2026-09-06 18:47:35
Anonymous:
DES103 r3 (Design Document r9) against PMR002: scenes rewritten as state sequences obeying the routing rule with retarget-or-spread precedence; junction lamp is an indicator; legal racks and charge ledgers for both expeditions; hauler cost stated truthfully; pickup, overflow, planting rules; arc fuel policy and two drawn arc loadouts with a played burst (REV102-13); tier-three chain proposed for the world designer; endings' rules; no ending salvage cost; length in hours as assumptions; early-stop answer without achievement data; free zombie pack as a design lever; price uncommitted
hold the flood/design document.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Design Document
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**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**
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**DES103 r3, the Design Document at revision r9 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | revised against PM's PMR002 findings 1 to 4 and criteria 1 to 11**
## Read this first: one page for the owner
@@ 44,11 44,17 @@
There is a switch at the head of the causeway that decides which side of the district gets power. If you run to it and throw it to the yard, the hatch will open and stay open. The yard beacon will light. And in ninety seconds the surge will come in here, not there, because the Flood goes to the lit beacon.
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You could instead take the tool on your back, a coil that stores a charge, wade into the channel wearing insulation, and discharge it. The water carries the current to the hatch and it opens for a few seconds: long enough to get through. The yard stays dark. The surge still goes to the causeway. But you have spent the charge you spent the last surge harvesting.
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You could instead take the tool on your back, a coil that stores a charge, wade into the channel wearing insulation, and discharge it. The water carries the current to the hatch and it opens for a few seconds: long enough to get through. The yard's beacon, on the same circuit, glows steady for those seconds, so anything that can see it and has no nearer light starts toward it; but it never flashes, so the next surge still enters by the causeway. You have spent the charge you spent the last surge harvesting.
Or you could do what the experienced player does: throw the switch, let the hatch open, stand in the channel's edge in insulation, and wait. When the surge wades into the water to reach the beacon, you discharge the coil into the water they are standing in. They stop, stunned, and shed charge you can pick up. The hatch is open. The battery is full. You invited the Flood into the water where your coil was waiting.
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The rule is the same in all three. What differs is what you knew.
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The rule is the same in all three. What differs is what you knew. The same three routes as states, so they can be checked against section 4:
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| Route | Panel | Powered circuit | Lit beacons | Crowd from the first surge: where, and what it targets | Hatch |
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| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
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| Throw the switch | Yard | Yard, by the panel | Yard (steady, and it will flash at the next dispatch) | Holding at the causeway's far end; the causeway beacon is now dark, the yard beacon is the only lit one it can reach, so it retargets and starts across the junction toward the yard | Open while the yard is lit |
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| Coil only | Causeway | Causeway by the panel; yard for a few seconds, by the coil | Causeway (steady, flashes at dispatch); yard steady for the discharge only | Holding at the causeway beacon, which stays lit and is nearer than the yard's, so it does not move | Open for the discharge's few seconds |
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| Switch, then coil | Yard | Yard, by the panel | Yard | Crossing to the yard and, at the next dispatch, the second surge entering the channel there, where the coil is waiting | Open while the yard is lit |
---
@@ 119,7 125,7 @@
- A valve that joins two channels extends where current reaches. A field pump, fuelled by a bundle of salvage, drains a channel and cuts it. The coil injects current. The panel routes it.
- **The lit branch is the branch the Flood comes to.** Powering the yard to open its hatch means the next surge enters the yard. That is the price of every door.
- **Switching the panel mid-surge moves the Flood, and that is its price.** Throwing the panel from causeway to yard darkens the causeway beacon and lights the yard's. Every crowd already inside walks to the new light: from the causeway's far end, across the junction beside the sluice, and along the channel to the yard beacon, so the junction and the interior route are the Flood's road while it crosses. Yard to causeway is the mirror, and the hatch closes behind anyone still in the hall. Off darkens both: every crowd spreads along its own branch, toward the docks as much as the interior, and the hatch closes. The forecast shows each entered crowd's new target the moment you switch, so the price is readable before the crowd moves. And the panel stands in the open at the causeway head. So a panic switch does buy something this surge, and it is meant to; what it costs is the route the crowd crosses, the door that shuts, and where the next surge lands.
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- **Surge behaviour after arrival.** A surge gathers around its target beacon and holds there while that beacon stays lit and no lit beacon is nearer. Each surge is larger, so the held crowd's radius grows; by the third the causeway's far end or the channel mouth is full. Two things move organisms besides beacons: **pursuit range**, any organism within a short range of the surveyor breaks off to chase and drifts back when out of range, which is what the cutter fires at; and **press**, the gathered crowd's edge creeps slowly outward along its branch during the quiet interval, so "quiet" means a moving line you can read, not an empty branch; stragglers roam between surges, and the next surge re-concentrates the crowd. A surge whose beacon goes dark spreads along its branch at once, both ways. What makes a held crowd a decision: the hatch, the richest deposits and the motes all sit at the far ends where the crowd is, and the press brings its edge toward the dock ends, so harvesting or opening anything means working at the crowd's edge inside its pursuit range, or waiting and losing surge time. At the end of the expedition everything resets.
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- **Surge behaviour after arrival.** A surge gathers around its target beacon and holds there while that beacon stays lit and no lit beacon is nearer. Each surge is larger, so the held crowd's radius grows; by the third the causeway's far end or the channel mouth is full. Two things move organisms besides beacons: **pursuit range**, any organism within a short range of the surveyor breaks off to chase and drifts back when out of range, which is what the cutter fires at; and **press**, the gathered crowd's edge creeps slowly outward along its branch during the quiet interval, so "quiet" means a moving line you can read, not an empty branch; stragglers roam between surges, and the next surge re-concentrates the crowd. Precedence, stated once: a crowd retargets to the nearest lit beacon it can reach whenever one exists, and spreads along its branch, both ways, only when none does; a crowd already holding at a lit beacon never leaves it for a farther light. Only beacons pull; other lamps, including the junction pool's indicator, are not beacons and draw nothing. What makes a held crowd a decision: the hatch, the richest deposits and the motes all sit at the far ends where the crowd is, and the press brings its edge toward the dock ends, so harvesting or opening anything means working at the crowd's edge inside its pursuit range, or waiting and losing surge time. At the end of the expedition everything resets.
- **Dock consequence.** A dry dock is never blocked; it is a hard stop. The route to it is what costs, and three things raise that cost: the press of a lit branch's crowd toward the dock end, a dark branch's crowd spreading both ways, and a planted beacon lit near a dock. The two docks have the same bypass, because the culvert joins both dock ends; the asymmetry is water, because the yard's crowd stands in a channel where the coil works and unprotected feet burn. So the held dock's branch must stay lit whenever a surge is in it, which is also what keeps that branch hot. Holding the causeway dock means the causeway is your safe default and the yard is where you send trouble. Holding the yard dock means the yard must stay lit through any surge you send there, so the hall's crowd stands between you and nothing, but off and causeway are both dangerous the moment a surge is in the yard. The colony's choice decides which branch you can never afford to darken.
**An alternative the owner should know about.** The world designer and I had converged on a stricter version of clause 3, in which a beacon pulls only within a visible glow and the two fixed beacons are out of each other's sight, so the panel could never move an arrived surge and only a carried beacon could. It keeps the panel a pure planning tool and removes the panic switch. PM confirmed the continuous rule after considering the alternative (Brief D016), for design reasons: one visible change has a direct consequence in an existing crowd, including a route crossed and a door shut, and it needs no glow or split rule. The alternative stays documented and can be argued again; the difference is whether the panel is a plan or a lever, and it is decision 3. Neither has been played.
@@ 135,6 141,8 @@
- When packing, you draw one **link** from each battery to the one module it powers. An unlinked module is dark and inert.
- A battery leaks into every bundle connected to it by touching bundles, whatever the links say: one unit a minute per connected bundle, shown as a drip per bundle. Insulation is the only slot that breaks a chain.
- A battery holds ten units. A discharge of the coil spends the whole battery. A kill mote is one unit; a stun sheds one large mote of five units per ten organisms stunned.
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- Charge has five states, and the ledgers in sections 12 and 13 track them: dropped (a mote on the ground), collected (walked over), stored (in a battery, up to ten), expired (a mote that faded, or charge collected with nowhere to go), spent (a discharge or a burst). A collected mote goes to the linked battery with the most room; a full battery takes nothing; a battery that the arc is drawing takes nothing until the burst ends.
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- Modules go into an empty slot when picked up, wherever you stand; arranging and linking happen only in a shelter. A planted beacon and its battery come back only if two slots are free; otherwise they stay where they are until you free the slots at a shelter or the battery runs down.
You leave the dock with the cutter, one empty battery in an otherwise empty rack, and whatever starting module the workshop lets you choose. All numbers are proposals.
@@ 156,14 164,14 @@
S S S
S S S cutter only; no battery, so motes are lost
```
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Six bundles. Play: leave the panel on causeway, take the culvert to the quiet, dark yard, gather, come back under the surge. Cost: never opens a powered door, never harvests, has no answer to a surge except distance. Counterplay: anything that lights the yard, including another player's habits from an earlier expedition (the panel resets, but a coil-lit beacon does not need the panel). Best on the expedition after a discovery, when you know exactly where the salvage is and how to avoid the road.
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Six bundles. Play: leave the panel on causeway, take the culvert to the quiet, dark yard, gather, come back under the surge. Cost: carries no powered gear and harvests nothing, so the only door it can open is one the panel opens, at the price of lighting that branch; it has no answer to a surge except distance and the forecast. Counterplay: its own panel choice is its only lever, and a crowd on the road home is its only real threat. Best on the expedition after a discovery, when you know exactly where the salvage is and how to avoid the road.
*The shepherd.*
```
S P B
S S I link: B → P
```
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The beacon and its battery are packed together; the insulation keeps the battery off the bundles. Three bundles. Play: carry the lit beacon into a surge's reach and plant it; the surge walks to it and stays while it is lit. Planting sets down the beacon and its battery as one piece and frees two slots; retrieving is walking over it. Darken it (retrieve it, or let the battery run down) and the pull stops. Cost: the beacon draws the surge toward wherever it is, including you while you carry it; its battery runs down while planted; and it can pull only what is already inside, never choose an intake. Counterplay: a lit fixed beacon nearer the surge outcompetes it; a surge pulled off one route occupies another. Best for clearing the interior route for a run at a distant deposit, or for pulling a surge off the causeway so the hauler's road is clear.
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The beacon and its battery are packed together; the insulation keeps the battery off the bundles. Three bundles. Play: carry the lit beacon into a surge's reach and plant it; the surge walks to it and stays while it is lit. Planting sets down the beacon and its battery as one piece and frees two slots; retrieving is walking over it with two slots free, and with fewer it stays put. Darken it (retrieve it, or let the battery run down) and the pull stops. Cost: the beacon draws the surge toward wherever it is, including you while you carry it; its battery runs down while planted; and it can pull only what is already inside, never choose an intake. Counterplay: a lit fixed beacon nearer the surge outcompetes it; a surge pulled off one route occupies another. Best for clearing the interior route for a run at a distant deposit, or for pulling a surge off the causeway so the hauler's road is clear.
**A readable failed arrangement.**
```
@@ 172,6 180,22 @@
```
The battery is linked to the coil below it, correctly. But it also touches the bundle to its right, which touches the next, which touches the one below: three connected bundles, three drips, three units a minute. The battery is empty in a little over three minutes, before the second surge, and the coil is dead when it is needed. The fix is visible in the rack: move the insulation between, or leave a slot empty, and carry less.
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**Two loadouts with the arc**, since the recommendation rests on it. Under the link rule the arc needs a battery of its own.
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*The harvester.*
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```
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C C B
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A B I links: top B → C, bottom B → A
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```
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Coil, arc, two batteries, insulation: six slots of gear and no cargo. Each battery touches its linked module and the insulation or the other battery's module, never a bundle, so nothing leaks. Play: invite a surge into the channel, discharge to stun it and refill the coil's battery, then spend the arc's battery through the packed doorway. Cost: banks nothing; the expedition is for the interior and for charge, not for the colony. Counterplay: a surge that never stands in water gives the coil nothing; a burst spent on a thin crowd is wasted.
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*The arc hauler.*
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```
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S A B
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S S I link: B → A
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```
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Arc, battery, insulation, three bundles. The battery touches the arc and the insulation; the bundles touch only each other, the arc's housing and the insulation, so nothing leaks. Play: gather, and keep one ten-second burst in reserve for the doorway or the road home. Cost: no coil, so no stun and no bulk harvest; the burst is funded by kill motes alone, at one unit a kill, which is slow. Counterplay: a crowd that arrives before the battery is full.
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---
## 6. Growing inside an expedition
@@ 182,7 206,11 @@
**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.
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**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.
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**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.
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**The arc's fuel policy, stated as rules.** A burst is one battery: the arc draws its linked battery from full to empty in about ten seconds and stops. A battery being drawn accepts no charge, so motes collected during a burst go to another linked battery with room or expire. Organisms killed by chained hits shed motes only if they have not shed already this expedition; a stunned crowd sheds nothing further. So a burst is bounded three ways: by one battery, by the once-per-organism yield, and by needing to walk over motes inside a crowd while fighting. Recharging between bursts is possible only from organisms that have not yet shed.
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**What the player can do early, in the middle, and late.** Early (expeditions one to three): cutter and one battery; the panel and the culvert; the first found coil or arc, used once. Middle (four to seven): a workshop starting module, so the harvester or the arc hauler can be assembled by the second surge; two-battery racks; the shepherd's planted beacon; the junction opened by the valve. Late (eight to eleven): the interior, valves that carry current across the district, and the relay room, where the same rule ends the game. Power grows by composition inside an expedition and by knowledge and starting choice across them; there is no number that climbs. 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.
---
@@ 209,9 237,9 @@
The player experiments in two places under one rule: in the district (valves, the panel, the coil, a planted beacon, a field pump) and in the rack (what touches what, what is linked). Every experiment has a visible cause and a visible cost.
- **Limits.** The panel powers one branch or none. A discharge needs a full battery and spends it. A field pump costs a bundle and lasts one expedition. A planted beacon runs its battery down. A stun yields once per crowd.
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- **Combinations that matter.** Panel to yard plus a coil in the channel: stun and harvest an invited surge. At the junction (tier two), open the valve that joins the yard channel to the pool and light the yard at the panel: the junction circuit, which the panel never reaches directly, is energised through the water and the gate opens for as long as the yard is lit, with the yard hot behind you and crowds drawn toward the junction while its lamp is lit. Or leave the valve shut and discharge the coil into the pool: the gate opens for a few seconds and nothing else lights. The first needs no module; the second buys stealth. A planted beacon on the causeway's dock end plus the panel on yard: pull an entered causeway crowd off the road while the next surge goes to the yard, clearing both routes home for one interval, at the cost of a crowd gathering near the dock you will leave by.
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- **Combinations that matter.** Panel to yard plus a coil in the channel: stun and harvest an invited surge. At the junction (tier two), open the valve that joins the yard channel to the pool and light the yard at the panel: the junction circuit, which the panel never reaches directly, is energised through the water and the gate opens for as long as the yard is lit, with the yard hot behind you; the pool's lamp is an indicator, not a beacon, and draws nothing. Or leave the valve shut and discharge the coil into the pool: the gate opens for a few seconds and nothing else lights. The first needs no module; the second buys stealth. A planted beacon on the causeway's dock end plus the panel on yard: pull an entered causeway crowd off the road while the next surge goes to the yard, clearing both routes home for one interval, at the cost of a crowd gathering near the dock you will leave by.
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**A plausible experiment that fails, readably.** The player has learned that current opens the pump-hall hatch and that the yard is dark. Surge one is gathered at the causeway beacon. The player wades into the yard channel and discharges the coil to open the hatch without touching the panel, reasoning that the yard stays dark to the relay and the surge will stay on the causeway. The hatch opens. So does the yard beacon: it lights steady, because it is on the same wet circuit. Surge one, which follows the nearest lit beacon it can reach, turns off the causeway and comes to the yard, through the junction, while the player is inside the hall. The lesson is legible in the light convention: steady means powered, powered means lure, and the coil powers everything the water touches. The second half of the lesson is in the cables: only the beacon that flashes chooses where a surge enters, and nothing you carry can make a beacon flash; at the next dispatch the player watches the pulse run down the causeway's thin cable, not the yard's. The recovery is in section 13.
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**A plausible experiment that fails, readably.** The player has learned that current opens the pump-hall hatch, and has set the panel to off to keep both branches quiet: both beacons dark, both doors shut, and the first surge, which entered by the sluice, spreading along the interior route with no light to hold it. The player wades into the yard channel and discharges the coil to open the hatch, reasoning that with nothing lit the crowd has no reason to come. The hatch opens. So does the yard beacon: it lights steady for the discharge, because it is on the same wet circuit. The spreading crowd, which had no lit beacon to reach, now has one, and by the precedence in section 4 it retargets and comes down the channel to the hall while the player is inside. As states: panel off; yard circuit powered by the coil for a few seconds; yard beacon steady, never flashing; crowd on the interior route, target none, then target the yard beacon; hatch open for the discharge, then shut. The lesson is legible in the light convention: steady means powered, powered means lure, and the coil powers everything the water touches. Had the crowd been holding at a lit causeway beacon instead, it would not have moved, because a nearer lit beacon keeps a crowd; the failure needs a crowd with nowhere to go, and off is how you make one. The second half of the lesson is in the cables: only the beacon that flashes chooses where a surge enters, and nothing you carry can make a beacon flash; at the next dispatch the player watches the pulse run down a thin cable, and it is not the yard's. The recovery is in section 13.
---
@@ 248,7 276,7 @@
- **The workshop.** One additive repair, a full return: lets you choose one starting module each expedition instead of leaving with only a battery.
- **The forecast relay.** One additive repair, a full return: the first intake is known before you leave the dock, so the first three minutes can be planned.
-
**No upkeep.** Salvage repairs and improves the colony; nothing decays between expeditions, nothing is charged per expedition, and repeated failed expeditions lose nothing already banked. The colony's stake is long-run: every repair, every change of held dock, and the ending itself are paid in salvage, so a surveyor who stops hauling can never change anything. This is a drafting default: the alternative, a per-expedition pump cost, would punish an investigative expedition that returns light, which is the meta-level version of pressure that leaves no room for curiosity. If the owner wants the colony to feel more precarious, the place to add it is the ending's cost, not a tax.
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**No upkeep.** Salvage repairs and improves the colony; nothing decays between expeditions, nothing is charged per expedition, and repeated failed expeditions lose nothing already banked. The colony's stake is long-run: every repair and every change of held dock are paid in salvage, so a surveyor who stops hauling can never change anything. The ending costs no salvage; reaching the relay room is paid in knowledge and exposure, not cargo. This is a drafting default: the alternative, a per-expedition pump cost, would punish an investigative expedition that returns light, which is the meta-level version of pressure that leaves no room for curiosity. If the owner wants the colony to feel more precarious, the place to add it is the ending's cost, not a tax.
**Is that enough colony?** Honestly: it is a small colony by the standard of colony-management games. Its decisions change the value of what you know rather than adding systems, which is the intended relationship. If the owner wants a larger settlement, with people, needs and building, that is a scope decision that adds a second game to this one and should be made knowingly.
@@ 259,8 287,8 @@
One district and an ending. The mystery has three tiers, each a recombination of the same rule in the same district, not a new machine family.
- **Tier one, the false refuge (expeditions one to about three).** Why the causeway is overrun. Answered in the pump hall. Changes routing for good.
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- **Tier two, the junction and the interior (about four to seven).** What the last crew went in for. The junction gate is on a circuit the panel never reaches. Evidence: the valve beside it, drawn open on the inked plan and found shut; a lamp on the junction pool that lights whenever the yard channel is energised while the valve is open. Inference: joined water carries power, and therefore attraction, across the district, so the crew could open the gate from the yard without the panel. Experiment: open the valve and light the yard at the panel; the lamp on the pool lights and the gate opens, and stays open while the yard is lit, so the tier is reachable with no module at all, at the price that the yard is hot and crowds can be drawn toward the junction while its lamp is lit. The coil is the quiet way in: valve shut, a discharge in the pool, a few seconds of open gate and nothing else lit. Behind the gate: the second tally board and the crew's note of the relay room's valve sequence. Tier three stays a knowledge gate: the relay room opens by the same current rule and that note, not by a found key.
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- **Tier three, the relay (about eight to eleven).** The relay's timer, in a room at the sluice's head, is what calls the Flood. The final choice, each an expedition-ending act that leaves a different district: **shut it**, so there are no more dispatches and the Flood enters only by the sluice, unannounced, honest and harder; **fix it**, welding the panel to one branch for good, one dock safe forever and one branch lost; or **hold it**, leaving it running and keeping the steering, the status quo chosen. Reaching the room and choosing ends the game. Free expeditions continue after any ending.
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- **Tier two, the junction and the interior (about four to seven).** What the last crew went in for. The junction gate is on a circuit the panel never reaches. Evidence: the valve beside it, drawn open on the inked plan and found shut; a lamp on the junction pool that lights whenever the yard channel is energised while the valve is open. Inference: joined water carries power, and therefore attraction, across the district, so the crew could open the gate from the yard without the panel. Experiment: open the valve and light the yard at the panel; the lamp on the pool lights and the gate opens, and stays open while the yard is lit, so the tier is reachable with no module at all, at the price that the yard is hot; the pool's lamp is an indicator, not a beacon, and draws nothing. The coil is the quiet way in: valve shut, a discharge in the pool, a few seconds of open gate and nothing else lit. Behind the gate: the second tally board and the crew's note of the relay room's valve sequence. Tier three stays a knowledge gate: the relay room opens by the same current rule and that note, not by a found key.
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- **Tier three, the relay (about eight to eleven).** The relay's timer, in a room at the sluice's head, is what calls the Flood. The chain, proposed here by the lead for the world designer to correct and own, uses only the existing rule. Clue: the relay room's door is on the sluice's own circuit, dead like the junction's, and the crew's note from tier two is a valve sequence with three positions drawn against the inked plan. Compare: the junction valve, already known, joined the yard channel to the pool; the sluice's head sits one pool further along the same water, behind two more valves the player has walked past. Inference: the note is the order that joins the yard's water all the way to the sluice's head, so current from a lit yard, or a discharge in the pool, reaches the door. Action: set the three valves as the note says, light the yard at the panel, and watch the sluice-head lamp; it lights when the water is joined. Consequence: the door opens while the yard is lit, the whole district's water is one energised body, so every crowd that can see a lit beacon is holding at the yard's, and the sluice itself is the way in. Inside: the timer, its three settings, and the last crew's own tally. The final choice, each an expedition-ending act that leaves a different district: **shut it**: no dispatches and no forecast; surges still come, by the sluice only, on an unannounced timer, spreading along the interior route and then both branches; the expedition still ends at fifteen minutes and the docks are still hard stops, so withdrawal is by the culvert as ever, with nothing to read but the crowd itself. **Fix it**: the panel is welded to one branch; that branch's beacon flashes at every dispatch for good, so every surge enters there and holds there while it stays lit, and the other branch never receives one; nothing is safe beyond what the press bound already promises, and the welded branch's door is open forever while the other's is shut forever. **Hold it**: leave it running; the district and the forecast are as they were. Reaching the room and choosing ends the game; nothing about the ending is paid in salvage. Free expeditions continue after any ending under that ending's rules.
**Early, middle, late.** Early, you learn to read light and to use the culvert. Middle, you carry power to places the panel cannot reach and learn to hold a surge where you want it. Late, the district is a machine you play, and the ending asks what you want it to do.
@@ 268,9 296,9 @@
**What expedition twenty-one is.** Honestly: a courtesy. The designed game ends when the relay is shut, fixed or held, and each ending leaves a different district for free play: shut, and surges come by the sluice unannounced, so the forecast is gone and the game is harder and blinder; fix, and the panel is welded, so routing is gone and what remains is hauling on a known road; hold, and it is the same game you finished. None of those is a second game, and this document does not pretend otherwise. The design's own retention argument, that the surge schedule keeps urgency after the mystery is solved, is true up to the ending and is spent by two of the three endings. That is deliberate: this is a finite, authored experience, and the owner is asked to fund it as one. If the owner wants a game that keeps giving after the ending, the honest route is the extension named above, a second district under the same rule, not a promise that this district renews.
-
**How long the game is, in hours, and whose number it is.** This count is the lead's, derived from the beats above and owned here. Counting what is designed, the minimum is about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four per tier, with deaths adding to that; at about fifteen minutes each, that is roughly three to four hours for the whole designed experience, ending included, before free play. It is an estimate from content, not a validated length; the earlier figure of twelve to twenty expeditions was a guess and is withdrawn. The owner should know one commercial fact that follows, in plain words. The Steam store lets a buyer return a game "within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime" (Steam's own refund page, read on 2026-09-06). Two hours is about eight expeditions, which is most of the designed game: a player could finish two of the three tiers and return it. That is a pricing and scope constraint, not a design flaw, and section 17 puts it in front of the owner as a decision about length, price and extensions. The outside researcher's measured page mentioned in section 1 shows the owner's reference games in two price bands that do not overlap, crowd games below thirteen dollars and mystery games above fourteen; those are the prices of eleven chosen examples on one day, not rules for every game, but they are why section 17 treats length, price and shelf as one recommendation rather than three questions.
+
**How long the game is, in hours, and whose number it is.** This count is the lead's, derived from the beats above and owned here. Counting what is designed, the minimum is about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four per tier; at about fifteen minutes each that is two and a half to three hours of expeditions, and roughly three to four hours with time at the dock, repacking and deaths, which is an assumption about overhead, not a measurement. Both figures are estimates from content, not validated lengths; a player who already knows the district can go faster, because nothing counts expeditions; the earlier figure of twelve to twenty expeditions was a guess and is withdrawn. The owner should know one commercial fact that follows, in plain words. The Steam store lets a buyer return a game "within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime" (Steam's own refund page, read on 2026-09-06). Two hours is about eight expeditions, which is most of the designed game: a player could finish two of the three tiers and return it. That is a pricing and scope constraint, not a design flaw, and section 17 puts it in front of the owner as a decision about length, price and extensions. The outside researcher's measured page mentioned in section 1 shows the owner's reference games in two price bands that do not overlap, crowd games below thirteen dollars and mystery games above fourteen; those are the prices of eleven chosen examples on one day, not rules for every game, but they are why section 17 treats length, price and shelf as one recommendation rather than three questions.
-
**What the game is for someone who stops early.** Tier one lands at expeditions one to three, so a player who plays four expeditions and stops has had a complete small answer, the false refuge, and a routing skill they did not have before; the relay's ending is for the minority who finish. An outside researcher's page reports that in four comparable games with a definite ending, between about ten and forty per cent of players reach it, with the caveat that the population behind those figures is undocumented and they are within-game ratios, not completion rates; that is offered as context, not as a prediction for this game.
+
**What the game is for someone who stops early.** Tier one lands at expeditions one to three, so a player who plays four expeditions and stops has had a complete small thing: a question the place asked them, an answer they found in the pump hall, and a skill they did not have before, sending the Flood where they want it with a switch and knowing what that costs. That is a finished experience, not two thirds of a setup. The relay's ending is for those who go on; the design does not claim anything about how many will, and no achievement or playtime figure on this wiki can say.
**The title.** Hold the Flood is the owner-supplied working title (Brief D017); final naming is the owner's and is not locked. In this design the holding is done by deciding where the Flood goes: the colony holds the Flood off its refuge not by fighting it but by routing it, and the ending is about holding it for good. The Flood is the enemy mass, never the water; the water is what carries the current.
@@ 288,42 316,81 @@
**3:00.** The dispatch. From the yard the player sees the causeway beacon flash across the district and, a moment later, the surge pour in at its far end and gather there. Forty organisms. The forecast now reads: second surge in five minutes, intake causeway. The notebook records: the surge came in where the lamp flashed.
-
**3:30 to 7:30.** Quiet. The player crosses to the junction platform, a shelter, and watches the causeway crowd's edge press slowly down the road toward the dock end. Two stragglers wander into the yard; the cutter kills them; two motes; the player walks over them and the battery shows two units. On the platform the player links the battery to the coil, then finds a third deposit on the far bank. Rack now: coil, battery, three bundles, one slot empty, and one drip, because a bundle touches the battery. The player does not yet know what a drip means.
+
**3:30 to 7:30.** Quiet. The player crosses to the junction platform, a shelter, and watches the causeway crowd's edge press slowly down the road toward the dock end. Two stragglers wander into the yard; the cutter kills them; two motes; the player walks over them and the battery shows two units. On the platform the player arranges the rack for the first time: the coil across the top left, the battery beside it and linked to it, the two bundles below with a gap between them.
+
```
+
C C B
+
S - S link: B → C; one drip, where the right-hand bundle touches the battery
+
```
+
Back in the yard the player finds a third deposit on the far bank and drops the bundle into the empty slot. Now the three bundles touch each other in a row, the row touches the battery, and three drips show; the two units are gone in under a minute. The player does not yet know what a drip means, and will. Rack now: coil, battery, three bundles, one slot empty, and one drip, because a bundle touches the battery. The player does not yet know what a drip means.
**8:00.** The second dispatch. Causeway again, eighty organisms, joining the first crowd. The press on the causeway now reaches halfway to the dock. The forecast reads: third surge in four minutes, intake causeway. The player decides to leave.
**9:00.** The culvert, back toward the dock end. The player emerges at the causeway head, twenty metres from the dock, with the press's edge thirty metres up the road. Four organisms break off and pursue. The cutter takes two; the player takes one hit; the dock is a hard stop and the pursuers stop at its edge.
-
**9:40.** Extraction, three bundles and a coil, one point of health down, a battery with two units minus what leaked. The player banks three bundles. The notebook holds: the culvert is safe and marked; the surge comes in where the lamp flashes; the yard lamp is dark and the hatch is shut; there is a switch at the causeway head with cables to both lamps.
+
**9:40.** Extraction, three bundles and a coil, one point of health down, an empty battery. The player banks three bundles. The notebook holds: the culvert is safe and marked; the surge comes in where the lamp flashes; the yard lamp is dark and the hatch is shut; there is a switch at the causeway head with cables to both lamps; something drains a battery that touches salvage.
Nothing was solved. Everything needed to solve it was seen.
| 5:00 | same, arranged; one drip | two motes dropped and collected; stored 2 |
+
| 7:30 | coil 2, battery 1, bundles 3; full | three drips; 2 leak away within the minute; stored 0 |
+
| 9:40 | extracted with 3 bundles, coil, empty battery | expired by leak 2; spent 0 |
+
---
## 13. A later expedition, changed by knowing (illustration)
-
Expedition six. The player has solved the false refuge, banked enough for the workshop, and chooses the coil as the starting module. Loadout: the electrician, from section 5. Causeway dock still held dry.
+
Expedition six, a harvest expedition: the player goes in for the interior and for charge, not for cargo. They have solved the false refuge, banked enough for the workshop, and choose the coil as the starting module. The causeway dock is still held dry. Times are approximate and proposed; the ledger at the end tracks every slot and every unit.
+
+
**0:00.** Rack: coil across the top left, one empty battery beside it. The forecast reads: first surge in three minutes, intake causeway. The notebook says the yard cart held insulation on expeditions two and four and a battery on expedition four, and that the junction platform held an arc on expedition five; placements vary, so this is a plan, not a certainty. The player leaves the panel alone and takes the culvert.
-
**0:00.** The forecast reads: first surge in three minutes, intake causeway. The player leaves the panel alone and takes the culvert to the yard, gathers two bundles, and waits at the channel's edge.
+
**1:30.** The yard cart: insulation and a battery, both there today. They go into empty slots as found.
-
**3:00.** Surge one, causeway. The player ignores it. Two stragglers, two motes; the battery reads two.
+
**3:00.** Surge one, causeway. The player ignores it. Two stragglers, two motes, collected into the first battery.
-
**4:00.** The player runs the culvert back, dashes the eight seconds to the panel, and throws it to yard. The yard lights. Across the district, surge one leaves the causeway beacon and starts toward the junction. The forecast reads: second surge in four minutes, intake yard. The player returns through the culvert at a run.
+
**4:00.** The player runs the culvert back, dashes the eight seconds to the panel, and throws it to yard. The yard lights and the hatch opens. Across the district, the crowd at the causeway's far end, its beacon now dark and the yard's the only lit one it can reach, starts across the junction. The forecast reads: second surge in four minutes, intake yard. The player returns through the culvert at a run.
-
**6:00.** The yard. The hatch is open. The player enters the pump hall and reads the tally board again, this time looking for the inked route, and copies it. Outside, surge one arrives at the yard beacon, in the channel at the hall's door, and gathers. The player is inside with the Flood at the door. This is the moment the design is built around.
+
**5:00.** The junction platform, a shelter, ahead of the crossing crowd: the arc is there. The player arranges the rack: the harvester, six slots of gear. Links: the first battery to the coil, the second to the arc. Nothing touches a bundle; nothing leaks.
+
```
+
C C B
+
A B I links: top B → C (2 units), bottom B → A (0)
+
```
-
Options, all readable: the hatch is powered and open, so the door is a chokepoint where organisms in pursuit range come in one at a time, and the cutter can hold it for a while at a cost in health; or the player steps to the channel's edge inside the doorway, in insulation, and discharges the coil into the water the crowd is standing in. The battery has two units; a discharge needs ten. So the player holds the door with the cutter, kills eleven, picks up eleven motes between the bodies, and now has enough.
+
**6:00.** The yard, then the hall, and the tally board read again for the inked route. Outside, the crowd from the causeway arrives at the yard beacon, into the channel at the door, and holds. The player is inside with the Flood at the door. This is the moment the design is built around.
-
**7:50.** Discharge. The twenty-nine organisms still standing in the channel stop, stunned for eight seconds, and shed two large motes, ten units. The player walks the channel's edge collecting them, battery full again, and is clear of the crowd before it moves.
+
Options, all readable: the hatch is powered and open, so the door is a chokepoint where organisms in pursuit range come in one at a time; the cutter can hold it for a while at a cost in health; the coil's battery has two units and a discharge needs ten; the arc's battery is empty. The player holds the door with the cutter and kills eleven, picking up motes between the bodies: eight go to the coil's battery, which is now full, and three to the arc's.
-
**8:00.** The second dispatch, yard, eighty organisms, into the channel where the stunned crowd is recovering. The player is already on the culvert side.
+
**7:50.** Discharge. The twenty-nine organisms still standing in the channel stop, stunned for eight seconds, and shed two large motes, ten units. The coil's battery, emptied by the discharge, takes them all back; the arc's stays at three. The player is clear of the crowd before it moves.
-
**8:30 to 11:30.** The player takes the causeway, now empty, to its far end and on to the junction platform, following the inked route. The junction gate is shut and its lamp is dark: the gate is on the junction's own circuit, and nothing the panel does reaches it. Beside it, a valve, shut, and the inked plan shows it open. The player writes it down: the door to the interior wants current the panel cannot send it directly, and the valve beside it is how the water could carry it. Not this time; the full battery is the way home.
+
**8:00.** The second dispatch, yard, eighty organisms, into the channel where the stunned crowd is recovering. The player is at the channel's edge in insulation and discharges again into the fresh surge: about sixty of them are in the water; six large motes, thirty units, of which the coil's battery takes ten and the arc's takes seven to reach full; thirteen expire on the ground. Both batteries full.
-
**12:00.** Third dispatch, yard. The player is on the causeway, walking home along the road that was, five expeditions ago, the Flood's. Extraction with three bundles, a full battery's worth of charge unspent and lost at the dock, and the interior route copied.
+
**8:20.** The burst. The stunned surge is packed in the doorway and the channel mouth, and the player triggers the arc: for ten seconds the cutter's hits jump body to body through the crowd, and the arc's battery runs from ten to nothing. These organisms have already shed, so the burst returns no motes; it is a pure spend, and it thins the doorway crowd by dozens before they recover. That is the genre's moment, bought with the surge before.
+
+
**8:30 to 11:30.** The player takes the causeway, now empty, to its far end and on to the junction platform, following the inked route. The junction gate is shut and its lamp dark: the gate is on the junction's own circuit, and nothing the panel does reaches it directly. Beside it, the valve, shut, and the inked plan shows it open. The player opens the valve: the pool's lamp lights, because the yard is lit and the water is now joined, and the gate opens. The player does not go in, because the coil's battery is the way home, and writes it down: the door to the interior wants current the panel cannot send it directly, and the valve is how the water carries it.
+
+
**12:00.** Third dispatch, yard. The player is on the causeway, walking home along the road that was, five expeditions ago, the Flood's. Extraction with no cargo, the coil's battery full and its charge lost at the dock, and the interior route copied and the valve understood.
**What the hatch does when power ends.** If the yard loses power while the player is inside the hall, because the panel was thrown elsewhere or a coil-opened hatch timed out, the hatch blinks for three seconds and closes, but never on an occupant: anything in the doorway holds it open. Inside a closed hall there is a hand crank that opens the hatch in ten seconds without power. The trap is recoverable without solving anything, and the recovery takes exactly long enough to matter, because ten seconds is surge time, which is the currency this design charges in. Switching the panel from inside is impossible, because the panel is at the causeway head.
| 12:00 | extracted; no cargo | | | 10 lost at the dock | 10 | |
+
---
## 14. Presentation and assets
@@ 339,7 406,8 @@
| Energised water | Arc particles on the tint | Engine particles | None needed | Colour flash if particles are costly |
| Next surge: intake and countdown | Screen overlay with map marker; locked marker after dispatch | UI kit | Not yet selected | Text overlay |
| Each entered crowd's current target | Small marker on the overlay per crowd | UI kit | Not yet selected | Text list |
-
| The relay's pulse travelling the signal cable | Animated flicker along the thin cable, panel to beacon | Engine-drawn line animation | None needed | Beacon flash alone, which loses the "which cable" clue |
+
| The relay's pulse travelling the signal cable | Animated flicker along the thin cable, panel to beacon | Engine-drawn line animation | None needed | A pulse marker running along the drawn cable line on the forecast overlay, which keeps the "which cable" information; a beacon flash alone would not |
+
| The arc's burst | Current jumping body to body through the crowd; the arc's battery emptying on the rack readout | Engine particles and the rack UI | None needed | Tint flash on each chained organism |
| A beacon's reach (alternative model only) | Glow radius on the ground | Engine-drawn | None needed | Not needed under the baseline |
| A surge's press and pursuit | Crowd density; organisms turning to face you | Enemy sprite, one type, tint variants | **Gap: the bioelectric enemy is the one thing free packs are unlikely to supply**; likely needs owner-approved custom art or a heavily reworked free sprite | Reworked generic creature sprite; this is the first approval request to expect |
| Spent organism | Dimmer sprite | Same sprite, tint | As above | Tint only |
@@ 352,7 420,7 @@
**Sources checked today, read-only.** OpenGameArt's published FAQ states that hosted assets are offered under one of CC0, CC-BY 3.0/4.0, CC-BY-SA 3.0/4.0, OGA-BY 3.0/4.0 or GPL 2.0/3.0, that each asset carries its own uploader-chosen licence, and that commercial use is allowed under those terms; no specific pack has been selected. Kenney's asset listing page does not state a licence on the listing itself, but the individual page for its "Top-down Shooter" pack states "Creative Commons CC0" and describes 580 files of 2D top-down sprites including tiles, furniture and zombie-style figures; that makes it a plausible candidate for tiles, props and a reworkable creature sprite, subject to a suitability check nobody has done yet. No asset has been downloaded, purchased or created.
-
**Coverage gaps, honestly.** The enemy sprite is the likely custom-art request. Everything else in the table can be carried by generic top-down tiles, a UI kit, engine particles and text, at the cost of some atmosphere. Sound is not designed here.
+
**Coverage gaps, honestly.** The enemy sprite is the likely custom-art request as the enemy is currently proposed, and the reason is the proposal, not the market: the one free pack checked (Kenney's "Top-down Shooter", CC0, whose page describes zombie figures among its 580 files; PM confirmed the terms and commercial use on 2026-09-06, without approving suitability) supplies humanoid zombies, and the bioelectric organisms proposed here are not humanoid. Zombies are among the owner's own examples of the Flood. So the cheapest route is a design lever, not an art request: if the Flood were a humanoid mass, tinted and size-varied from a free pack, the enemy would be covered at no cost and the rule would not change, since what conducts is bodies standing in water either way. That option is put to the owner as part of decision 2; nobody has inspected the pack's sprites in the engine, and this document does not claim they fit. Everything else in the table can be carried by generic top-down tiles, a UI kit, engine particles and text, at the cost of some atmosphere. Sound is not designed here.
---
@@ 389,9 457,9 @@
This section proposes one experience rather than a menu. The recommendation is the game described in this document with the arc module in its minimum scope: a survivorlike whose crowd combat yields charge, whose payoff moment is a spend of that charge, whose growth is what you find and pack, and whose distinctive experience is a district that sends its own enemies where the panel points. Designed length about ten to twelve expeditions, three to four hours, plus free expeditions and three endings; positioned, as a hypothesis, as a short authored game on the shelf your crowd-game references sit on, at their price band, with the mystery as the reason to choose it. Each numbered item below is a place where you can depart from that recommendation, with the cost of departing stated.
1. **The premise.** Direction A as written is PM's provisional choice, not yet yours. Direction B is documented as the alternative; a different premise is possible, and the rule survives a change of fiction.
-
2. **Enemy and setting.** Bioelectric organisms in a drowned pumping district are proposals. If you want zombies, aliens or another Flood, the rule survives; the fiction changes.
+
2. **Enemy and setting.** Bioelectric organisms in a drowned pumping district are proposals. If you want zombies, aliens or another Flood, the rule survives; the fiction changes. One consequence worth knowing: a humanoid Flood, which zombies are, is the one enemy a free pack already checked could plausibly supply, so it would remove the only custom-art request this document expects (section 14).
3. **The routing model.** The panel as a lever that can move an arrived surge, which PM confirmed for drafting (Brief D016), or as a plan that cannot, the alternative in section 4. Both are consistent; the difference is felt at the panel.
-
4. **Combat, length and shelf: the recommendation and its alternatives.** Recommended: charge as the only combat yield, the arc in the minimum scope for the mowing moment, no experience curve, growth by composition capped at six slots (sections 5 and 6); the designed length above; the positioning hypothesis above. What is observed, with its limits: an outside researcher measured the reference games' list prices on 2026-09-06 (crowd games about five to thirteen dollars, mystery games about fifteen to thirty) and reviewers' playtime at the moment they reviewed (medians of roughly nine to forty-six hours); reviewers play more than buyers, and playtime at review is not completion length, so these figures cannot set a minimum length for this game, and the price of eleven chosen examples is not a rule for every game. Steam's refund terms are two weeks and under two hours of play; that is a fact about the store, not a prediction of refunds. What is predicted, and testable only later: that a three-to-four-hour authored crowd-routing game holds its price on that shelf. The alternatives, each a change with a cost: a conventional experience curve with level-up choices, which pulls the player toward the biggest crowd and away from the district, the thing this design is for; a longer game by adding a second district under the same rule, the extension with the best return, which no evidence here requires; or selling it as a mystery on the other shelf, which departs from the genre you asked for. Nothing here is a viability claim, and content is not to be added merely to sit beyond a refund threshold.
+
4. **Combat, length and shelf: the recommendation and its alternatives.** Recommended: charge as the only combat yield, the arc in the minimum scope for the mowing moment with the fuel policy in section 6, no experience curve, growth by composition capped at six slots (sections 5 and 6); the designed length above; the positioning hypothesis above, with the price left uncommitted. The intended player, named once: someone who plays crowd games and wants a reason to think; mystery players are the second audience, not the first. What is observed, with its limits: an outside researcher measured the reference games' list prices on 2026-09-06 (crowd games about five to thirteen dollars, mystery games about fifteen to thirty) and reviewers' playtime at the moment they reviewed (medians of roughly nine to forty-six hours); reviewers play more than buyers, and playtime at review is not completion length, so these figures cannot set a minimum length for this game, and the price of eleven chosen examples is not a rule for every game. Steam's refund terms are two weeks and under two hours of play; that is a fact about the store, not a prediction of refunds. What is predicted, and testable only later: that a three-to-four-hour authored crowd-routing game holds its price on that shelf. The alternatives, each a change with a cost: a conventional experience curve with level-up choices, which pulls the player toward the biggest crowd and away from the district, the thing this design is for; a longer game by adding a second district under the same rule, the extension with the best return, which no evidence here requires; or selling it as a mystery on the other shelf, which departs from the genre you asked for. Nothing here is a viability claim, and content is not to be added merely to sit beyond a refund threshold.
5. **The colony's size.** Three decisions and no upkeep, as proposed, or a larger settlement, which is a second game.
6. **The rack's size.** Six slots and seven modules, as proposed, or a real item game at twenty to thirty modules, which changes the content budget.
7. **The enemy's name, and the final title.** "The Flood" is your term for the enemy mass; an outside critic reports it is also the name of a well-known existing game's enemy faction and that the phrase is hard to find on a storefront. Keep it, or rename the enemy while keeping the working title; the design does not depend on the word. The final title is yours and is not locked (Brief D017).
@@ 435,7 503,11 @@
## Appendix B: bookkeeping
-
**Status.** DES103 r2, which is this page at revision r8, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document; r7 (44984c) is page history.
+
**Status.** DES103 r3, which is this page at revision r9, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document; r8 (d37cbf) and r7 (44984c) are page history. Revised against PM's PMR002 (Pm Reviews/Pmr002 219947; Tasks 95db05), which declined the critic's ready verdict and requested a focused revision, and against Design Review REV102 r5 (e2db8b) and External Critique EXT102 r2 (d3b19b).
+
+
**Sources read for r9.** PMR002 (findings 1 to 5 and the asset follow-through); Tasks 95db05 (DES103 Ready with its evidence line; REV103 blocked on this revision; WLD102 revision requested for the finale); REV102 r5 (issues 10 to 13, of which 10 to 12 were met by r8 and 13 is met here); EXT102 r2 (X21 and X22 withdrawn); REF103 r1 (the researcher's own corrections: the "order of magnitude" and "two bands" claims retracted, sampling limits stated); Clarity r10 (no open questions).
+
+
**What r9 changes, as DES103 r3.** PMR002 finding 1: the two-minute example and the failed experiment are rewritten as state sequences that obey the confirmed routing rule (panel position, powered circuits, lit beacons, crowd position and target, door state); a coil-lit beacon glows steady and lures but never flashes; the failed experiment now needs a crowd with no lit beacon to reach, which the off position creates, because a crowd holding at a nearer lit beacon does not move; the retarget-or-spread precedence is stated once in section 4; the junction pool's lamp is an indicator, not a beacon, and draws nothing (sections 4, 8, 11). Finding 2: expedition one's rack is legal and drawn (five items, then six, with the drips explained) and carries a written ledger of dropped, collected, stored, expired and spent charge; expedition six is rewritten as a harvest expedition with the harvester rack drawn, every find named, every unit tracked, and the arc's burst played at the hall door; the hauler's cost is stated truthfully (the panel is free to it); pickup, overflow, planting and retrieval rules are stated; the arc's fuel policy is stated as rules (one battery per burst, no charging while drawing, no motes from organisms that have shed); early, middle and late capabilities are listed (sections 5, 6, 12, 13). Finding 3: a complete tier-three chain is proposed by the lead for the world designer to correct and own; each ending's dispatch, forecast, retreat and door consequences are stated; the ending costs no salvage, and the two sentences that said otherwise are corrected; the length is stated as two and a half to three hours of expeditions and three to four with overhead, both labelled assumptions; the early-stop answer no longer cites achievement figures (sections 1, 10, 11). Finding 4: price is left uncommitted and the intended player is named once (section 17). REV102-13: two arc loadouts are drawn with links and costs, a burst appears in a scene, and the table has a row for its cue (sections 5, 13, 14). Asset follow-through: the free pack checked supplies humanoid zombies, so a humanoid Flood would remove the expected custom-art request; put to the owner under decision 2; the cable clue's fallback now keeps the dispatch information (section 14). The world designer's page should mirror the lamp and precedence wording and correct or replace the tier-three chain.
**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).
@@ 481,4 553,4 @@
**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 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.
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**PM report.** Task DES103 r3 against PMR002; artifact Design Document r9 (r8 d37cbf, r7 44984c, r6 12779d, r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); PMR002 findings 1, 2 and 4 are answered on this page and finding 3 is answered as far as the lead can without the world designer's chain, which this revision proposes for them to correct; handoffs: the world designer to verify the two scenes' targets under the precedence rule and to own the tier-three chain; the critic's REV103 on this exact revision; the reader's CLR102 on the owner page; 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.
