- **Power:** the link preview refuses a configuration whose possible concurrent operating demand exceeds the rig's visible supply. Mutually exclusive link states and buffered charge/discharge states are checked separately rather than summing every theoretical maximum; any state that can truly overlap must fit. A transformed parent keeps its reservation through its final fragment. Rebound Disc supplies an explicit launch/Barrier interlock for the opening rig and finite ordinary/master flight slots; the preview checks those actual gated states. [Mechanical Interfaces](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanical%20Interfaces%20And%20Opening%20Quantities) owns the boundary.

An eligible stage is one finite, announced pressure release from an identified physical source. Closing physical access before that release commits prevents it and gives no combat-upgrade offer. It still earns safety and access, and completed work follows its owning persistence rule. Once the stage's arrivals commit, resolving it earns one temporary choice tied to the active rig. The player resolves it either by clearing all attackers committed to that release or by completing a physical seal that ends their access. Killing faster than arrivals suppresses the lane but does not end a release that still has committed attackers feeding through it. A strong build that clears the finite release before the announced peak, or a prepared player who completes its seal after release commitment but before that peak, earns immediately. Sealing stops further access; already-arrived bodies remain dangerous until cleared or separated. Break and seal offer the same choice; their combat, oxygen and access costs may differ.

Crossing the stage's escape boundary saves the astronaut but earns nothing; re-entry resumes the same unresolved stage. A resolved stage pays once for the current station arrangement and remains spent across a living return. Reopening the same seal does not create another reward. A later machinery release qualifies only when it is separately authored, announced and sourced—not because the player crossed a distance reset. Physical seal persistence follows its mechanism. Death itself pays nothing. An earned but unchosen offer expires aboard with the rest of temporary expedition power. The accepted cost is that surviving an unsuccessful fight gives no temporary help beyond retained property and knowledge, while a reachable seal after commitment may become the safer reward route. Preventive closure trades that temporary choice for safety and access; placement must make the timing and cost readable.

As an illustrative sustained outing, three to five meaningful stage choices could produce a foundation, then a branch, then refinements or changes; an optional larger authored stage may offer a rarer transformation. This is not a quota or a claim that current routes support the cadence. A short trip can earn one, while backtracking through cleared or spent areas grants none. Living return preserves those areas. Exactly where the next eligible frontier lies requires route/content support and may leave a baseline or no-upgrade approach; no first choice is guaranteed to be soon.

Offers should change behaviour: add a branch, create a return, convert a payload, move a payoff or turn stored energy into a manual climax. Small statistical improvements can support tuning later, but they should not be the defining choice. An offer fails when one answer is mandatory for every crowd shape, when its effect is hard to see, or when the player cannot explain why the machine changed.

This rhythm gives the encounter and reward systems a clean handoff. Combat provides pressure and a release; the release provides a brief paused choice; the changed machine makes the next crowd desirable. The cost is that a familiar cleared route becomes safer but cannot rebuild peak power. The next climb comes from an occupied frontier, changed death-shift geography or a larger event the player chooses to wake—not from a death reward or instant reset of the world.

**Storm Choir — 7 carrying / 7 mounted spaces.** Base short chain → Echoing Arc's added routes → Thunderhead's full-store three-head storm and lance. The player crosses toward connected density and chooses the release. Spacing and hard cover interrupt routes; it runs hot and has no Barrier. A moving gap or structural rib can make a costly setup feel wasted if the shown connected regions were ignored.

**Ricochet Foundry — 7 carrying / 7 mounted spaces.** Base ordinary shot plus manual shove → Rebound Disc's automatic bank → Fragment Wake's terminal fan → Foundry Drop's full-store master disc and fan. Manual Trigger→Nozzle moves eligible bodies or loose cover; it never steers the disc. The preview distinguishes a hard face with a clear reflected line from a terminal face and shows the fan cone. Open space, soft/irregular surfaces and poor reflected lanes shorten routes. Spending the shove on setup may remove the escape tool; a fan that opens into fixed cover may reach almost nobody.

**Gravity Furnace — 8 carrying / 8 mounted spaces.** Automatic pressure shots plus outward stride pulses → Inward Draft's rear pull → Furnace Burst's full-store lance and bloom. The player runs a wake into a chosen line, then fires or escapes. Hard cover divides the effect and ranged attackers keep firing. Bellback's pressure wave can scatter the wake; this proposal also lets a clear Inward Draft displacement interrupt its brace as a Nozzle response. Holding for a larger knot brings danger closer, and a blocked bloom may feel much smaller than the gathered crowd.

Whether stored Capacitor charge survives death remains with the existing persistence decision and is not answered here. Upgrade frequency, defeated-enemy thresholds or pickups, duplicate stacking, acquisition by finding versus fabrication and detailed targeting assistance also remain open. The proposed carrying, rig, power, heat and coverage quantities remain unvalidated candidates rather than owner selections. Written rules cannot establish that the builds are fun, balanced, readable or technically feasible; those claims require a later authorized phase.