2026-09-06 17:25:20
Anonymous:
CLR101: lead marks Q23, Q24 answered and Q22 resolution proposed at Design r4 (42f653); Q7/Q8 now answered consistently with World and Mystery r6; re-read 0ae873 before posting; no question text changed
hold the flood/clarity questions.md ..
@@ 42,8 42,8 @@
| **Q4** | **"Run" and "expedition" look like the same thing but are never equated.** Brief asks "how knowledge survives between runs"; Design and World say only "expedition". Are they the same unit of play? If so, please use one word. | Brief §Open decisions vs Design | Answered at Design r3 (0b4039) |
| **Q5** | **What is the coil?** It is the centre of the electrician build and of the signature interaction, but it is never introduced. Its first appearance is mid-sentence: "the coil injects it". Is it a weapon, a tool, a rack module, worn or carried? What does the player do to "discharge" it, and what does discharging look like? | Design §spine rule, §Core actions | Answered at Design r3 (0b4039) |
| **Q6** | **What is the rack, physically?** It is "a 2 by 3 grid", but a reader never learns what it *is* in the fiction — a backpack, a frame on the surveyor's back, a cart? Is it the whole inventory, or is there other inventory beside it? Likewise: what is a **cutter** (a weapon?), and what is a **bundle** as opposed to **salvage** as opposed to **cargo** as opposed to **finds**? Those four may be one thing under four names, and a reader cannot tell. | Design §The rack, §Builds | Answered at Design r3 (0b4039) |
-
| **Q7** | **"Dispatch" is a load-bearing word with no stated meaning.** Everything hangs on it: beacons "pulse at each dispatch", W1 evaluates "at the dispatch instant", the panel changes only "surges not yet dispatched". Who or what dispatches? Is a dispatch simply the scheduled moment a surge is released, or is something in the fiction sending them? A reader cannot tell whether the district is automated, haunted, or run by someone. | World W1/W2, Design spine rule 3 | Proposed at Design r3 (0b4039); world designer to confirm the fiction |
-
| **Q8** | **What is the forecast, in the fiction?** It is described as "a UI overlay" giving the next surge's time and entrance. Why does the player have it? Who computes it? If the Flood is a wild mass of organisms, a reliable timetable of its arrivals needs an in-world reason — especially as the colony can *upgrade* it ("forecast relay"). | Design §Core actions, §Gathering and colony | Proposed at Design r3 (0b4039); world designer to confirm the fiction |
+
| **Q7** | **"Dispatch" is a load-bearing word with no stated meaning.** Everything hangs on it: beacons "pulse at each dispatch", W1 evaluates "at the dispatch instant", the panel changes only "surges not yet dispatched". Who or what dispatches? Is a dispatch simply the scheduled moment a surge is released, or is something in the fiction sending them? A reader cannot tell whether the district is automated, haunted, or run by someone. | World W1/W2, Design spine rule 3 | Answered at Design r4 (42f653) and World and Mystery r6 (430206), consistently |
+
| **Q8** | **What is the forecast, in the fiction?** It is described as "a UI overlay" giving the next surge's time and entrance. Why does the player have it? Who computes it? If the Flood is a wild mass of organisms, a reliable timetable of its arrivals needs an in-world reason — especially as the colony can *upgrade* it ("forecast relay"). | Design §Core actions, §Gathering and colony | Answered at Design r4 (42f653) and World and Mystery r6 (430206), consistently |
| **Q9** | **"Dry without payment" (the culvert) is opaque.** I think it means "you do not have to spend a bundle running a pump to keep it dry", but a first reader cannot tell what currency "payment" refers to. Plainer wording, please. | Design §Topology, World §Topology | Answered at Design r3 (0b4039) |
## B. Things a reader cannot picture at all
@@ 86,9 86,9 @@
| # | Question | Where | Status |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
-
| **Q22** | **Does re-routing the panel move a surge that has already arrived, or not?** One page says both, four paragraphs apart. **W2 — Commitment:** "A dispatched surge keeps its intake until it arrives. **Re-routing at the panel affects only surges not yet dispatched**; it never teleports enemies or cancels a pursuit." **§Topology (r5):** "A surge enters beside its beacon and, while that beacon stays lit, holds there (W1 *path*) … **re-routing the panel after entry is what drags a surge across the district toward the new light.**" I can see how you might mean to reconcile these — re-routing does not change where a surge *entered* (intake) but does change where it *walks* (path) — but W2's sentence as written says "affects only surges not yet dispatched", with no exception, and W2 has not been reworded since W1 was split in r4. This is not a small wording point: it decides whether the panel is a planning tool used between surges, or a lever the player can pull mid-emergency to drag a surge off themselves. Those are two different games, and the whole "cost of diversion" argument (that a diversion made after dispatch "buys nothing this surge") rests on the first reading while the topology paragraph asserts the second. | World and Mystery r5, W2 vs §Topology | Open |
-
| **Q23** | **Does the signature interaction still work after r5 moved the beacons?** This matters more than its size because it is *the* scene meant to sell direction A — it is the one concrete moment the owner will read. Design §Signature interaction has the electrician "wait on the ledge for surge two to **wade into the channel** before discharging", which needs the surge to be standing in water. r5 puts the yard beacon **at the pump hall** and says a surge "enters beside its beacon and, while that beacon stays lit, **holds there**". So does the arriving surge stand in the shallow channel, or at the pump hall beside its beacon? If it holds at the beacon, the electrician's stun-and-harvest does not happen as written. The same paragraph also says "Surge one is **dispersing** on the causeway", where r5 says a surge **holds** at its lit beacon — dispersing and holding are opposite pictures of what a surge does after it arrives, and a reader cannot form either one. | Design §Signature interaction vs World r5 §Topology | Open |
-
| **Q24** | **The rhythm table calls Quiet 3 "shorter" and then gives it the same length as Quiet 2.** Quiet 2 runs minute 5 to 8; Quiet 3 runs minute 10 to 13. Both are three minutes. A reader who trusts the label and a reader who trusts the numbers get different answers about whether the expedition tightens toward the end. If the escalation is real, the numbers should show it; if the numbers are right, the word should go. | Design §Rhythm | Open |
+
| **Q22** | **Does re-routing the panel move a surge that has already arrived, or not?** One page says both, four paragraphs apart. **W2 — Commitment:** "A dispatched surge keeps its intake until it arrives. **Re-routing at the panel affects only surges not yet dispatched**; it never teleports enemies or cancels a pursuit." **§Topology (r5):** "A surge enters beside its beacon and, while that beacon stays lit, holds there (W1 *path*) … **re-routing the panel after entry is what drags a surge across the district toward the new light.**" I can see how you might mean to reconcile these — re-routing does not change where a surge *entered* (intake) but does change where it *walks* (path) — but W2's sentence as written says "affects only surges not yet dispatched", with no exception, and W2 has not been reworded since W1 was split in r4. This is not a small wording point: it decides whether the panel is a planning tool used between surges, or a lever the player can pull mid-emergency to drag a surge off themselves. Those are two different games, and the whole "cost of diversion" argument (that a diversion made after dispatch "buys nothing this surge") rests on the first reading while the topology paragraph asserts the second. | World and Mystery r5, W2 vs §Topology | Resolution proposed at Design r4 (42f653): a beacon pulls only within its glow and the fixed beacons are out of each other's sight, so the panel never moves an arrived surge; world designer to align W2 and the r5 topology sentence |
+
| **Q23** | **Does the signature interaction still work after r5 moved the beacons?** This matters more than its size because it is *the* scene meant to sell direction A — it is the one concrete moment the owner will read. Design §Signature interaction has the electrician "wait on the ledge for surge two to **wade into the channel** before discharging", which needs the surge to be standing in water. r5 puts the yard beacon **at the pump hall** and says a surge "enters beside its beacon and, while that beacon stays lit, **holds there**". So does the arriving surge stand in the shallow channel, or at the pump hall beside its beacon? If it holds at the beacon, the electrician's stun-and-harvest does not happen as written. The same paragraph also says "Surge one is **dispersing** on the causeway", where r5 says a surge **holds** at its lit beacon — dispersing and holding are opposite pictures of what a surge does after it arrives, and a reader cannot form either one. | Design §Signature interaction vs World r5 §Topology | Answered at Design r4 (42f653): the yard intake is the channel beside the pump hall, so the surge stands in water; surge one now holds rather than disperses |
+
| **Q24** | **The rhythm table calls Quiet 3 "shorter" and then gives it the same length as Quiet 2.** Quiet 2 runs minute 5 to 8; Quiet 3 runs minute 10 to 13. Both are three minutes. A reader who trusts the label and a reader who trusts the numbers get different answers about whether the expedition tightens toward the end. If the escalation is real, the numbers should show it; if the numbers are right, the word should go. | Design §Rhythm | Answered at Design r4 (42f653): quiet 3 is minutes 10 to 12 |
| **Q25** | **The Hub points at a page that does not exist.** The Hub's new §Working agreement line says the hourly PM review "records completed reviews on Hold the Flood/PM Reviews". That page returns 404, and the reference is plain text rather than a link, so a reader cannot even click to find that out. Is it coming, or should the sentence name where reviews actually go? | Hub §Working agreement | Open |
**One observation, not a question.** Q22 and Q23 are the same kind of problem as the critic's N10: a rule was sharpened in a late revision, but the *older sentences that depended on the loose version* were not revisited. N10 was caught because the critic diffed two pages against each other. Q22 is on a single page, and Q23 sits between the two pages that were each individually correct at the moment they were written. If DES102 is assembled by carrying forward W1–W4, S1–S3 and the r5 topology, it would be worth one pass asking, of every sentence being carried, "was this written before or after the intake/path split?"
