2026-09-15 16:39:20
Anonymous:
Clarify rescue, carrying, and roster alternatives
hold the flood/combat and enemy roster.md ..
@@ 2,7 2,7 @@
The astronaut enters the Balance Gallery to close one pressure cap and inspect a far-wall mark. Across a fixed structural rib, a **Bellback** plants its feet and draws dust into a bright forward cone. Two feeding mouths begin opening behind it. Slow **Pressers** pour onto the gallery floor while a Breath Bank frosts one lane and the balance chamber leans toward whichever plate carries more weight.
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The player is not choosing one enemy for a duel. They are choosing where the crowd should gather. Sealing one mouth early makes the room safer but gives the build less density to exploit. Holding the centre lets automatic fire keep working and puts more bodies in an arc chain, but Bellback’s locked pressure wave may scatter the knot or throw the astronaut off the cap control. The player can step behind the rib, face a manual Barrier into the wave, interrupt the unfinished brace with a Nozzle, or defeat Bellback. Each answer is visible before commitment.
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The player chooses where the crowd should gather. Sealing one mouth early makes the room safer but gives the build less density to exploit. Holding the centre lets automatic fire keep working and puts more bodies in an arc chain, but Bellback’s locked pressure wave may scatter the knot or throw the astronaut off the cap control. The player can step behind the rib, face a manual Barrier into the wave, interrupt the unfinished brace with a Nozzle, or defeat Bellback. Each answer is visible before commitment.
When the first announced crowd band has committed and Bellback has been answered, in either order, the gallery makes a larger temporary transformation ready while later bodies are still arriving. A developed Storm Choir can enter the connected mass and release its stored storm; an ordinary Presser validly reached by the climax falls, while routes, cover and special-creature strength still limit the result. A cautious player can instead shelter at the rib, cross on the Bank’s opposite beat, occupy the stirrup and complete one lasting cap cycle. Both paths pursue the same discovery. The intended pleasure is turning a crowd that was closing the room into the shape that makes a ridiculous build sing, then earning enough quiet to notice what the station was hiding.
@@ 78,7 78,7 @@
### Veilbearer — a temporary sight problem
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**What you see and fear.** A hunched carrier unfolds a translucent membrane between two bright floor anchors. Its edge is previewed before release. The fixed sheet briefly hides allies from automatic targeting, so the player must move rather than wait for a weapon to solve visibility.
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**What you see and fear.** A hunched carrier unfolds a translucent membrane between two bright floor anchors. Its edge is previewed before release. The fixed sheet briefly hides allies from automatic targeting, so the player must restore a firing angle, wait for decay or interrupt the cast; the weapon cannot solve the lost visibility by itself.
**How you turn it.** Reach an edge, wait for decay, interrupt or displace the bearer during wind-up, or defeat the exposed body. Barrier can hold Pressers while the player flanks but cannot erase the sheet. Unlike Shutterback, the veil is fixed, short-lived and does not turn with the sheltered group.
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Work done while the game runs shows its current stage and committed checkpoints. Explicit cancellation, displacement out of reach or a creature occupying the control loses only the unfinished stage; damage alone does not. Capturing a record is all or nothing. Seals, completed caps, pins, clamps and other owning checkpoints persist.
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The journal fully pauses enemies, oxygen, tethers, projectiles, alerts, warnings, recovery, readiness and work. It can change links among accessible mounted parts, but it completes nothing. Pickup, first fitting, fixture operation and other physical work happen while the game runs.
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The journal fully pauses enemies, oxygen, tethers, projectiles, alerts, warnings, recovery, readiness and work. Link edits among accessible mounted parts can commit inside that pause, but no action or timer in the world advances. Pickup, first fitting, fixture operation and other physical work happen while the game runs.
A living retreat requires physically reaching the named exit and does not repopulate the ongoing expedition. Returning aboard alive preserves the arrangement; death shifts unjoined rooms. Either return brings every still-carried part and loot object home once, ends expedition power and begins a fresh combat climb next time. Breathed oxygen and consumed material stay spent. Dropped or station-installed objects remain at their exact locations.
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| **1 — R02/R03, Freight Split** | Pressers fill two cargo lanes; the noisy last fastener or Caller can release the patient-bay stage. Install Fork to hold rack and shutter, carry it and fight the open lane, cut the alarm, or retreat between fasteners. | P01 Triage dog or clearing earns quiet. Fasteners, dog/alarm state, bridge and the one Fork location persist. |
| **2 — R05, Pace Calibration** | Boltspitter holds the pillar line while 15–30 Pressers stream from a belt-return duct and thicken during gait work. | Drop the duct grille or clear arrivals. P02 Carousel and each gait capture keep their own checkpoints; Stride/coupler recovery remains separate. |
| **3 — R08, First Local Latch** | First lesson: one Clampcrawler in a quiet hall. On an eligible later expedition, P03 alert may open an opaque holding volume containing 20–40 Pressers; cutting before commitment prevents it, and there is no seal after the shutter is dogged open. | The introduction-seen bit prevents a same-expedition retry spawn. Latch/refusal/release and committed dog/alarm states persist. |
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| **4 — R11–R13, R-3 Crossing** | A Flanker pack uses the side leg while 25–50 Pressers flow through the quarantine-wing grille around the bollard. | Clear or seal the grille before the prepared short rescue begins; three walking legs stay open. Arc source, stocked abort preparation and confirmed rescue state follow their owners. |
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| **4 — R11–R13, R-3 Crossing** | A Flanker pack uses the side leg while 25–50 Pressers flow through the quarantine-wing grille around the bollard. | The prepared short route must be demonstrably quiet or separated before rescue begins: arrivals cleared, bypassed into a shown quiet state, or cut off by a persistent local closure. Sealing the grille never removes bodies already through it; three walking legs stay open. The [placement inventory](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Encounter%20And%20Mechanism%20Placement%20Inventory) owns the full crossing rule. |
| **5 — R14/R15, Builders’ Runs** | Boltspitter guards the pump-hall pillar; Veilbearer screens a rail crowd. Gantry and cable-duct stages are separate. In the moving-scan variant, the same sources provide its warned bands and P14 milestone—never duplicate stages. | Seal gantry hatch/duct grille or clear arrivals. P04, captures, wall panel and Lens state persist; the scan bridge keeps its own notch/sample rules. |
| **6 — R17/R20, Pressure Ledger** | Flankers precede one 40–80 Presser ward release; Siphon waits across the sampling-loop pillars but R20 has no source. Long lane earns bands; the cutter-opened passage is a bypass/return shortcut. | Lock both ward doors or clear the release, then use P05 Breath Bank and cap work. Passage, seals, caps, evidence and Dynamo/core locations persist. |
| **7 — R24/R23/R21, Transfer Evidence** | Veilbearer and Boltspitter cover separated stations while one 30–60 loft stage uses three R24 hatches. Corrective-pair capture or P14’s far sample can trigger that same stage once. | Dog all hatches or clear arrivals. P06 Grid, pair captures, Cycler location and spent sample persist; transfer lines carry no creatures. |
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## One revisit: the sampling loop becomes fuel
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On the first objective 6 visit, the four-space Sensor/Projector plus Manual/Barrier rig can barely hold the long hall. The player seals one ward door, baits the newly seen Siphon hose into a pillar, handles the Flanker pack along the wall and closes one Breath Bank cap. They free and carry the installed Dynamo but leave the regulator core because oxygen, the part and the core cannot all fit. The cap and missing fixture part remain changed; the route record is useful but not promised after death.
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On the first objective 6 visit, the four-space Sensor/Projector plus Manual/Barrier rig can barely hold the long hall. The player seals one ward door, baits the newly seen Siphon hose into a pillar, handles the Flanker pack along the wall and closes one Breath Bank cap. Four starter parts, one two-unit canister, the one-unit Dynamo and two-unit regulator total **9 of 10 C**, so a lightly loaded successful visit can carry both finds. This example leaves the regulator only when another canister or find occupies the last space, or when the player keeps more breathing margin instead of spending time on both pickups. The cap and any removed fixture part remain changed; the route record is useful but not promised after death.
After finding Capacitor and opening the six-space ship configuration, the player can return—if the sampling loop is actually reachable—with **Counterwall, 6 C / 6 A**: Manual → Barrier, Dynamo clamped to that frame → Capacitor, then the Capacitor’s built-in manual release → Arc. Each Siphon hose, Presser strike or Flanker strike caught on the faced Barrier is its own external wave and may supply one local Dynamo contribution. At a visible valid Arc target, the player releases stored charge through the packed lane. The horde has changed from a reason to flee into fuel for a protected valve window. One two-unit canister leaves only two carrying units for the regulator and nothing else.
@@ 193,7 193,7 @@
The current full proposal is six ordinary roles, three specials and two setpieces. Its strongest cheaper alternative keeps all six ordinary roles plus Bellback and Glass Siphon, removes Shutterback from this roster, and uses only Receiver Vault as a major setpiece. Veilbearer carries the simpler sight-pressure role. Balance Gallery becomes an ordinary Bellback/mechanism placement. Receiver Vault uses Bellback and Siphon instead of the moving fan, but its threshold must show one complete Bellback warning, locked release and recovery across fixed cover before Siphon can overlap. That self-contained rehearsal avoids requiring objective 8 first.
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The alternative removes one special adaptation and one bespoke staged layout, at the cost of less dynamic angular cover, spectacle and escalation. It does not delete any ordinary movement/cover baseline or add a creature. If Veilbearer and Shutterback do not read as meaningfully different in the full roster, cutting Shutterback is preferable to multiplying occlusion variants.
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The alternative removes one special adaptation and one bespoke staged layout, at the cost of less dynamic angular cover, spectacle and escalation. It does not delete any ordinary movement/cover baseline or add a creature. Two different tests remain: if the fixed Veilbearer and moving Shutterback are not readable as distinct pressures, cut the ordinary Veilbearer rather than multiply occlusion roles; separately, the cost-driven 6/2/1 alternative removes Shutterback to save the special adaptation and staged layout. Neither roster cut is selected.
