2026-09-08 16:28:27
Anonymous:
Author response to review 376 / PM 379: readings-not-conclusions policy with provenance and limits, corrected silence claim, conditional late-game latch/roster/connection states, coherent crossing in the walkthrough, rig area and stored charge, undecided target override, revival entrance, unconfirmed mid-transfer outcome, estimate rescoped to role-hours
hold the flood/player information.md ..
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# Hold The Horde — Player Information
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**Status.** A proposed information layer covering what the player is shown, what they may do about it, how the game confirms or refuses an action, and what the interface deliberately declines to work out for them. It follows the owner's selected opening, the owner-required journal pause and automatic-fire decision, and the current [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules), [Combat Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20Rules), [Oxygen and Observation](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Oxygen%20and%20Observation), [Language and Journal](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Language%20and%20Journal) and [Rescue Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Rescue%20Rules). Layouts, wording, control schemes and the accessibility baseline below are proposals. Nothing here establishes that any of it is usable, readable or compliant with any standard; no observation of a player has occurred.
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**Status.** A proposed information layer covering what the player is shown, what they may do about it, how the game confirms or refuses an action, and what the interface deliberately declines to work out for them. It follows the owner's selected opening, the owner-required journal pause and automatic-fire decision, and the current [Build Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Build%20Rules), [Combat Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Combat%20Rules), [Oxygen and Observation](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Oxygen%20and%20Observation), [Language and Journal](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Language%20and%20Journal), [Rescue Rules](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Rescue%20Rules) and [Death and Persistence](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Death%20and%20Persistence). Layouts, wording, control schemes and the accessibility baseline are proposals. This states an intended information policy; it does not establish that the policy is usable, legible or compliant with any standard, and no player has been observed.
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## The one rule
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## The information policy
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The interface reports three things and nothing else: **what the astronaut can presently sense**, **what the player personally committed to a record**, and **the mechanical state of a thing they are touching or inspecting**. It never infers a conclusion from them.
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**The interface presents readings, never conclusions.** Everything it shows carries its provenance and its known limit:
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Where all three are silent, the display is silent, and that silence is honest information: it means nobody has been there, looked, or written it down. The owner's requirement that mystery must not depend on bad UX is met by making *current, sensed, mechanical* state unambiguous — not by supplying answers the astronaut has no way to know.
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- **Direct observation** — what the astronaut can presently sense, including the face of an instrument they are standing at.
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- **The player's own records** — what they framed and committed, with the place and the life it was taken in.
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- **Attributed testimony** — a survivor's statement, their stated basis, and what is their interpretation.
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- **Instrument and software reports** — a computed result shown as that instrument's claim with its limit stated. The ship's R-3 bearing is one: it reports a live pressure pulse in a direction, and it cannot distinguish a failing sensor from a quiet ward.
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**Therefore the interface never:** translates either alien script, or labels a sign with a meaning; marks a player note right, wrong, supported or solved; shows an unseen route or asserts that any route is safe; assembles a station map the player has not walked; or predicts what a build will do beyond the single link being previewed.
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These are provenance labels, not four separate screens, and the line between them is not always sharp — a dial the astronaut reads is both an observation and an instrument's claim. What must never blur is **reading versus conclusion**.
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Bounded computation is allowed and expected: a bearing derived from a pulse, a validity check on one proposed link, a labelled software suggestion that two already-captured records look alike. What is excluded is the conclusion — no translation of either script, no note marked right or wrong, no assertion that a route is safe or walkable, no map of ground the player has not covered, and no prediction of what an assembled rig will do.
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**Where nothing is shown, nothing is available here** — no observation, record, testimony or instrument report bears on it. That is honest and useful, and it is weaker than it sounds: it is not evidence that the place is unvisited, unexamined or unrecorded, only that the player has nothing to hand.
## One expedition, six moments
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The thread is the second expedition. The isolation bridge is aboard, so the ship can separate R-3's live pressure pulse from the collar fault, and the player is going to find the ward.
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The thread is the second expedition. The isolation bridge is aboard, so the ship can separate R-3's live pressure pulse from the collar fault, and the player is going to find the ward. The person in R-3 is called Yeva here for concreteness; she is the occupant of one of the two unselected versions in [First Survivor](/Hold%20The%20Flood/First%20Survivor), and nothing in this information flow depends on which version or which person the owner picks.
### 1. Preparing aboard
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**Sees.** A manifest of everything carried, with used and free capacity as one shared figure — canisters, rig parts and empty loot space in the same total, as the owner required. Suit condition. Stored records from the first life, each marked with the arrangement it was taken in. One live indicator: R-3's pressure bearing, a direction from the collar with no distance and no path.
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**Sees.** A manifest of everything carried against **overall carrying capacity** — canisters, rig parts and empty loot space in one shared total, as the owner required — and, separately, **active rig area**, which installation also consumes. The two figures are shown as two figures, because a part moved to inactive cargo frees area without freeing capacity. Suit condition. Stored records from the first life, each marked with the life it was taken in. One instrument report: R-3's bearing, a direction from the collar, no distance and no path.
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**Action.** Repack. Swap a canister for loot space, install or uninstall parts, decide whether the Fork Relay left in Cargo Turn is worth walking back for.
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**Action.** Repack; install or uninstall parts; decide whether the Fork Relay left at Cargo Turn is worth walking back for.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** Ship-side editing is free and reversible; anything exceeding capacity is refused with the offending item still visible, never by silently dropping it. The Fork appears as **installed in the station**, not carried property, so the player can see why it will not come home if they die.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** Ship-side editing is free and reversible; anything exceeding either figure is refused with the offending item still visible, never by silently dropping it. The Fork is listed as **installed at Cargo Turn**, not as carried property, so the player can see in advance why it will not come home if they die.
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**Cannot infer.** Whether this loadout is enough. How much oxygen the trip will cost. Whether the route to the bearing exists at all.
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**Cannot infer.** Whether this loadout is enough, what the trip will cost in oxygen, or whether a route to the bearing exists at all.
### 2. Arranging the rig
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**Sees.** Each part's own ports, its inspected individual behaviour, and the links already drawn. Nothing about the assembly as a whole — no damage figure, no rating, no name for the build.
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**Sees.** Each part's ports, its inspected individual behaviour, and the links already drawn. Nothing about the assembly as a whole — no damage figure, no rating, no name for the build.
**Action.** Draw or cut one directed link between two visible ports.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** Preview answers exactly one question: *is this proposed direct link between these two accessible endpoints valid?* A valid link previews and can be committed; an invalid one visibly refuses **before** commitment, costing nothing. It does not evaluate the chain, warn of a bad idea or rank alternatives. Aboard this is instant; in the station the same edit is a world action with oxygen and threats running, and the journal's paused diagram cannot complete it.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** Preview answers exactly one question: *is this proposed direct link between these two accessible endpoints valid?* A valid link previews and can be committed; an invalid one visibly refuses **before** commitment, at no cost. It does not evaluate the chain, warn of a bad idea or rank alternatives. Aboard this is instant; in the station the same edit is a world action with oxygen and threats running, and the journal's paused diagram cannot complete it.
**Cannot infer.** What the finished rig will do. That is the point: the player authored the causal path and finds out by firing it.
### 3. Moving, fighting and doing noisy work
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**Sees.** Oxygen, condition and free capacity, continuously. For each ordinary actuator, its readiness and, when ready, the single highlighted target it has selected — the nearest visible valid hostile. For each manual special, whether it is available and which way it will face. A reverse breadcrumb along passages actually traversed this life, back to the last confirmed anchor and ultimately the ship.
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**Sees.** Oxygen, condition and free capacity continuously. For each ordinary actuator, readiness and — when ready — the single highlighted target it has selected, the nearest visible valid hostile. For each storage part, its stored charge and how close it is to saturation. For each manual special, availability and facing. A reverse breadcrumb along passages actually traversed this life, back to the last confirmed anchor and ultimately the ship. A hit shows condition lost and any displacement it caused.
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At the jammed ward door the player cuts bolts. The interface shows the current stage, the bolts already released, and — before the first cut — the cue that this work is loud and which connected entrance will answer.
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A jammed door **on the approach** — not R-3's, which is intact and cycles — has to be cut. Before the first bolt the interface shows the current stage, that this work is loud, which connected entrance will answer, and any caller present bracing to warn.
**Action.** Move, place the barrier, keep cutting, cancel, or leave.
**Confirmation / refusal.** Each completed bolt is a visible physical checkpoint that persists. Cancelling loses the unfinished stage and nothing else. An ordinary weapon with no valid target holds fire and says so by showing no highlight; it is not broken, and the fix is positioning.
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**Cannot infer.** Whether the breadcrumb is still walkable, whether an unexplored passage is shorter, or how much oxygen the way home will take. The breadcrumb is a record of where the astronaut's feet went, and promises nothing else.
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**Undecided, and shown as undecided.** Whether the player may override or reselect the automatic target is not settled in Combat Rules or the Brief. This article does not decide it; if an override exists it needs its own readable state, and the display above assumes none.
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**Cannot infer.** Whether the breadcrumb is still walkable, whether an unexplored passage is shorter, or how much oxygen the way home will take. It records where the astronaut's feet went and promises nothing else.
### 4. Capturing and comparing a clue
**Sees.** Above the three-way junction, `KETH SORAN VEL`, `SORAN KETH VEL` and `TAAN`. Framing a record shows the frame and the commit progress; the world keeps running while it completes.
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**Action.** Frame and commit one still with its location. Then open the journal — at which point **the rest of the game pauses: enemies, oxygen, projectiles, alerts, weapon readiness and action progress, even mid-combat**, as the owner requires. Inside, pin the two records side by side, highlight the swapped group by hand, and write a note.
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**Action.** Frame and commit one still with its location. Then open the journal — at which point **the rest of the game pauses: enemies, oxygen, projectiles, alerts, weapon readiness and action progress, even mid-combat**, as the owner requires. Inside, pin two records side by side, highlight the swapped group by hand, and write a note.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** Capture is atomic: interrupted before commit, there is no record; completed, one still and one location persist through death as knowledge. An on-request visual suggestion may surface a lookalike among *already captured* records and is labelled software-generated. The note is stored with its revision history and is never parsed, graded or scored.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** Capture is atomic: interrupted before commit there is no record; completed, one still and one location persist through death as knowledge. An on-request visual suggestion may surface a lookalike among *already captured* records, labelled software-generated. The note is stored with its revision history and is never parsed, graded or scored.
**Cannot infer.** What any token means. The journal will not tell the player that `KETH` is "pump", will not mark a hypothesis supported, and cannot reveal a new angle, advance the scene or finish anything — the pause buys thinking time, not world time.
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### 5. Returning alive
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### 5. The short crossing, and returning alive
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The route from the airlock to R-3 has now been walked in this arrangement and in this life, which is the condition First Survivor sets for offering the crossing.
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**Sees.** One rescue state at a time, each named with the physical fact that established it: **Waiting**, **Prepared** (travel air connected and confirmed, next segment traversed, abort refuge stocked), **In transfer**, **At abort refuge**, **Sent** (aboard, airlock closed). A canister committed through the equipment sleeve leaves the manifest at commitment, visibly.
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**Sees.** What came home and what did not: oxygen spent, the Fork still listed as installed in Cargo Turn, new salvage on the manifest. The captured records join the board marked with the arrangement they were taken in.
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**Action.** Prepare, request movement, hold the junction, or call the abort. **Either party may call it** — the astronaut from outside, Yeva from her side — and the display names who did.
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**Action.** Show a record to a survivor. Yeva's answer is recorded as **her statement, her stated basis, and what is her interpretation** — attributed testimony, not a system ruling.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** A request, a radio confirmation or a crossing in progress is never shown as Sent; only the closed airlock is. Flow confirmed through the sleeve is shown as *her* confirmation, not as a system check.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** If the player linked a route to a predicted destination and walked it, the journal attaches one of three factual outcomes: *arrived at linked destination*, *arrived elsewhere* (with the place), or *attempt incomplete* (with the interruption). None of these says the reading was right.
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**Returning alive.** At the airlock: what came home and what did not — oxygen spent, the Fork still installed at Cargo Turn, new salvage on the manifest. Shown a captured record, Yeva's answer is recorded as her statement, her stated basis, and what is her interpretation. If the player linked a route to a predicted destination and walked it, the journal attaches one factual outcome — *arrived at linked destination*, *arrived elsewhere* with the place, or *attempt incomplete* with the interruption — and none of the three says the reading was right.
**Cannot infer.** Whether Yeva is correct, or whether one confirmed arrival generalises to any other inscription.
### 6. Reviving after a shift
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**Sees.** Everything still carried at death is aboard — the owner's rule, shown as an ordinary arrival rather than an event screen. Every walked route from the previous life is restyled as **historical**: still readable, still located relative to its anchor, explicitly no longer a claim about the present. Persistent things stay listed as facts: doors unlocked, bolts released, parts installed, latched connections.
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A separate, later life: the astronaut dies on an ordinary expedition, with no transfer in progress.
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**Sees.** Everything still carried at death is aboard — the owner's rule, shown as an ordinary arrival rather than an event screen. Through the airlock, the room now on the other side: current sensed information, and the first thing learned about the new arrangement. Every walked route from the previous life is restyled as **historical** — still readable, still located relative to its anchor, explicitly no longer a claim about the present. Persistent facts stay listed as facts: doors unlocked, bolts released, parts installed, connections latched.
**Action.** Go out again and find out where things are.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** The ship shows the live R-3 bearing again — a current direction, never a path. A historical record and a live bearing are drawn differently and are never merged into one map.
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**Confirmation / refusal.** The bearing reappears as a current direction, never a path. Historical records and live instrument reports are drawn differently and are never merged into one view.
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**Cannot infer.** Anything about the new arrangement that has not been walked. There is no revealed neighbour list, no partial map filled in off-screen, and no hint that a particular direction is now correct.
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**Cannot infer.** Anything about the new arrangement that has not been walked or sensed from where the astronaut stands. No revealed neighbour list, no map filled in off-screen, no hint that a direction is now correct.
## Decision and state table
| State | What the player sees | Action available | Confirm / refuse | Deliberately not inferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Packing aboard | Shared capacity, manifest, condition | Repack, edit rig freely | Over-capacity refused with the item visible | Whether the load suits the trip |
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| Packing aboard | Capacity and active rig area as two figures | Repack, edit rig freely | Exceeding either is refused with the item visible | Whether the load suits the trip |
| Proposed link | Two ports and their inspected behaviour | Commit or cut one direct link | Invalid link refuses before commitment, at no cost | The behaviour of the whole chain |
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| Carried vs installed | Item marked *carried* or *installed at a named place* | Retrieve an installed part by walking to it | Retrieval costs exposed world time | Whether retrieving it is worth it |
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| Weapon ready, target present | Readiness plus one highlighted target | Reposition | Automatic launch spends readiness | Which target is tactically best |
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| Carried vs installed | Item marked *carried* or *installed at a named place* | Retrieve by walking to it | Retrieval costs exposed world time | Whether retrieving it is worth it |
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| Weapon ready, target present | Readiness plus one highlighted target | Reposition | Automatic launch spends readiness | Which target is tactically best; whether override exists (undecided) |
| Weapon ready, no target | Readiness, no highlight | Reposition | Holds fire; nothing is wasted | Where a target will appear |
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| Noisy staged work | Stage, completed checkpoints, the cued entrance | Continue, cancel, defend | Completed checkpoints persist; the unfinished stage is lost | How many will actually come |
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| Storage part | Stored charge and saturation | Spend it on a manual release | Release starts a new wave | Whether now is the moment |
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| Noisy staged work | Stage, checkpoints, cued entrance, bracing caller | Continue, cancel, defend | Completed checkpoints persist; unfinished stage is lost | How many will actually come |
| Journal open | Frozen view and stored records | Pin, highlight, annotate | Nothing completes; readiness does not advance | Meaning, correctness, translation |
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| Route walked this life | Reverse breadcrumb to last anchor | Follow it back | It records passage, not safety | Continued access or oxygen cost |
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| Route from an earlier life | Same record marked historical | Read it, plan from it | Never merged with live indicators | Whether it still connects |
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| Live bearing | Direction only | Head that way | It survives shifts because it is sensed now | Distance, route, walkability |
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| After death | Full carried manifest aboard | Resume | Installed and consumed items stay as they were | The new arrangement |
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| Route walked this life | Reverse breadcrumb to last anchor | Follow it back | Records passage, not safety | Continued access or oxygen cost |
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| Route from an earlier life | Same record marked historical | Read it, plan from it | Never merged with live reports | Whether it still connects |
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| Instrument report | Direction and the instrument's stated limit | Act on it | It survives shifts because it is sensed now | Distance, route, walkability, sensor health |
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| Rescue | One named state and the fact behind it | Prepare, move, abort | Only a closed airlock reads Sent; abort names who called it | Whether the next segment will hold |
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| After death | Carried manifest aboard; the room now beyond the airlock | Resume | Installed and consumed items stay as they were | The rest of the new arrangement |
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## Late-game states, conditional on an unchosen mechanism
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[Connecting The Station](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Connecting%20The%20Station) has no selected mechanism, so these are the information consequences *if* the current candidate is adopted, not commitments:
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| State | What the player sees | Not inferred |
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|---|---|---|
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| Latch preview | Whether these two adjacent faces can exchange the pulse, and on refusal the visible reason — for example two opposing output arrows | Whether some other face elsewhere would work |
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| Three states kept distinct | Walking connectivity, persistent join, and current diagnostic signal shown separately | That losing diagnostic power has undone a join |
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| Latch roster | Counts of regions joined to the ship-rooted network, discovered but not joined, and anonymous registered regions not yet encountered | Any name, face, route or location for an anonymous region |
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The roster's deliberate cost is already accepted on that page: publishing a count turns hidden spaces into known unknowns. The information rule it must obey is narrower and belongs here — **a persistent join stays known after death, because it is a fact about work already done; it must not thereby reveal an unbound adjacency the player has not yet seen.** Knowing the network is incomplete is not knowing where the gap is.
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## The short rescue, with its open question marked
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## The short rescue, and its open question
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Rescue state is shown as one of five words with the physical condition that established it, so the player always knows what is true and what is merely arranged: **Waiting** (in a supported refuge), **Prepared** (travel air connected and confirmed, next segment traversed, abort refuge stocked), **In transfer**, **At abort refuge**, **Sent** (aboard, airlock closed). A request, a radio confirmation or a crossing in progress is never shown as Sent.
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Rescue state reports **what has been confirmed**, and separates confirmation from outcome. The five states above are all established by a physical fact the player witnessed.
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**Unresolved, and labelled as such rather than papered over:** the ordering of a death-triggered shift against an in-progress transfer, and whether shifts can occur mid-life at all, are not settled. The interface consequence is real — if a shift can interrupt a transfer, the display must be able to say *this survivor is at a refuge whose current position is unknown*, which is a state the present articles do not define. This article proposes the five states and flags that sixth possibility as pending an owner decision; it does not invent an answer.
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**Unresolved, and labelled rather than papered over:** the ordering of a death-triggered shift against an in-progress transfer is not settled, and First Survivor now marks it as an assumption rather than a rule. The interface consequence is concrete. If the astronaut dies mid-transfer, the display must report the **last confirmed state** and mark the survivor's present location and outcome **unconfirmed** — it must not assert that they reached a refuge, because no current article establishes that they did. That is a sixth state in all but name, and it needs an owner decision before it can be specified rather than described.
## A proposed accessibility baseline
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Offered as design proposals with their costs, **not** as demonstrated usability and not as a claim of conformance with any standard.
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Design proposals with their expected costs. Not demonstrated usability, not a conformance claim, and the costs below are reasoned expectations rather than measured ones.
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- **Full remapping and input alternatives.** Every action rebindable; no action requiring a simultaneous three-input combination; hold actions available as toggles; staged work completable without repeated rapid input. *Expected cost:* the "hold to keep cutting" tension weakens where a toggle replaces it, and each added control path multiplies the states that must stay readable.
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- **Readable text.** Scalable interface text with a minimum size, adjustable contrast behind it, and no essential information carried only by a small in-world painted label. *Expected cost:* larger text crowds the compact suit display, and some diegetic character is lost when a value must also exist as plain text.
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- **Colour-independent status and cues.** Every state that matters — readiness, valid target, valid versus refused link, carried versus installed, live versus historical — carries shape, position, pattern or text as well as colour. *Expected cost:* authoring discipline on every new cue and a busier display. The candidate's service signatures are currently described by colour and count; a non-colour distinguishing form would need designing in.
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- **Alternatives to essential audio.** The caller's brace, the door grind, the connected entrance answering and alert sources each need a visible equivalent including direction. *Expected cost:* visualising directional sound can hand over spatial information that hearing players must infer, so these need tuning to match the audio cue rather than exceed it.
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- **Presentation-intensity controls.** Reduced camera shake and flash, a cap on simultaneous full-screen effects, and an option to damp the visual density of a large horde without changing enemy numbers or difficulty. *Expected cost:* a spectacular build's payoff is partly its spectacle, so damping it plausibly reduces that payoff for players who need the option. Whether it materially costs the owner's build priority is not established here and would need observation.
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Two of these — non-colour signature forms and non-audio directional cues — are cheaper to design in now than to retrofit once puzzle and encounter content is authored. That is an ordinary authoring expectation, not a costed engineering claim.
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## Effort, stated in role-hours
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Both estimates below are kept visible because they cover **different deliverables**, and neither is adjusted to agree with the other.
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**The outline's row.** [Whole Game Outline](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Whole%20Game%20Outline) allows **8–16 author role-hours** for the UI and accessibility information contract: paper states and flows with no usability claim. That is the deliverable this article is. Most of that allowance is already spent on it; I estimate **4–8 further author role-hours** to close it out, this response included.
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**The larger deliverable my earlier figure described.** My first estimate — 8–14 design days plus 3–5 — was a broader scope, bundled authoring with review, and was given in days. Restated at six productive role-hours per day, and rescoped to authoring only:
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| Follow-on work | Author role-hours |
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|---|---|
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| Complete cue-by-cue inventory with non-colour and non-audio equivalents | 12–20 |
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| Journal and manifest structure at screen level — structure, not screens or art | 8–14 |
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| Accessibility option list with defaults and their interactions | 6–10 |
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Author subtotal **26–44 h**; adding focused review and author response at roughly a third gives **33–59 role-hours**, about 6–10 days at that rate. **This is a reduction from my first figure**, and the reduction comes from separating the first-pass contract (the outline's row, largely done) from the inventory that follows it, and from removing review effort I had silently folded into an authoring number.
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**Conditional increment.** If the shift-timing question is answered such that survivor-location uncertainty becomes a real state, the information-layer work is **8–14 author role-hours**: the state itself, its cues, and its effect on route and roster displays. Down from 3–5 days, because I previously included rescue-rule design that is not mine to do and should not be counted here.
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- **Full remapping and input alternatives.** Every action rebindable; no action requiring a simultaneous three-input combination; hold actions available as toggles; the staged work actions completable without repeated rapid input. *Cost:* the "hold to keep cutting" tension is weakened where a toggle replaces it, and every added control path multiplies the states that must stay readable.
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- **Readable text.** Scalable interface text with a minimum size, adjustable contrast behind it, and no essential information carried only by a small in-world painted label. *Cost:* larger text crowds the compact suit display, and some diegetic charm is lost when a value must also exist as plain text.
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- **Colour-independent status and cues.** Every state that matters — readiness, valid target, valid versus refused link, carried versus installed, live versus historical — carries shape, position, pattern or text in addition to colour. *Cost:* authoring discipline on every new cue, and a busier display; the service signatures in the station-wide puzzle would need a non-colour distinguishing form designed in from the start rather than added later.
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- **Alternatives to essential audio.** The caller's brace, the door grind, the connected entrance answering, and alert sources all need a visible equivalent, including a direction. *Cost:* visualising directional sound risks handing over spatial information that hearing players must infer, so these need tuning to match the audio cue rather than exceed it.
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- **Presentation-intensity controls.** Reduced camera shake and flash, a cap on simultaneous full-screen effects, and an option to damp the visual density of a large horde without changing enemy numbers or difficulty. *Cost:* a spectacular build's payoff is partly its spectacle, and damping it reduces the owner's second priority for the players who need the option.
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These are estimates of writing and reviewing by someone with no implementation experience of this project. They are not a schedule, and they cover no engineering, art or validation.
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None of these is free, and none is proven. They are listed now because two of them — colour-independent signatures and non-audio directional cues — become materially more expensive if they are retrofitted after the puzzle and encounter content is authored.
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## What later validation would have to settle
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## Effort, and what would have to be validated
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Whether the suit display is legible under horde pressure; whether players read an instrument bearing as a route despite its distinct treatment; whether the historical marking actually stops them trusting a stale record; whether the link preview teaches the grammar or merely gates it; whether the journal pause is used for thought or for safety; whether a published anonymous-region count reads as a spoiler or as a goal; and whether any accessibility option here helps the players it is meant for. Each needs later owner-authorised implementation and observation with real players, including players who use those options by necessity. None has occurred.
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**Rough design-only range**, excluding all engineering, art and any playable build: roughly **8–14 design working days** to take this from a stance to a specifiable layer — a complete state inventory, a cue-by-cue list with its non-colour and non-audio equivalents, the journal's screen-level structure, and the accessibility option list with defaults. Add **3–5 days** if the pending shift-timing question is answered in a way that adds survivor and route states. This is an estimate of writing and reviewing, made with no implementation experience of this project, and it is not a schedule.
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## One review finding not adopted
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**What a desk cannot settle.** Whether the suit display is legible under horde pressure; whether players read a live bearing as a route despite the distinct treatment; whether the historical marking actually stops them trusting a stale map; whether the direct-link preview teaches the grammar or merely gates it; whether the journal pause is used for thought or for safety; and whether any accessibility option here helps the players it is meant for. Each needs later owner-authorised implementation and observation with real players, including players who use these options by necessity. None has occurred.
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The review asked this page to state plainly that no screen other than the journal pauses. It does not, because that would settle something the owner has not. The owner's decision covers the journal; Oxygen and Observation records explicitly that the requirement "applies to the journal, not automatically to every other menu." General menu and pause behaviour remains unchosen, and this page confines itself to the one pause that is decided — while keeping field rig edits and record capture in running world time, as their own articles require.
