMALL; 4 chains, relationship of registers resolved | Language and Journal; Language Expedition; Utterance Discovery | Each chain records evidence, test, correction path and action unlocked; neither language becomes exposition | 8–15 h |
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| UI and accessibility information contract | Systems | All bands; paper states/flows, no usability claim | Survival, combat, journal and language specifications | Immediate goal, oxygen, capacity, target, build causality, pause and journal-history states are specified with accessibility requirements and failure messaging | 8–16 h |
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| UI and accessibility information contract | Design Lead (current assignment) | All bands; paper states/flows, no usability claim | Survival, combat, journal and language specifications | Immediate goal, oxygen, capacity, target, build causality, pause and journal-history states are specified with accessibility requirements and failure messaging | 8–16 h |
| Save/persistence and authoring constraints | Technical Design specialist, if staffed | All bands; technical-design discovery/spec only | Shift/persistence rules; topology; content schemas | Save authority, death transaction, persistent-world state, content identifiers and authoring constraints are testable on paper without implementing them | 8–16 h |
| Content feasibility pass | PM | SMALL; dependency/cost roll-up | Owner chooses a band; preceding specifications | Reuse assumptions, authoring load, overlaps and unvalidated duration claims are recorded for owner decision | 6–10 h |
| Development/validation handoff scope | PM | All bands; plan only, phase remains gated | Stable v1 specifications and owner phase decision | Required prototypes, technical spikes, usability/balance/performance checks, staffing and approval gates are named without performing them | 6–12 h |
| Whole-game coherence review | Reviewer | SMALL specification set; one focused review | Readable versions of selected specifications | Finds missing pillars, hidden dependencies, unsupported duration claims and contradictory player rules, or records no material objection | 4–8 h |
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The superseded first estimate table summed arithmetically to **77–140 role-hours** for a SMALL-cast specification: Systems 37–67, Lead 30–55, PM 6–10 and Reviewer 4–8. Adding the previously omitted survival, traps, UI, technical-persistence and handoff scopes makes this planning inventory **111–208 role-hours**: Systems 57–107, Lead 30–55, future Technical Design 8–16, PM 12–22 and Reviewer 4–8. The sum is an audit of listed labor, not elapsed time or a completeness proof. TARGET/STRETCH content authoring and all implementation and validation effort remain unestimated; SMALL specifications and later authorized evidence must establish per-unit work and reuse, so multiplying only survivor hours would be misleading.
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The superseded first estimate table summed arithmetically to **77–140 role-hours** for a SMALL-cast specification: Systems 37–67, Lead 30–55, PM 6–10 and Reviewer 4–8. Adding the previously omitted survival, traps, UI, technical-persistence and handoff scopes makes this planning inventory **111–208 role-hours**: Systems 49–91, Lead 38–71, future Technical Design 8–16, PM 12–22 and Reviewer 4–8. The sum is an audit of listed labor, not elapsed time or a completeness proof. This retains the outline author’s rough 8–16-hour UI allowance; the separate Player Information estimate needs scope/unit reconciliation before forecast roll-up. Author-response and PM-integration coverage, and unique estimated deliverables for cross-listed colony projects and mystery chains, also remain to be mapped. TARGET/STRETCH content authoring and all implementation and validation effort remain unestimated; SMALL specifications and later authorized evidence must establish per-unit work and reuse, so multiplying only survivor hours would be misleading.
