Commit d37cbf

2026-09-06 18:33:26 Anonymous: DES103 r2 (Design Document r8): fix EXT102 X21 (a mote adds charge up to capacity) and X22 (electrician loop break-even with one battery, profitable with two; arc bounded by the surge, drain above cutter yield); one cable vocabulary (REV102-7); owner page recommendation rewritten in plain words with no term before its definition (Clarity Q38); nothing else moved

hold the flood/design document.md ..
@@ 1,6 1,6 @@
	# Hold the Flood — Design Document
-	**DES103 r1, the Design Document at revision r7 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | written to PM's document criteria 1 to 11**
+	**DES103 r2, the Design Document at revision r8 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | written to PM's document criteria 1 to 11**
	## Read this first: one page for the owner
@@ 8,7 8,7 @@
	**Why it might be worth making.** Crowd-survival games are good at pressure and bad at curiosity. This one makes the pressure legible, so a plan is possible, and makes understanding the thing that changes where the pressure lands. The two-minute example in section 1 is the whole argument in one hatch.
-	**The recommendation, in one paragraph.** For players of automatic-weapon crowd games who want a reason to think, and for players of exploration mysteries who will accept pressure as the price of a puzzle: a survivorlike, as you asked, whose crowd combat yields charge instead of experience, and whose payoff moment, mowing a packed surge, exists as a spend of that charge through the arc module, which this revision moves into the minimum scope. Growth inside an expedition comes from what you find and pack, capped at six slots; the choices come every few minutes at the dispatch and at shelters, not every thirty seconds from a card. The distinctive experience is the mystery of a district that sends its own enemies where the panel points, and the lever that lets you point it. Designed length: about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four hours, plus free expeditions and three endings. Positioning assumption, a hypothesis and not a finding: a short authored game on the shelf your crowd-game references sit on, at their price band, with the mystery as the reason to pick this one. The alternatives, and what each costs, are in section 17.
+	**The recommendation, in one paragraph.** For players of automatic-weapon crowd games who want a reason to think, and for players of exploration mysteries who will accept pressure as the price of a puzzle: a survivorlike, as you asked, in which fighting the crowd yields fuel rather than experience points, and in which the genre's big moment, mowing down a packed wave, is bought with that fuel through one piece of gear, the arc, which lets your weapon's hits jump from enemy to enemy for a few seconds. Your power grows from what you find and pack into six slots, and your choices come a few times per expedition, whenever a new wave is announced and whenever you repack in a safe room, rather than from a menu of upgrades every half-minute as in most games of this kind. The distinctive experience is a district that sends its own enemies wherever a switch points, and the switch is yours. Designed length: about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four hours, plus free play and three endings. Positioning assumption, a hypothesis and not a finding: a short authored game sold next to the crowd games you named, at the prices they charge, with the mystery as the reason to pick this one. The alternatives, and what each costs, are in section 17.
	**What it costs, in scope.** One fixed district of about eight places, one enemy type with variants, seven modules, three surges per expedition, three colony decisions, and three authored mystery tiers. The one engineering risk is crowd behaviour. The one likely custom-art request is the enemy.
@@ 109,10 109,10 @@
	1. **Conduction.** Current flows between touching conductors, and through water to everything the water connects. Insulation stops it.
	2. **Power.** A device works only while it is energised: a hatch, lamp or beacon on a live line or in energised water; a rack module linked to a charged battery. A lit beacon is steady while powered.
-	3. **Attraction.** The district has two kinds of line: a **power line** and a **signal line**, both switched by the panel to the causeway, to the yard, or to neither. At a dispatch the relay's pulse travels the *signal* line only, the beacon on it flashes, and the surge enters there. **The panel alone decides the intake.** After entry, a surge moves toward the nearest lit beacon it can reach, re-evaluated continuously, and gathers around it when it arrives; with no lit beacon reachable it spreads along the branch it entered. Current you inject yourself (the coil, a planted beacon's battery) travels power, never signal: it can light a beacon steady and open a hatch, so it can draw a surge that is already inside, but it can never choose where the next surge enters. **The two lines are visible, or the rule is unfair.** At the panel each position has two cable heads, a thick power cable and a thin signal cable; the thin one runs beside the thick one to the top of its beacon; and at every dispatch the relay's pulse can be seen travelling the thin cable from the panel to the beacon before it flashes. A beacon you lit with the coil is steady but its thin cable never carries a travelling pulse, and at the next dispatch the player watches the pulse run down the other branch's cable instead. That is the observable cause; without it a player who lit the yard with the coil would conclude the rule is unreliable, which is the worst lesson a game about rules can teach.
+	3. **Attraction.** The district has two kinds of line: a **power cable** and a **signal cable**, both switched by the panel to the causeway, to the yard, or to neither. At a dispatch the relay's pulse travels the *signal* line only, the beacon on it flashes, and the surge enters there. **The panel alone decides the intake.** After entry, a surge moves toward the nearest lit beacon it can reach, re-evaluated continuously, and gathers around it when it arrives; with no lit beacon reachable it spreads along the branch it entered. Current you inject yourself (the coil, a planted beacon's battery) travels power, never signal: it can light a beacon steady and open a hatch, so it can draw a surge that is already inside, but it can never choose where the next surge enters. **The two cables are visible, or the rule is unfair.** At the panel each position has two cable heads, a thick power cable and a thin signal cable; the thin one runs beside the thick one to the top of its beacon; and at every dispatch the relay's pulse can be seen travelling the thin cable from the panel to the beacon before it flashes. A beacon you lit with the coil is steady but its thin cable never carries a travelling pulse, and at the next dispatch the player watches the pulse run down the other branch's cable instead. That is the observable cause; without it a player who lit the yard with the coil would conclude the rule is unreliable, which is the worst lesson a game about rules can teach.
	A grounding, for what it is worth: an outside researcher's sourced reference page on this wiki records that real electrofishing uses one electrode at two intensities, a weak field that draws fish toward it and a stronger one that stuns them, as concentric zones of a single device. This design's beacon and coil are that pair: the relay's weak pulse lures, the coil's strong discharge stuns. No rule here depends on the physics, but the fiction is not invented from nothing.
-	4. **Charge.** Organisms carry charge. A killed one drops a small **mote**; a mass stunned in water sheds large motes. Each organism sheds once per expedition and is visibly dimmer afterward. Motes fade in seconds; walking over one fills a battery in your rack; with no battery, the charge is lost. Charge never leaves the district.
+	4. **Charge.** Organisms carry charge. A killed one drops a small **mote**; a mass stunned in water sheds large motes. Each organism sheds once per expedition and is visibly dimmer afterward. Motes fade in seconds; walking over one adds its charge to a battery in your rack, up to the battery's capacity; with no battery, or a full one, the charge is lost. Charge never leaves the district.
	What this gives the player, in plain terms:
@@ 180,9 180,9 @@
	Growth comes from the world. Per expedition, two to four modules from fixed placements whose contents vary; two to six bundles from deposits; and charge from surges met on your terms. The rack caps at six slots, so power grows by composition, not by number: you leave with a cutter and an empty battery; by the second surge you usually have one powered setup; the third surge tests it. Later expeditions grow faster because the workshop lets you start with a chosen module and because you know where the placements are.
-	**Charge is finite by rule.** Each organism sheds once. A surge of forty stunned in water yields four large motes, twenty units, two full batteries, if you are standing where they fall before they fade. Stragglers yield one unit each. Discharging spends a whole battery. So the electrician's loop, harvest a surge to fund the next discharge, pays only against a fresh surge standing in water, and never against the same crowd twice.
+	**Charge is finite by rule.** Each organism sheds once. A surge of forty stunned in water yields four large motes, twenty units, two full batteries, if you are standing where they fall before they fade. Stragglers yield one unit each. Discharging spends a whole battery. So the electrician's loop, harvest a surge to fund the next discharge, works only against a fresh surge standing in water, and never against the same crowd twice. With one battery it breaks even: a discharge spends ten, a stunned surge of forty sheds twenty, and a single battery can hold only ten of them before the rest fade. The electrician who wants a profit carries a second battery in place of a bundle, coil, two batteries, insulation and one bundle, which is the rack tension that loadout is built on; the printed rack in section 5 is the break-even version.
-	**The genre's payoff moment, and the module that supplies it.** Crowd games of this kind have one defining moment: the point where your power outpaces the spawn rate and you mow the crowd down. Charge alone does not reach that point, and an outside critic was right that shipping under the genre's tag without it would disappoint the audience the tag brings. So the recommended design includes it, on the same rule: the **arc**, a one-slot module that, while linked to a charged battery, makes the cutter's hits conduct from organism to organism through a dense crowd, draining the battery over about twenty seconds. In a thin crowd it does little; in a packed surge it is the mowing moment, funded by charge you harvested from the surge before, and bounded by the finite-charge rule so it cannot be sustained. It is the same conduction clause, applied to bodies. With it, the design has the genre's spike as a spend rather than a climb, once or twice an expedition, earned and chosen. Said plainly, in the owner's own word: you asked for a survivorlike, and this is how the design is one. Without the arc it would be a routing and deduction game with automatic weapons, and by its own numbers in section 3 the player would never outpace a surge; that is why the arc is in the minimum and not on a menu. The tradeoff, stated: there is no level-up draft, so the genre's every-thirty-seconds choice is replaced by the dispatch every few minutes and the rack at shelters, and whether the mowing moments are frequent enough to carry the feel is a question for play, not for this page.
+	**The genre's payoff moment, and the module that supplies it.** Crowd games of this kind have one defining moment: the point where your power outpaces the spawn rate and you mow the crowd down. Charge alone does not reach that point, and an outside critic was right that shipping under the genre's tag without it would disappoint the audience the tag brings. So the recommended design includes it, on the same rule: the **arc**, a one-slot module that, while linked to a charged battery, makes the cutter's hits conduct from organism to organism through a dense crowd, draining a full battery in about ten seconds. In a thin crowd it does little; in a packed surge it is the mowing moment, funded by charge you harvested from the surge before. Its bound is not the battery but the surge: each organism sheds once, so a surge can fund at most its own size in charge, chained kills shed motes too but only from organisms that have not yet shed, and between surges there is nothing to chain. A forty-organism surge cannot fund more than a few ten-second spells however well it is played, and the drain rate is set above what the cutter alone can earn, so the arc is a spend, not an engine. Numbers are proposals. It is the same conduction clause, applied to bodies. With it, the design has the genre's spike as a spend rather than a climb, once or twice an expedition, earned and chosen. Said plainly, in the owner's own word: you asked for a survivorlike, and this is how the design is one. Without the arc it would be a routing and deduction game with automatic weapons, and by its own numbers in section 3 the player would never outpace a surge; that is why the arc is in the minimum and not on a menu. The tradeoff, stated: there is no level-up draft, so the genre's every-thirty-seconds choice is replaced by the dispatch every few minutes and the rack at shelters, and whether the mowing moments are frequent enough to carry the feel is a question for play, not for this page.
	---
@@ 372,7 372,7 @@
	## 16. Honesty: what is resolved, what is open, what is unknown
-	**Resolved in this draft.** One routing model, written out and priced (section 4), on the world designer's map as of their revision r10, adopted verbatim so the two pages stop trading choices. The yard intake is in the water. Modules do not conduct; wet salvage does, and passes it on. Charge is finite by rule. No colony upkeep. The culvert is a gravity drain and costs the player nothing. The hatch has a stated closing rule and a crank exit. The relay's signal line is visible, so the coil's limit is learnable.
+	**Resolved in this draft.** One routing model, written out and priced (section 4), on the world designer's map as of their revision r10, adopted verbatim so the two pages stop trading choices. The yard intake is in the water. Modules do not conduct; wet salvage does, and passes it on. Charge is finite by rule. No colony upkeep. The culvert is a gravity drain and costs the player nothing. The hatch has a stated closing rule and a crank exit. The relay's signal cable is visible, so the coil's limit is learnable.
	**Tuning bounds the design depends on, stated so they can be tested.** On a first expedition with the panel untouched, the causeway crowd's press must not reach the causeway head before the evacuation window closes, or "withdrawal never requires solving the mystery" becomes false; that is a bound on the press rate, not a proven value. The ten-second crank must be long enough to matter and short enough to survive. The leak rate must make the rack a decision rather than a nuisance.
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	- **Forecast:** the relay's schedule, shown as a countdown and an intake marker.
	- **Intake:** where a surge enters: the causeway's far end, the yard channel at the pump hall, or the sluice.
	- **Beacon:** a lamp on the district's circuit; steady when powered, flashing at a dispatch, dark when unpowered. A lit beacon draws the Flood inside the district.
-	- **Panel:** the three-position switch at the causeway head that decides which branch's power and signal lines are live.
-	- **Power cable / signal cable:** the two lines the panel switches, leaving each position side by side as a thick cable and a thin one; power lights and opens things, and the thin signal cable carries the dispatch pulse, which can be seen travelling it.
+	- **Panel:** the three-position switch at the causeway head that decides which branch's power and signal cables are live.
+	- **Power cable / signal cable:** the two cables the panel switches, leaving each position side by side as a thick one and a thin one; power lights and opens things, and the thin signal cable carries the dispatch pulse, which can be seen travelling it.
	- **Press:** the slow outward creep of a gathered crowd's edge along its branch during a quiet interval.
	- **Pursuit range:** the distance within which organisms leave a crowd to chase you.
	- **Hatch:** the pump hall's powered door, open while the yard is lit, with a hand crank inside for when it is not.
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	## Appendix B: bookkeeping
-	**Status.** DES103 r1, which is this page at revision r7, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document. PM's PMU002 (Tasks 137028) opened DES103 on the existing draft as its base and set criteria 1 to 11; DES102 remains In review pending PM's full acceptance, and nothing here assumes it. r6 (12779d), r5 (bc134b), r4 (46b320), r3 (d35209), r2 (c4ad51) and r1 (d828a4) are page history.
+	**Status.** DES103 r2, which is this page at revision r8, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document; r7 (44984c) is page history.
+
+	**Sources read for r8.** Pm Reviews a2beab (PMU002 checkpoint; next full review still due; nothing new assigned). Design Review REV102 r4 041852 (assessed r6; items 7 to 9: one vocabulary for the cables, the unsupported playtime inference, the review-count line; the last two were already met by r7, the first is completed here). External Critique r6 3148bb (EXT102 delivered against r7: X19 retracted; X21, a mote cannot "fill" a ten-unit battery; X22, the electrician's loop breaks even with one battery and the arc's stated bound is not the binding one). Clarity round 9 (Q38: the owner page used five terms before defining them and leaned on genre knowledge). World and Mystery r14 e2d4b4 (PMU002 applied; title relabelled; nothing open to the lead).
+
+	**What r8 changes, as DES103 r2.** Two arithmetic defects in the document's own numbers are fixed: a mote adds its charge to a battery up to capacity rather than filling it (section 4 and Appendix A); the electrician's loop is stated as break-even with one battery and profitable only with a second in place of a bundle, which is now named as that loadout's rack tension (section 6); and the arc's bound is restated as the surge, not the battery, with its drain set above what the cutter alone earns (section 6). One vocabulary for the two cables throughout, per the critic and the editor. The owner page's recommendation paragraph is rewritten in plain words with no term used before it is explained and no reliance on knowing what an upgrade card is (the reader's Q38). Nothing else moved. PM's PMU002 (Tasks 137028) opened DES103 on the existing draft as its base and set criteria 1 to 11; DES102 remains In review pending PM's full acceptance, and nothing here assumes it. r6 (12779d), r5 (bc134b), r4 (46b320), r3 (d35209), r2 (c4ad51) and r1 (d828a4) are page history.
	**Sources read for r7.** Tasks 137028, Brief 28fb1c and Team cbf8d7 (PMU002: five owner-added members recorded, D015; routing confirmed, D016; the title is the owner-supplied working title and final naming is not locked, D017; criterion 11 added and related choices to be combined into a recommendation, D018; the claims that reviewer playtime proves a minimum length or that a second district follows are ruled unsupported); Design Review REV102 r3 382607 (residual confirmed resolved; verdict stands; the review-count line flagged); World and Mystery r13 a8a3f4 (aligned to r6's tier-two door); Clarity round 8 (Q35 confirmed; Q36 on ending-reach ratios; Q37 on the title clause on the world page); External Critique r5 6a92c7 (X18 and X20 withdrawn); Glossary 7987ee (the duplicated cable entry).
@@ 457,7 461,7 @@
	**Sources read for r3.** World and Mystery r10 c6f059 (the world designer's integration check of draft r1 and their aligned page; the text this revision lifts); Design Review r8 11bd4d (post-acceptance note; recommends confirming D013; REV102 awaits this document); Clarity Questions round 5 (the reader's cold read of draft r1, and Q31, Q32); External Critique r2 280e75 (X9 to X15); the outside researcher's Reference page on electricity in water (REF101); Pm Reviews unchanged (PMR001 checkpoint only; no routing ruling yet). Earlier sources: Hub 89e2dc; Brief 3cf14c; Tasks ee938e; Team 3ddc81; Design r6 211106; Glossary 86c1c4.
-	**What r3 changes.** The world designer's r10 and my r2 crossed and each adopted the other's earlier choices, so r3 aligns to r10 verbatim and stops the exchange: the junction platform as the shelter, the junction gate on its own circuit with its valve and pool as tier two, the crank as the hatch's exit, press and pursuit range as the crowd terms, and the map as drawn there. Their integration items 1 to 7 are all applied: gravity-drain culvert and dead pump; both docks share the bypass and the asymmetry is water; the press-rate bound is stated as a tuning constraint (section 16); the forecast shows each crowd's target (section 3); the turned-sign rule is stated (section 7); the relay room opens by a valve sequence, not a key (section 11); the chain rows are lifted from r10, with the Understand row rewritten for the visible signal cable. The reader's Q32 is answered by making the signal line observable (section 4, section 9, section 14). The outside critique's X9, X13 and X14 are answered on this page: the title is the owner's working name and not a requirement; expedition twenty-one is a courtesy and the retention argument is spent by two endings, said plainly; the length is owned here. One sentence cites the outside researcher's sourced electrofishing reference as grounding for beacon and coil being one device at two intensities.
+	**What r3 changes.** The world designer's r10 and my r2 crossed and each adopted the other's earlier choices, so r3 aligns to r10 verbatim and stops the exchange: the junction platform as the shelter, the junction gate on its own circuit with its valve and pool as tier two, the crank as the hatch's exit, press and pursuit range as the crowd terms, and the map as drawn there. Their integration items 1 to 7 are all applied: gravity-drain culvert and dead pump; both docks share the bypass and the asymmetry is water; the press-rate bound is stated as a tuning constraint (section 16); the forecast shows each crowd's target (section 3); the turned-sign rule is stated (section 7); the relay room opens by a valve sequence, not a key (section 11); the chain rows are lifted from r10, with the Understand row rewritten for the visible signal cable. The reader's Q32 is answered by making the signal cable observable (section 4, section 9, section 14). The outside critique's X9, X13 and X14 are answered on this page: the title is the owner's working name and not a requirement; expedition twenty-one is a courtesy and the retention argument is spent by two endings, said plainly; the length is owned here. One sentence cites the outside researcher's sourced electrofishing reference as grounding for beacon and coil being one device at two intensities.
	**What r2 changed.** Integrates WLD102 r8 as delivered: the world designer's map (interior gate on the causeway circuit, two ledges, culvert exits, the ladder from the hall to the yard ledge as the unpowered exit), the gravity-drain culvert, the crowd vocabulary (holding, proximity, thinning), the re-derived dock consequence, the mid-surge price by route and door, the mystery's revised rows, and the shut / fix / hold ending with the valve gallery as tier two. Answers the outside critique where it is design: the differentiator (section 1), the rack as a small scope (section 5), the optional arc module for the genre's payoff (section 6), the renewable and the length in hours with the refund-window fact (section 11), and three new owner decisions (section 17). The routing baseline is unchanged from r1 and from D013; the world designer's r9 asks PM to confirm or reverse it, and this document is written so that either answer changes section 4 and the scenes, not the rest.
@@ 469,7 473,7 @@
	5. Ending without a tax: sections 10 and 11, no upkeep, three tiers in the same district, one path, expedition count as an estimate, title related to holding enemies off the refuge.
	6. Readability: plain body, Appendix A with the five requested terms, the readable-state table in section 14 with sources checked today, the culvert's pump account reconciled to the world designer's, Quiet 3 shortened.
-	**Changes from the concept packet (DES101 r5).** The glow-range and split-surge rules are withdrawn from the baseline and kept as the labelled alternative. Power and signal lines are new, to give PM's "coil cannot select intake" a physical reason; the world designer reached the same separation independently. Holding, press and pursuit range are the shared crowd terms, settled at the world designer's revision r10. The siphon and the optional arc modules are new. Numbers are proposed throughout.
+	**Changes from the concept packet (DES101 r5).** The glow-range and split-surge rules are withdrawn from the baseline and kept as the labelled alternative. Power and signal cables are new, to give PM's "coil cannot select intake" a physical reason; the world designer reached the same separation independently. Holding, press and pursuit range are the shared crowd terms, settled at the world designer's revision r10. The siphon and the optional arc modules are new. Numbers are proposed throughout.
	**Asset check record.** OpenGameArt FAQ read today: licence list and per-asset licensing as stated in section 14. Kenney: the assets listing page (kenney.nl/assets) shows no licence statement; the "Top-down Shooter" pack page (kenney.nl/assets/top-down-shooter) states "Creative Commons CC0" and 580 files. Both fetched read-only on 2026-09-06; suitability not assessed.
@@ 477,4 481,4 @@
	**Criterion 11, where it is answered.** The owner page's recommendation paragraph; section 1's audience paragraph; section 6's payoff design and tradeoff; section 11's length, early-stop and ending paragraphs; section 17's recommendation and decision 4, with the observed data, its limits and the prediction separated.
-	**PM report.** Task DES103 r1 on the DES102 base; artifact Design Document r7 (r6 12779d, r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); the world designer's page is aligned and the map exists in one place; no canonical decision changed; reasoning is written design against the cited revisions, no player data; two outside facts are cited with their sources and caveats (Steam's refund terms, read directly; the researcher's measured price bands, not independently verified); risks and tuning bounds are listed in sections 15 and 16; the independent critic's verdict on r3 is ready for owner review, and r4 and r5 add only the residual and the pitch layer. Next handoff: PM to accept DES102 and either open DES103 on this revision or say what more the owner packet needs; the world designer to align their page to sections 2 and 4; the critic to confirm the residual. One PM request: rule on the routing model, since it decides section 4 and both scenes, and say whether the alternative still goes to the owner as a decision.
+	**PM report.** Task DES103 r2 on the DES102 base; artifact Design Document r8 (r7 44984c, r6 12779d, r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); the world designer's page is aligned and the map exists in one place; no canonical decision changed; reasoning is written design against the cited revisions, no player data; two outside facts are cited with their sources and caveats (Steam's refund terms, read directly; the researcher's measured price bands, not independently verified); risks and tuning bounds are listed in sections 15 and 16; the independent critic's verdict on r3 is ready for owner review, and r4 and r5 add only the residual and the pitch layer. Next handoff: PM to accept DES102 and either open DES103 on this revision or say what more the owner packet needs; the world designer to align their page to sections 2 and 4; the critic to confirm the residual. One PM request: rule on the routing model, since it decides section 4 and both scenes, and say whether the alternative still goes to the owner as a decision.