2026-09-10 11:11:35
Anonymous:
Outcome47: expressive temporary build climb, multi-output power/heat limits, finite echo returns and paused link editing
hold the flood/build rules.md ..
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# Build Rules
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**Status:** PM provisionally integrated this written design after focused review and author response; gameplay quality remains unvalidated. The owner has accepted connected reusable-part builds and spare oxygen sharing carrying capacity with equipment and loot. The exact grammar, parts, capacities, starting equipment, quantities and progression below remain proposals. Mostly automatic ordinary fire, manual specials and the journal pause are owner decisions.
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Builds are machines the player assembles from reusable parts. A good build has a recognizable fantasy—storm, ricochet factory, moving furnace—not merely a higher damage number. Permanent parts let the player begin an expedition with an intention; temporary combat upgrades make that machine grow into something outrageous before the astronaut returns home.
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## Proposed core: a connected effect grammar
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The owner has selected connected reusable parts, mostly automatic ordinary fire, manual special abilities, shared carrying space and a full journal pause. Temporary combat upgrades reset whenever the astronaut returns aboard, alive or revived. The specific connection language, upgrade effects and limits below are proposals.
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The player carries one finite rig. Its spaces hold active equipment parts; ordinary salvage, inactive parts and spare oxygen canisters occupy the same overall carrying capacity, as the owner accepted. A part installed in the rig occupies capacity once, not once as cargo and again as equipment. Moving it to inactive cargo frees active rig area but not carrying capacity. The exact grid, shapes, capacities and canister quantities remain open. A suit tank supplies limited portable oxygen.
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## Example: choosing what this expedition becomes
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Parts use a public grammar rather than hidden recipes: a **trigger** notices an event; a **payload** carries charge, heat, force or fragments; a **modifier** transforms, stores or branches; an **actuator** produces a projectile, arc, barrier or shove. A packet contains a trigger and may carry a payload. Impact Dynamo, for example, emits a trigger carrying charge; Capacitor stores it and later emits a charged trigger, while Thermal Lens changes charge into heat without inventing another trigger.
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The astronaut leaves with a Pulse Projector, an Arc Emitter, a Fork Relay and a charge cell. They expect crowded hospital corridors, so the parts are connected to turn automatic hits into branching arcs. The same four parts could instead support a forceful projectile and a defensive release; the machine is an intention, not a fixed class.
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The player arranges parts and draws compatible directed links between visible ports. Multi-role parts reopen old arrangements. Rig-installed and inactive carried parts each consume capacity once; installation also consumes active area and enables use. Field swaps consume world time.
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The first occupied hall gathers into a real crest. Automatic weapons keep cycling while the player chooses the dense line, uses a manual barrier to survive the flank and clears the source route. In the quiet afterwards the rig offers two temporary upgrades based on what is installed:
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At the ship, rearrangement is safe. In the station, installing, removing or rewiring a part is a deliberate world action while oxygen and threats continue. The journal still pauses the rest of the game as the owner requires, but consulting a recorded diagram cannot complete a rig edit.
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- **Echoing Arc** lets the final arc return once through the connection, adding charge and heat. It promises a larger payoff when enemies stay close.
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- **Rebound Disc** changes the Projector's ordinary shot into a heavy disc with a limited return path. It promises repeated impacts when the room has hard walls and useful angles.
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## Resolution and readable limits
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This is a choice of play, not “damage plus five percent.” Echoing Arc asks the astronaut to run toward density and save a manual discharge. Rebound Disc asks them to read the architecture and bank shots through the crowd. The player chooses Echoing Arc.
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An ordinary controller launch, manual special activation, a new enemy attack or an ambient hazard is an **external event** and starts a causal wave. The accepted first-pass envelope in [Mechanical Interfaces And Opening Quantities](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanical%20Interfaces%20And%20Opening%20Quantities) permits one independent ordinary launch path per active rig, sourced by Threat Sensor or qualifying grounded-movement Stride. One designated ordinary actuator owns target/readiness; its valid target and one readiness spend seal a launch reservation. When that wave reaches it through any Fork, the actuator executes exactly once without rechecking the spent readiness. Other descendants check independently. A second independent source-to-ordinary-launch path refuses before edit commitment under this proposed content limit; an unrelated manual source, non-launch Stride path or Projector descendant remains legal. Ordinary firing is mostly automatic and special abilities are manual under the owner's decision. Rig-created projectiles, fragments, arcs, barriers and contacts keep their wave identity rather than becoming new external events.
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At the next crest, returning arcs fill the charge cell quickly enough to power a manual **Thunderhead**. The player holds the dangerous centre for one more second, presses the special and watches the stored charge fork through the entire lane. A build that was modest at departure has crossed a visible threshold. A deliberately woken larger surge may later offer one rarer transformation, but the player can also turn home with the parts and knowledge already earned.
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Within a wave, each part resolves once and a returning signal stops. Force projectiles, pressure bursts, fragments and external strikes against the player or Barrier Plate are impacts; arcs and heat are not unless explicitly converted. Impact Dynamo watches one named carrier through its local clamp and batches qualifying same-wave impacts there into one downstream charged trigger of proposed **2 U**, regardless of batched impact count. The carrier is a Barrier frame, Projector physical-output feed or authored fixture surface; the Dynamo does not hear remote impacts. Capacitor stores exact **0–4 U**, accepts at least 1 U up to free space, visibly vents delivered overflow and is blocked before Fork allocation when full. Its chosen release is **2 U**: below 2 U or when its first receiver refuses, nothing commits and charge remains; after that first receiver accepts, charge is committed and a later refusal does not refund it. A manual release starts a new wave, while rig-caused release retains the incoming wave. Storage becoming ready does not create a new external event. Retained charge across death remains unresolved rather than silently kept or cleared.
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Back aboard, every temporary upgrade is removed under the owner-set reset. The physical Projector, Arc, Fork and charge cell remain. The player also keeps the discovered fact that the next freight route has hard rebound surfaces. On the next departure they may rebuild toward Rebound Disc from the start, carry more oxygen instead, or follow a different clue. The power climb restarts; the player's equipment and understanding do not.
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A later external event begins another wave. Enemy attacks can repeatedly feed Counterwall until attacks stop, the barrier fails or storage saturates. That is an intended horde-fed engine, not recursive self-activation or a balance claim.
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## Three kinds of progress
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An incompatible link is visibly invalid before commitment. Fork determines pre-allocation candidates from link, type, readiness, storage and required-target validity. No candidate dissipates the input; one gets the whole payload; two divide whole U evenly, with output 1 receiving any odd remainder. Each share then checks its receiver threshold; a sub-threshold share dissipates without copying, buffering or reassignment. Bare triggers copy to accepting outputs. Surprise should remain traceable, not depend on hidden exceptions.
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**Retained equipment** is physical. A reusable part carried home remains in the collection. Installed rig parts and inactive carried parts use the same shared carrying capacity as oxygen canisters and loot; active use also occupies rig space. A part left in a station machine or dropped in a room is not carried home.
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## Navigation, inspection and discovered families
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**Expedition power** is temporary. Resolving meaningful crowd pressure earns upgrades tied to parts already installed. Every such upgrade resets on any return aboard. The player gets the survivorslike pleasure of rising from vulnerable to dominant during each outing without losing permanent finds.
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The suit always shows oxygen, carried reserve/capacity, condition and controls. Its minimum return reference is a reverse breadcrumb through passages actually traversed to the last confirmed anchor, ultimately the ship. It promises neither safety nor continued access, exposes no unseen route and predicts no exact return cost. Unknown routes have local orientation only. A recorded location keeps captured evidence and its anchor-relative breadcrumb; a learned crew name labels the record without granting tracking.
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**Useful knowledge** is remembered. The journal can preserve observed part behaviour, source locations, crowd traits and successful connections. Knowledge does not grant a part or an upgrade, but it makes the next loadout and route more intentional.
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A carried or accessible part shows individual behavior, controls and ports. Preview answers only whether the proposed direct link between accessible endpoints is valid; it does not calculate every combination. An unfamiliar fixture shows visible traits, ports and its original cut mark. Once learned, **relay** predicts packet transfer, **sink** absorption and **isolator** interruption. Human-painted copies remain contextual. Controls work without this discovery, and not every build requires it.
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## Connecting parts
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At an exposed isolator contact, the player may bypass it and seat a carried relay-family part—such as Fork Relay—in readable service ports. Knowing relays transfer packets tells the player what to pack; local preview only confirms the proposed link on arrival. The part stays seated to keep the section and hoist powered. It is lost to the rig but, once left behind, no longer occupies carrying capacity. This adopts Exploration Structure's persistence choice.
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Each part explains one action and shows compatible ports. A build reads as a plain causal sentence:
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## Illustrative parts
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**start → change → deliver → payoff**
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These eight parts demonstrate the grammar; they are not a final catalogue or starting loadout. The current [Equipment Catalogue](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment%20Catalogue) owns their acceptance, clamp and presentation details; the accepted mechanical article owns this bounded split/storage/controller candidate. Larger modular expansions, integrated weapons, heated-barrier effects and separate vent receivers remain undeveloped, unselected alternatives.
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A sensor may start an automatic event; a fork branches it; a lens changes charge into heat; an actuator turns the result into an arc, projectile, barrier or shove. A part can fill more than one role, so finding one object can reopen several existing builds.
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| Part | Known individual behavior | Different uses it opens |
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| Pulse Projector | An accepted trigger, valid target and readiness launch the packet's payload, or a weak force pulse if the packet has no payload | Starter actuator; carries heat or force; supplies impacts |
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| Impact Dynamo | Qualifying impacts on its one locally clamped carrier emit one proposed 2 U charged trigger per causal wave | Projectile engine; barrier counter; salvage-chain bridge |
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| Fork Relay | Copies a bare trigger; divides whole U across pre-allocation candidates, output 1 taking an odd remainder, with no post-threshold reallocation | Splits offense/defense; charges storage while firing |
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| Capacitor | Stores exact 0–4 U, vents overflow and releases chosen 2 U only after its first receiver accepts | Burst damage; emergency barrier; delayed combo timing |
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| Thermal Lens | Converts a packet's charge payload into heat while preserving its trigger | Stored-charge or conductive-Cycler heat through Projector |
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| Arc Emitter | An accepted charged trigger produces arcs from its valid selected target when ready | Horde clearing; capacitor burst; secondary Fork output |
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| Barrier Plate | A trigger creates a directional barrier; a charged trigger can create or refresh it using that charge; strikes produce impact events | Defence; Dynamo trigger surface; route-holding tool |
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| Salvage Cycler | A valid activation trigger consumes selected salvage and emits proposed conductive 2 U charge, pressure 2 U force or brittle fragments with amount still open; later refusal does not refund material | Conductive charge, pressure force or brittle fragments |
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The player mounts or removes a physical part in the live world. That action checks carrying and rig space, occupies the astronaut and can be interrupted. Once accessible parts are mounted, the proposed link editor lives in the journal. The journal already pauses enemies and oxygen by owner decision; link changes there consume no world time. Preview shows whether direct ports fit and how much power and heat the proposed connection demands.
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Finding a Capacitor is therefore not a prescribed upgrade. The player can replace an immediate Arc connection with stored burst, store Dynamo charge from qualifying Barrier strikes, or route one Fork branch into storage while the other fires. Taking it occupies room that could carry salvage or an extra canister, whether installed or inactive. Installing it grants present use and commits active rig area and edit time; carrying it home inactive preserves later options without using it now.
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This makes expression easy to try without pretending that a frozen menu is active combat. Closing the journal returns the player to exactly the danger they paused. Constant mid-fight optimization is a real usability risk, so temporary upgrades alter existing connections automatically and offers should stay few and consequential. Later authorized observation must determine whether players experiment freely or feel obliged to pause after every change in the room.
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## Three materially different paths
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## Several ordinary weapons can work together
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**Cascade lance.** Use the catalogue's hypothetical later 8 A / 8 C configuration: Sensor reserves one designated Projector launch; Dynamo, clamped to Projector's physical-output feed, emits 2 U through Fork. Ready Arc and unsaturated Capacitor as two pre-allocation candidates receive 1 U each; if only one is a candidate it receives all 2 U. A post-split threshold refusal dissipates that share without reallocation. The player then pays for a world-time rewire, disconnecting Sensor from Projector and connecting built-in manual 2 U Capacitor release → Thermal Lens → Projector. If Lens accepts first, the 2 U is committed and a later Projector refusal does not restore it. Sparse targets reduce Arc opportunities; this is not the four-space opening rig. Packed hordes may be overwhelmed.
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A rig may contain more than one ordinary automatic weapon. Each automatic actuator owns its visible reach, target rule and readiness. When ready with a valid target, it fires; another actuator checks independently. A Fork may also send one event to several compatible payoffs. The universal single-ordinary-launch ban is removed.
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**Counterwall reactor.** The catalogue's later 6 A / 6 C example uses Manual Trigger → Barrier, Dynamo clamped to that Barrier, Capacitor and Arc Emitter. Each eligible wave feeds exactly 2 U; Capacitor stores up to 4 U and vents delivered overflow. A later built-in manual 2 U release feeds the ready, targeted Arc only after Arc accepts as first receiver. Releasing toward Barrier instead requires its single input to be configured for that path, replacing its Manual Trigger link. The wall becomes protection and engine while a horde attacks; it stops when strikes stop, bypass its facing or break the barrier, and full storage is excluded before allocation.
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The understandable limits are physical:
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**Salvage storm.** The current catalogue supports a chosen cargo shot through Manual Trigger → Cycler → Projector, using 4 A / 4 C and spending the selected material. Cycler emits proposed conductive 2 U charge, pressure 2 U force, or brittle fragments whose amount remains open. Conductive responses can instead use the catalogue's compatible charge-consuming routes. Once Cycler validly commits material, later receiver refusal never refunds it. The former continuous Cycler/Dynamo/Fork/Arc/storage expansion is an undeveloped alternative, not an established complete loadout. All descendants retain their wave. The path spends colony-bound salvage; hoarding starves it and firing destroys return value. Equipment/material composition, not enemy control, is the experiment.
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- **Rig space:** every active part must fit.
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- **Carrying space:** equipment competes with spare oxygen and discoveries.
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- **Power:** the link preview refuses a configuration whose simultaneous operating demand exceeds the rig's visible supply.
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- **Heat:** firing and repeated effects add visible heat. A hot component pauses or weakens according to its own inspected rule until it cools; it does not secretly choose another weapon to disable.
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All three reuse parts while asking whether to sustain a chain, power defence or consume cargo. A found Fork, Lens or Capacitor changes several paths because ports describe possibilities, not archetype membership.
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Multiple outputs therefore buy coverage and spectacle by consuming the same capacity that could support defence, oxygen or a more focused chain. Ordinary fire stays mostly automatic. Facing, movement and proximity determine what the actuators can reach; the player reserves button presses for labelled specials such as a barrier, shove or stored discharge.
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## Acquisition, commitment and return
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## Bounded returns and feedback
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Found equipment is readable individually. The player may install it, carry it inactive, leave it or discard something else. Taking a new part consumes carrying capacity; installing an already-carried part adds active-area use and field-edit time, not another carrying charge. Returned salvage has no currency or automatic upgrade value defined here.
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Spectacular builds need effects that can travel, branch and return. A blanket “each part resolves once and every return stops” makes that fantasy disappear. The proposed replacement is a visible **echo budget**.
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Hordes test space creation, sustained output and the oxygen-limited return while feeding dense-target chains and barrier impacts. A deliberately assembled build may erase ordinary hordes as payoff. Its real limits are causal shape, carried cost, acquisition and situations it does not address.
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An automatic launch, manual special, enemy strike or environmental event begins one causal sequence. A part or temporary upgrade may give that sequence a number of echoes. An arc jump, projectile rebound or signal return spends one echo and adds its stated heat. The returned effect may pass through compatible parts again while echoes remain. When the budget reaches zero, no target remains or a component overheats, that branch ends visibly.
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Capacity still forces choices before death or departure: keep the rig and leave salvage, leave or discard a part to carry a discovery, spend salvage through Cycler, or turn back. Moving a part into inactive cargo alone frees no capacity. Everything still carried at death, including new loot, returns aboard with the astronaut under the owner’s rule. Consumed Cycler material is already spent; a part deliberately dropped or left powering station infrastructure was not carried and remains where left.
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A descendant cannot refill the echo budget that created it, refresh its own readiness or mint power from itself. Forking divides or copies only the kind of event its inspected rule names; stored charge and consumed salvage remain real inputs. A later automatic firing cycle, a new manual special or a separate enemy attack starts a new sequence with its own budget. This allows a single disc to rebound several times or an arc to sing across a dense crowd without permitting an undefined loop that runs forever in an empty room.
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## Proposed suit baseline
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The exact echo counts, power draw, heat thresholds and cooling rates are deliberately unselected. They must make causes visible and spectacle possible before later implementation can test performance, dominance and readability.
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The owner’s death rule removes the cached-loadout recovery dependency. A ship-issued baseline remains useful as a clear starting and minimum-control proposal rather than replacement gear:
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## A proposed reward rhythm
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- a refillable integral tank providing limited portable oxygen;
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- navigation and the owner-required pausing journal;
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- a deliberate close-range emergency cutter for common cutting interactions and desperate defence; it occupies the astronaut and supplies no automatic fire or build ports.
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When a new local crowd crest commits its arrivals, resolving that crest earns one temporary choice tied to the active rig. Resolution can come from defeating those arrivals, sealing their physical source route or crossing the crest's named escape boundary; the encounter page owns the visible start, pressure and break tells. The visible high-pressure beat is the latest safe resolution window, not a quota the player must wait to fill. A strong build that clears the first arrivals, or a prepared player who seals the route before pressure peaks, earns the reward immediately. The crest then counts as spent for the current station arrangement even if the player escaped and its source remains occupied. Stepping back across the boundary or re-entering the surviving crowd pays nothing. A genuinely new crest requires another source route, machinery wake or authored pressure stage—not a distance reset.
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These baseline functions do not expose build ports and cannot join a cascade. The suit baseline remains worn rather than becoming detachable or saleable cargo. It supports navigation, basic defence and common interactions without replacing returned equipment or explaining revival. Additional canisters, build parts and tools occupy the shared capacity the owner accepted; exact starting gear remains proposed.
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An ordinary forward expedition aims to offer a foundation choice after its first route crest and a branch or refinement after a second distinct crest. Deliberately waking a larger surge may offer a rarer transformation as a third choice. A short retreat may end with only one, while backtracking through cleared or spent areas grants none. Living return preserves those areas, so the next fresh climb points toward an occupied frontier rather than refilling the route behind the player.
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## Credible alternative: multi-tag synergies
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Offers should change behaviour: add a branch, create a return, convert a payload, move a payoff or turn stored energy into a manual climax. Small statistical improvements can support tuning later, but they should not be the defining choice. An offer fails when one answer is mandatory for every crowd shape, when its effect is hard to see, or when the player cannot explain why the machine changed.
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Instead of directed links, each part could carry semantic tags such as heat, impact, branching and barrier. Compatible pairs or sets would activate authored effects automatically; arrangement would mostly manage carrying space. This is easier to explain and bounds the authored interaction list. Multi-tag parts can support cross-combinations, and their authored rules would still need to exclude or contain any feedback loops.
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This rhythm gives the encounter and reward systems a clean handoff. Combat provides pressure and a release; the release provides a brief paused choice; the changed machine makes the next crowd desirable. The cost is that a familiar cleared route becomes safer but cannot rebuild peak power. The next climb comes from an occupied frontier, changed death-shift geography or a larger event the player chooses to wake—not from a death reward or instant reset of the world.
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Its cost is prescription. Once combinations are listed, a found part tends to complete an intended set rather than transform several existing machines. The connected grammar is preferred because the player authors the causal path and can understand why a ridiculous outcome occurred. That preference accepts higher interface, authoring and consistency burdens.
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## Two contrasting directions, not recipes
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Reopen it if a representative catalogue cannot keep three-step chains readable without solving them for the player, if legal connections repeatedly create dominant or incoherent outcomes despite the once-per-wave rule, or if supporting cross-part interactions makes each new part too expensive to author and verify. Written design cannot establish readability, balance, fun or production feasibility.
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| Direction | What the player sees and does | Payoff | Cost and failure risk |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| **Storm Choir** | Moves toward dense groups so automatic arcs keep finding bodies; uses returning charge to time a manual Thunderhead | A few sparks become branching waves that collapse a packed lane | Insulated, isolated or heavy targets interrupt the song; Arc, Fork and storage consume space and run hot, leaving less single-target force |
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| **Ricochet Foundry** | Runs corridor angles while automatic discs rebound; uses a manual magnetic shove to change a bank | One shot becomes a luminous field of returning discs and fragments | Open rooms, soft partitions and absorbing enemies kill the rebounds; Projector and impact parts consume defensive space and heat quickly |
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## Counterexample and consistency check
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These are illustrative fantasies built from reusable behaviours and temporary transformations. They do not allocate new permanent parts or sources beyond the current equipment list. The player may hybridize them, stop early, or use the same Fork, Projector, Dynamo, Arc and storage parts for defence or station machinery. The meaningful question is what the machine does in this expedition and what it costs, not whether the player completed an authored set.
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- **Infinite feedback:** descended effects retain their source wave; a returning path stops. Multiple qualifying impacts on Dynamo's attached carrier become one 2 U contribution for that wave. New enemy attacks may sustain new waves, but rig output alone cannot mint them.
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- **One obvious upgrade:** Capacitor, Fork and Lens each have offensive, defensive and storage placements with different carried costs; no path is declared numerically superior.
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- **Cycler consumes the entire tradeoff:** it cannot consume the protected objective accidentally, and spending ordinary salvage loses return value. Other paths remain effective without cargo fuel.
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- **Death duplication:** the astronaut and everything still carried return aboard once. Consumed resources stay consumed, and parts dropped or left installed in the station stay there; no second copy is created.
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- **Paused rewiring exploit:** only the journal pause is owner-required. Field rig changes remain world actions and cannot be completed from its paused diagrams.
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## Property and unresolved boundaries
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Remaining dependency: the exact capacity model, part availability and ship storage determine whether abandonment and recombination stay credible under the accepted directions. None of these proposals changes the design-only phase.
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Everything physical still carried returns aboard after death. Consumed salvage remains consumed; a dropped part or one deliberately installed in station infrastructure remains at that location. Link changes never duplicate an object. [Equipment Acquisition and Rig Growth](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment%20Acquisition%20And%20Rig%20Growth) owns source, pickup and property examples; [Hordes and Builds](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Hordes%20And%20Builds) shows three developed visual fantasies.
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Whether stored Capacitor charge survives death remains with the existing persistence decision and is not answered here. Starting parts, exact carrying and rig space, power/heat values, upgrade frequency, duplicate stacking, acquisition by finding versus fabrication and detailed targeting assistance also remain open. Written rules cannot establish that the builds are fun, balanced, readable or technically feasible; those claims require a later authorized phase.
