2026-09-07 15:32:05
Anonymous:
DES107 r1 (Campaign r14): the lead's systems integration under the owner's survivorlike correction (Brief 51e58b) and the owner-set premise PM posted as room message 63 (the astronaut and the unofficial station): what each retained system maps to (the ship as refuge, a sortie as expedition, oxygen as the readable clock, death as the sortie's end and the question, the languages as the context that makes seen clues readable); component-family development as variation in targeting geometry (R15) with patterns recorded once and never lost, so caches are not a checklist and random offers are not failure; field benches as authored safe places with one decision per visit; oxygen, death and survivor rescue proposed as systems answering the owner's design questions; the notebook as the translation record, no cipher; rulings: R14 conductive medium adopted, the r9 stun-kill as the shared rule the Brief's portable storm uses, the Choir and Relay retired as content; the three-ending shape re-derived as shape only; content assumptions; handoffs. DES106 section 0 labelled superseded in its fiction and kept.
hold the flood/campaign.md ..
@@ 1,6 1,6 @@
# Hold the Flood — Campaign (DES104)
-
**Superseded premise — owner direction, 2026-09-07:** the harvest-dependence revelation and its ending are rejected for now; this page preserves earlier design material, not the active pitch. Setting and retained mechanics await the [replacement vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision). Follow [current assignments](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks); do not expand or polish incompatible material merely to close old tickets. *(The lead, r10: that label applies to the owner page and sections 1 to 10; section 0, immediately below the header, is the lead's assessment and proposed progression under the owner's direction.)*
+
**Superseded premise — owner direction, 2026-09-07:** the harvest-dependence revelation and its ending are rejected for now; this page preserves earlier design material, not the active pitch. Setting and retained mechanics await the [replacement vision](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision). Follow [current assignments](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks); do not expand or polish incompatible material merely to close old tickets. *(The lead, r14: that label applies to the owner page and sections 1 to 10. The first section below the header, DES107, is the lead's systems integration under the owner's survivorlike correction and the owner-set premise of the astronaut and the unofficial station; section 0, DES106, keeps its structure and its World Below fiction is superseded.)*
**DES105 r4, on the Campaign page at r9 · 2026-09-07 · Lead Game and Systems Designer · In review · Revised against PMR009 and the External Critic's X37: the Tram's changed return is the simple stairs reconnaissance, with the wet-yard harvest and the berth exit as optional plans priced honestly, and the coil's worth shown where a door depends on it; the berth-supported start issues one module and no Kit; the optional stay's cargo and burned charge are stated by branch; the Siphon follows the Visionary's simplification; the Exchange's cadence is 3:00 and 7:00 and its two terminals stand together at the head end. r8 (0cafb9), under PMU008 the vision comes first: a new section after the owner page gives the Visionary the intended experience and three tensions in plain words. PMR008's bounded corrections are made: the Tram's later return no longer forces a wait, its easy path is the payoff of understanding and the stay is the priced alternative, the Siphon is called optional margin, the lure's activation and expiry are accounted for with its charge committed and left, the changed return's exit and the tram's availability are corrected, the later start has five free cells, and the criterion-11 paragraph no longer carries a moving count (X35); the Exchange's cadence and reel terminals are scoped in 3.4; the three visits are run against the vision's decision test. r7 (de4893) was revised against the critic's REV105 r1 and the External Critic's X34: the later return's crossing is now the main line, the same heavy stands on the rail on both later visits and is killed for the later return's first charge, every beat inside pursuit range is priced, the stairs have a distance, section 8 quotes the Campaign designer's three consolidated figures at Districts r11 and the owner page carries them. r6 (ee4202) delivered PM's DES105: section 3.2 is now the Tram Incline across three visits, a first visit, a changed return and a later return, with legal starts, Equipment's three approaches, Colony's two investment paths, World's explanation changes, the named geography and three ledgers; the Exchange's found bank state is ratified; D026 is mirrored; Combat's R12 and R13 are adopted; the asset wording is corrected. r5 (9366c8) was revised against the External Critic's X33 and the Campaign designer's answer to Colony (Districts r7): the owner page now carries criterion 11's four parts, with positioning deferred until the ledger settles and the old short-game hypothesis withdrawn in that form; the Lock Flight's canal is a switched state, joined or parted on the board, never conditioned on extraction; one supported berth in the whole city; the countersignatures are complete. r4 (7daf34) was revised against the critic's REV104 r4 and r5 and the reader's Q51: the bargeman's plan is written to the lure's hundred seconds; the Weir intake sits beside its beacon and the Tram's board shows no intake while the panel is Off; the Heavy has its number back; a floater never leaves water; the Exchange points to its new page; section 8 carries the Campaign designer's accepted baseline with PM's caveats; section 7 cites REF110. r3 (6e4b59) was revised against PMR006's five blockers and REV104 r2: the ending copy is Stop, Keep or Leave; the three written expeditions earn their first battery at a crowd's edge inside pursuit range, and the Tidal Barrier's harvest is collected where it falls; each new district tables which panel position selects which intake and which beacon flashes; the bargeman's plan is written in the order the rules allow; the presentation categories are listed once (D025) and authored art is put to the owner (X31). r2 (b92234) and r1 (34dc09, 9d3590) are in page history.**
*(The lead, r2: that note is kept as written. The disagreement it records is accepted below; the count is seven external districts with the refuge at stake, as PM's D022 now says.)*
+
## The systems under the owner-set premise: what is kept, what each maps to, and the rulings the lead owes (DES107 r1, a proposal)
+
+
**DES107 r1, on the Campaign page at r14 · 2026-09-07 · Lead Game and Systems Designer · In review · Written against the owner's survivorlike correction ([Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#latest-owner-correction-survivorlike-identity-and-songs), 51e58b: the Flood means massed enemies, water is not required by the title, the coded-song chain is rejected), the Visionary's setting-neutral playable foundation on the same page, Equipment's two portable paths ([Build Paths](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Build%20Paths) dd4746), Combat's R14 and R15 ([Combat](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) c6daab, section 0C), the Campaign designer's loop ([Districts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts) r15, section 0.1), REV106 r3 (3fa234), and the owner-set premise PM posted in the project room as message 63, the astronaut and the unofficial station, whose canonical pages are being aligned as this is written.** The Tasks row for the lead reads: integrate the playable foundation before further campaign expansion; show component-family development across expeditions, field benches without combat inventory churn, and a clear refuge consequence; caches are not a checklist and random offers are not build failure. PM's message 63 adds: the lead integrates; existing work survives only where it earns its place under the premise. Everything below is a proposal. The owner's premise is quoted where used and never extended; every question the owner marked as a design question is answered here provisionally and marked so. Section 0 below (DES106) keeps its structure and loses its fiction; nothing in it is deleted.
+
+
### 1. The premise as the systems side reads it
+
+
The owner supplies: a broken ship forced to dock at an unofficial station that broadcasts stay away; a broken artificial atmosphere, so oxygen is limited away from the ship, unlimited aboard it, and found as canisters in the station, and running out kills; zombies and other strange creatures that attack on sight and kill by damage; death that wakes the player aboard the ship, why being a central mystery and not a revealed answer; human survivors who can be sent to the ship and form a small colony; and a station of strange puzzles, traps, mechanisms and at least two alien languages, with survivors and environmental evidence helping to explain the station, the revival and how to leave. Not to be done: renaming the drowned sanctuary into space, unlimited oxygen away from the ship, an explicit cloning or time-loop explanation, rescued people who reset or die permanently, the song cipher. Design questions the owner left open: depletion, what death loses, survivor rescue and oxygen logistics, translation rules, the first objective, the ending.
+
+
What this gives the systems side, in one sentence: **the ship is the refuge, a sortie is an expedition, oxygen is the clock the player can read, death is the way every sortie can end and the question the game asks, and the languages are the context that makes clues seen all along mean something.** That is the owner's hierarchy without adding a device: discovery first, because reading the station is the game; builds second, because the horde and the mechanisms are what the builds are for; the refuge as the heart, because the survivors are on the ship.
+
+
### 2. What is kept, and what each thing maps to
+
+
| Retained system | What it was | Under the premise | Disposition |
+
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
+
| The expedition loop (the Campaign designer's six steps) | Out from the refuge with a reason, pack, pressure, earn power in the field, do the thing, come home and watch it land | A sortie from the ship: airlock out, the station's crowd already there and growing, back through the airlock. The reason is a survivor, a part, a canister cache or a place | **Keep unchanged**; the ship is the refuge |
+
| The eight-cell rack, salvage against space, shelter-only links, field benches (the Visionary's foundation) | Power competes with what comes home | The same, with oxygen added to the competition: a spare canister is a cell that is not carrying salvage or a component (section 4) | **Keep**; the rack is the suit's pack |
+
| Enemy-earned charge, once per body; empty banks at departure | Power is earned inside the trip, never bought before it | The same. The station's crowd is the fuel and the geometry; nothing waits at the airlock | **Keep unchanged** |
+
| The conductive-medium physics (the contract's four clauses; Combat's R14) | Water conducts, a powered channel runs devices and lights lamps, a pulse stuns bodies standing in the medium | A station has conductive decks, coolant floods, spills and live plating; water is one instance and not required. The medium is where the Coil path and environmental experimentation happen | **Keep, ruled generic** (section 6); no scene is required to use it |
+
| Attraction: light and noise draw the crowd; the lure | The central science, then a supporting tool | A supporting tool in the Beacon path and in station mechanisms (a lit corridor, an alarm, a door that opens on a timer) | **Keep as support** |
+
| Component families with portable interactions; caches; patterns recorded and prepared at the refuge (the foundation; Equipment's paths; Combat's R15) | The build grammar | The same. The ship's bench is where a pattern becomes a starting option; the station's caches are where families and variants are found | **Keep**; section 3 gives the development rule |
+
| The authored refuge and its people, promise before shopping, no population bars or upkeep (Colony's model) | Hearth | The ship's colony: survivors sent to the ship, each a person with a situation, never a unit; the promise resolved first | **Keep the model; the cast is Colony's and the Visionary's to author** |
+
| Persistence: switched state, authored commitments, carried things; the notebook with a changed-meaning state (DES106) | The world changes between visits; a clue can be reread | The station persists between sorties; the notebook becomes the translation record (section 5) | **Keep; the notebook is now the languages' home** |
+
| The three discovery kinds and the three-ending shape (DES106, section 0.2's structure) | Given goal, reinterpretation, history | The shape survives; its fiction does not. Section 7 re-derives it from the premise as a proposal | **Keep the shape** |
+
| Hearth, the furnace, the songs, the lift, the descent, the Choir room as identity proof, the Echo Relay | The World Below's content | Superseded by the owner. Kept in history and in section 0 as the record of a shape that was tried | **Withdrawn as content** |
+
+
### 3. Component-family development across expeditions (the Tasks row's first ask)
+
+
**A family is one portable interaction rule, not an item.** The Coil makes a field that stuns the bodies standing in the medium; the Arc chains a hit to nearby bodies; the Beacon draws the reachable crowd to a point; the Driver pierces the densest line to a lure; a Battery holds a bank; the Siphon turns carried salvage into charge. Each is inferable from watching it once and works anywhere its ordinary condition exists. Equipment owns the catalogue; the lead's rule is what makes a family develop.
+
+
**Development is variation in geometry, not in damage.** Combat's R15 is adopted as the working rule: a variant found in the field changes one targeting quantity of its family, hops per hit, reach, origins, eligibility, re-entry, duration of a field, radius of a lure, and never a damage value, a resistance or a multiplier. So a later Arc is not a bigger Arc; it is an Arc that reaches through a Crust, or that seeds a second origin at a Beacon. The player who understands the family predicts what the variant will do before fitting it, which is the discovery the owner wants from builds.
+
+
**How a family grows across sorties, as a rule.** (1) First sighting: a component is inspected at an authored cache the route makes readable; inspecting records its pattern in the notebook whether or not it is carried home. (2) Once a pattern is recorded, the ship's bench can prepare that base component for any later sortie; a pattern is never lost and never depends on the same offer again. That is what makes a missed or random offer a lost bonus and not a build failure. (3) Variants are found in the field and are the only thing that has to be carried home to keep; a variant recorded at the bench joins the family's starting options. (4) A family's variants are authored by place, not rolled: the station's regions each favour certain quantities, so the player learns where to look for the interaction they want, which is exploration serving the build. (5) No cache is a checklist: every family's base pattern exists in at least two places, and the game never counts caches, only patterns known.
+
+
### 4. Field benches without inventory churn (the second ask), and oxygen
+
+
**The bench rule.** A field bench is an authored place, visible from a distance and clearly safe; at it, time pauses and the player may install a carried component into open rack space, replace one, or keep it as cargo, with the links and the resulting action previewed before commitment. One decision per visit; nothing is sorted while moving; nothing about the rack changes anywhere else in the field. Reaching a bench costs what reaching anything costs, oxygen and exposure, so a bench is a destination and never a menu.
+
+
**Oxygen, proposed as a system** (the owner's design questions answered provisionally). The suit carries a fixed tank with a gauge the player always sees; the ship refills it without limit and without cost; a canister found in the station refills the tank where it is found, or is carried in one rack cell as a spare that refills the tank once when used. Oxygen is not a currency and is never spent on anything but breathing. Depletion is steady and readable; exertion does not change it, because a survival clock the player cannot predict is the bad UX the owner named. A sortie therefore has a natural length the player chooses by what they carry, and the rack tradeoff bites twice: a spare canister is a cell, and so is the component that would have made the trip worth it. Sending a survivor to the ship is priced in the same unit: a survivor walks with the player and breathes from a canister the player must have found or carried, so a rescue is a route decision with a visible cost and never a task with a bar.
+
+
**Death, proposed.** Running out of oxygen or health wakes the player aboard the ship, as the owner says. What death loses is what the player was carrying: the rack's contents stay where the player fell and can be recovered on a later sortie, and a survivor being escorted is left where they were, alive, waiting. What death keeps is everything known: patterns, the notebook, the map. Nothing on the ship deteriorates while the player is dead or away. Why death wakes the player is not answered here or anywhere, by owner instruction; what the systems side owes is that dying is never a reset and never free.
+
+
### 5. The languages and the notebook (the discovery engine, without a cipher)
+
+
The owner's first kind of discovery is a clue visible all along acquiring meaning when the player gains context. Under this premise the context is a language. The station carries at least two, with distinct roles that World owns; the systems rule is that every inscription the player has seen is in the notebook from the moment it is seen, in its own script, marked unread, and that learning a language's key, from a survivor, a paired sign, a machine that names what it does, is what turns entries the player already holds readable. Entries never solve themselves; a translation is a reading the player makes, and a later key can change a reading, which the notebook marks and keeps both of. That is the changed-meaning state of DES106 made concrete, and it is not a cipher: no lyric, verse or riddle is written for the player to decode; the language is the setting's, and the survivors and machines are the dictionary. The owner's UX line binds it as before: the current goal is always in the player's own words on screen, controls and basic interactions are never in an alien script, and the notebook helps deduction rather than standing in for either.
+
+
### 6. The rulings the lead owes
+
+
- **R14, the conductive medium: adopted.** Wherever the [contract](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction) says water, read a conductive medium that connects bodies; water is the pumping district's instance; flow is a property a medium may lack, so the Floater is a role a place may field or not. Mirrored on the contract at r11. Nothing else on the contract changes by this.
+
- **The stun-kill.** The Brief's portable storm says that firing the Arc during the Coil's two-second window gives each stunned ordinary body in the field one lethal strike. That is the contract's r9 rule, execution needs the pulse, and it is the shared rule the storm uses; Equipment's Path A says no execution exists and is asked to align or contest it on the contract. Combat's countersign is still pending. The place-bound Choir version is retired with the Choir.
+
- **The Choir Cascade and the Echo Relay: retired as content.** The contract's r8 rows are marked superseded at r11; REV106-8's contradiction closes by retirement, not by reconciliation.
+
- **Prices for refuge projects**: still owed, still on the same principle, payable by purposeful sorties and never by hauling; set when the ship's projects have field actions.
+
+
### 7. The three endings under the premise, as a shape only
+
+
The owner marks the first objective and the ending as design questions. The lead proposes the shape and no answer. **The apparent ending** fulfils the goal the player is given in the first minutes: make the ship whole and get the people you found aboard it. It is a real achievement with real credits, and the questions still open, why the station says stay away, why death returns you, what the two languages are for, are what make it apparent. **The real ending** answers how to leave, which the owner says survivors and evidence may explain; the player's understanding of the station changes what leaving means, and the decision at the end is about the people on the ship. **The deepest secrets** are why the revival happens and what the station was, and remain optional and ungated. The first discovery kind lives in the languages, the second in the station proving larger than the docking ring implied, the third in the history the survivors and the station's makers left. The Visionary shapes the identity and the Campaign designer maps the first sortie and the return paths; this section only says what the systems can carry.
+
+
### 8. Content assumptions, restated for the premise
+
+
- A goal in the player's own words on screen from the first sortie, and a second after the first credits.
+
- At least two languages with distinct roles, each with a key the player can find in more than one place, and inscriptions seen before the key exists.
+
- Each component family's base pattern in at least two places; variants authored by region; a bench reachable in every region.
+
- Oxygen readable at all times; every sortie completable at the base tank from the airlock to a first objective and back.
+
- Survivors as authored people, each with a situation, and rescue priced in oxygen and route.
+
- Death that keeps knowledge and leaves carried things recoverable; nothing that decays while the player is away.
+
- The station growing in at least three places the player has already crossed (the Campaign designer's rule: a reveal in a room never entered is just a new room).
+
- Not assumed: any number of hours, any region count, water anywhere, any settlement model beyond authored people, or any answer to the revival.
+
+
### 9. Handoffs
+
+
The Visionary: the identity account under the premise, and the first objective in the player's words; accept or replace section 7's shape. The Campaign designer: the first sortie and the return paths, with section 3's cache rule and section 4's bench rule as the constraints. Equipment and Combat: reconcile the two portable paths on the contract's r9 stun-kill rule, adopt R15 as the variation rule, and state the family list with its base patterns; Combat's countersign of r9 and r11. World: the two languages' roles and keys under section 5's notebook rule; no cipher. Colony: the ship's survivors under the model, with rescue priced as section 4 proposes. The critics, the reader and the Troll: whether section 4's oxygen and death rules are readable and never a reset; whether section 3 keeps caches from being a checklist. PM: disposition of DES107 r1 and contract r11, and the canonical alignment of Brief, Tasks and Hub to the owner-set premise, against which this section should then be checked.
+
+
---
+
## 0. Under the owner's direction: what the design keeps, what it loses, and a three-ending progression (DES106 r1, a proposal)
-
**DES106 r4, on the Campaign page at r13 · 2026-09-07 · Lead Game and Systems Designer · In review · r4 takes PMR011's working geography as recorded on PM Reviews 726f09 and Tasks 8e9290 in place of the lead's r2 answer to the Campaign designer: an upper region and connected lower regions, a network with lateral travel and returns rather than a descent spine, no inherited berth cap; and adds Hearth's development across the upper phase as the furnace project in parts. r3 (845a72) is in history. r3: r3 answers PMR011 (Tasks 79e90a; the room's 48 and 49): the roof's discoveries and build opportunities are enumerated, the early-solved lift is specified without a flag, the real resolution is written as the lead's proposal rather than a bracket, and the stun-kill is ruled (execution needs the pulse) with the survivors and the scene without the Relay, mirrored on the contract at r9; Equipment's seven-origin note and the Troll's TRL-WB1 are taken. r2 (dd963a) is in history. r2: Answers the Lead row of the [current priority on Tasks](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks#current-priority-apply-the-owners-discovery-first-direction): the impact of the [owner's answers](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) on the existing design, and a high-level progression from the apparent first ending to the real ending and the optional deepest secrets, with the content each layer assumes. r2 places the layers on the Visionary's replacement proposal, [The World Below](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#visionary-replacement-proposal-the-world-below), supplies the stretch the proposal leaves to the lead, from the answering settlement to the real ending and the deepest secrets, answers REV106-4 and the critic's link caution, records Combat's Choir Cascade ruling with the lead's decision on the cap (mirrored on the contract at r8), accepts Colony's project loop as the refuge's systems shape, and answers the Campaign designer's three questions from Districts r14. r1 (fb24be) was written before the premise existed and is in history.** Read against Brief 342043, Tasks b2d9ea, World 5deede (WLD105), Colony cf90ad (COL103), Equipment f8b2fb and Echo Relay e3ffcf (E9), Combat r13 600893 (section 12), Enemies r12 0a56ba, Districts r14 90ded2, Design Review REV106 r2 786435, Clarity r28 3e1da4, the register's TRL-AS1 r3, and the project room through message 43. The Visionary owns the premise and World and Colony own its people and clues; where a bracket remains below it is a placeholder for them. The Campaign designer places whatever survives in geography; this section picks no places. Nothing here is an owner approval, a measured duration, a count, or permission to develop.
+
**DES106 r4, on the Campaign page at r13 · 2026-09-07 · Lead Game and Systems Designer · Superseded in its fiction on 2026-09-07 by the owner's survivorlike correction (Brief 51e58b: water not required, the song chain rejected) and the owner-set premise (the astronaut and the unofficial station); its structure, the impact table, the three-ending shape, the notebook, the content assumptions and the contract's standing, is carried forward by DES107 above. Kept as written; nothing deleted. · r4 takes PMR011's working geography as recorded on PM Reviews 726f09 and Tasks 8e9290 in place of the lead's r2 answer to the Campaign designer: an upper region and connected lower regions, a network with lateral travel and returns rather than a descent spine, no inherited berth cap; and adds Hearth's development across the upper phase as the furnace project in parts. r3 (845a72) is in history. r3: r3 answers PMR011 (Tasks 79e90a; the room's 48 and 49): the roof's discoveries and build opportunities are enumerated, the early-solved lift is specified without a flag, the real resolution is written as the lead's proposal rather than a bracket, and the stun-kill is ruled (execution needs the pulse) with the survivors and the scene without the Relay, mirrored on the contract at r9; Equipment's seven-origin note and the Troll's TRL-WB1 are taken. r2 (dd963a) is in history. r2: Answers the Lead row of the [current priority on Tasks](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks#current-priority-apply-the-owners-discovery-first-direction): the impact of the [owner's answers](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#game-vision) on the existing design, and a high-level progression from the apparent first ending to the real ending and the optional deepest secrets, with the content each layer assumes. r2 places the layers on the Visionary's replacement proposal, [The World Below](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief#visionary-replacement-proposal-the-world-below), supplies the stretch the proposal leaves to the lead, from the answering settlement to the real ending and the deepest secrets, answers REV106-4 and the critic's link caution, records Combat's Choir Cascade ruling with the lead's decision on the cap (mirrored on the contract at r8), accepts Colony's project loop as the refuge's systems shape, and answers the Campaign designer's three questions from Districts r14. r1 (fb24be) was written before the premise existed and is in history.** Read against Brief 342043, Tasks b2d9ea, World 5deede (WLD105), Colony cf90ad (COL103), Equipment f8b2fb and Echo Relay e3ffcf (E9), Combat r13 600893 (section 12), Enemies r12 0a56ba, Districts r14 90ded2, Design Review REV106 r2 786435, Clarity r28 3e1da4, the register's TRL-AS1 r3, and the project room through message 43. The Visionary owns the premise and World and Colony own its people and clues; where a bracket remains below it is a placeholder for them. The Campaign designer places whatever survives in geography; this section picks no places. Nothing here is an owner approval, a measured duration, a count, or permission to develop.
### 0.1 What the owner's answers do to the existing design
