Build Rules

Builds are machines the player assembles from reusable parts. Early in an expedition, movement and a modest automatic effect help hold one lane. Earned temporary transformations make the same machine branch, rebound, gather or bloom across a substantial part of an 80–150-body horde, while the player still chooses the line and the moment of a manual climax. A good build has a recognizable fantasy—storm, ricochet factory, moving furnace—not merely a higher damage number.

The owner has selected connected reusable parts, mostly automatic ordinary fire, manual special abilities, shared carrying space and a full journal pause. Temporary combat upgrades reset whenever the astronaut returns aboard, alive or revived. The specific connection language, upgrade effects and limits below are proposals.

Example: choosing what this expedition becomes

Later in the game, the astronaut leaves with a proposed Storm Choir rig: Threat Sensor, Pulse Projector, Impact Dynamo, Fork Relay, Arc Emitter and Capacitor. Sensor keeps Projector firing at valid targets. Its impacts feed the locally clamped Dynamo, and Fork divides that charge between an Arc discharge and Capacitor storage. This is a later rig built from six physical parts; the exact costs and charge trace are in Mechanical Interfaces.

An identified ward vent announces one finite release into the first occupied hall. Whenever Sensor offers a valid target and Projector is ready, the ordinary shot cycles; its impact supplies the real Dynamo input. The player chooses dense lines and clears that stage's committed arrivals. In the quiet afterwards the rig offers two temporary upgrades based on what is installed:

Echoing Arc adds two finite branch routes to each accepted Arc action. Each route follows the same local hop, cover and body rules and the complete action reserves its heat before commitment. It creates no signal output or usable charge.
Rebound Disc changes Projector's ordinary shot into a finite physical disc. It follows a committed direction, rebounds only from hard surfaces and reserves operating supply while in flight. It promises repeated contacts when the room has hard walls and useful angles.

This is a choice of play, not “damage plus five percent.” Echoing Arc asks the astronaut to run toward density and preserve cooling headroom. Rebound Disc asks them to read the architecture and bank shots through the crowd. The player chooses Echoing Arc.

Later ordinary Projector shots fill Capacitor. At the next resolved stage, Thunderhead becomes an offered temporary transformation. It gives those same six mounted parts two visible connection modes: automatic charging and a manual burst. With the store full, the player presses the special once. The burst sends stored charge through Fork to three Arc chain heads and one pressure lance, then automatically restores the charging connections. It can break roughly forty well-packed ordinary bodies without deleting the rest of a large horde. Ordinary fire resumes only as its parts naturally become ready. The temporary effect supplies the switching behavior; the player does not perform a journal relink during the fight.

A cancelled or refused burst leaves the charge, heat and automatic mode intact. Once the first receiver accepts, it spends the full store and reserves all stated heat, even if a later target is lost or cover intervenes. Burst descendants cannot refill storage through Dynamo. Automatic connections restore without granting readiness; further eligible ordinary shots must charge the next burst. The journal previews both modes, including demand from effects still in flight; Mechanical Interfaces gives the numerical trace and acceptance rules.

Back aboard, Echoing Arc and Thunderhead are removed under the owner-set reset. The six physical parts remain if carried. The player also keeps the discovered fact that the next freight route has hard rebound surfaces. On the next departure they may choose the permanent ricochet base intended to seek Rebound Disc again, carry more oxygen instead, or follow a different clue. The expired upgrade itself is not retained; the power climb restarts while equipment and understanding remain.

Three kinds of progress

Retained equipment is physical. A reusable part carried home remains in the collection. Installed rig parts and inactive carried parts use the same shared carrying capacity as oxygen canisters and loot; active use also occupies rig space. Under the current ten-unit carrying comparison, either seven-unit later base plus one proposed two-unit canister leaves one unit for a discovery. A part left in a station machine or dropped in a room is not carried home.

Expedition power is temporary. Resolving meaningful crowd pressure earns upgrades tied to parts already installed. Every such upgrade resets on any return aboard. The player gets the survivorslike pleasure of rising from vulnerable to dominant during each outing without losing permanent finds.

Useful knowledge is remembered. The journal can preserve observed part behaviour, source locations, crowd traits and successful connections. Knowledge does not grant a part or an upgrade, but it makes the next loadout and route more intentional.

Connecting parts

Each part explains one action and shows compatible ports. A build reads as a plain causal sentence:

start → change → deliver → payoff

A sensor may start an automatic event; a fork branches it; a lens changes charge into heat; an actuator turns the result into an arc, projectile, barrier or shove. A part can fill more than one role, so finding one object can reopen several existing builds.

The player mounts or removes a physical part in the live world. That action checks carrying and rig space, occupies the astronaut and can be interrupted. Once accessible parts are mounted, the proposed link editor lives in the journal. The journal already pauses enemies and oxygen by owner decision; link changes there consume no world time. Preview shows whether direct ports fit, which modes a temporary transformation will operate automatically, and how much power and heat each possible state demands.

This makes expression easy to try without pretending that a frozen menu is active combat. Closing the journal returns the player to exactly the danger they paused. The journal is not a recurring active-special interface: Thunderhead, Foundry Drop and Furnace Burst perform their gated discharge and restore charging automatically. Offers should stay few and consequential. Later authorized observation must determine whether players experiment freely or feel obliged to pause after every change in the room.

Several ordinary weapons can work together

A rig may contain more than one ordinary automatic weapon. Each automatic actuator owns its visible reach, target rule and readiness. When its connected event source offers a valid target and the actuator is ready, it fires; another actuator checks independently. A Fork may also send one event to several compatible payoffs. The universal single-ordinary-launch ban is removed.

The understandable limits are physical:

Rig space: every active part must fit.
Carrying space: equipment competes with spare oxygen and discoveries.
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 projectile continues reserving supply until its finite flight ends.
Heat: a named action reserves its complete heat at commitment rather than spending secretly per victim. Without headroom an automatic actuator holds ready and a manual command refuses before spending charge. Once accepted, movement, cover or an absorber may shorten the physical effect without refund.

Multiple outputs therefore buy coverage and spectacle by consuming the same capacity that could support defence, oxygen or a more focused chain. Ordinary fire stays mostly automatic. Facing, movement and proximity determine what the actuators can reach; the player reserves button presses for labelled specials such as a barrier, shove or stored discharge.

Bounded returns and feedback

Spectacular builds need effects that can travel, branch and return. A blanket “each part resolves once and every return stops” makes that fantasy disappear. The proposed replacement is a visible finite route budget: depending on the named effect it may count routes, hops, bodies, rebounds, penetration distance, flight time, fragments or bloom reach.

An automatic launch, manual special, enemy strike or environmental event begins one causal sequence. A part or temporary upgrade gives that sequence only its inspected allowances. An Arc hop or branch consumes its route/body allowance; a disc consumes travel, time, rebound and body allowances; a lance and bloom consume their finite penetration and reach. A return can revisit compatible parts only when its named effect actually provides a signal output; Arc Emitter's ordinary physical arc does not. Cover, an absorber, missing targets or budget exhaustion ends that branch visibly.

A descendant cannot refill the allowance that created it, refresh its own readiness, release its in-flight supply reservation early or mint power from itself. Forking divides or copies only the kind of event its inspected rule names; stored charge and consumed salvage remain real inputs. A later automatic firing cycle, a new manual special or a separate enemy attack starts a new sequence with its own budget. This allows a disc to rebound several times or an Arc to sing across a dense crowd without an undefined loop that runs forever in an empty room.

The proposed counts, operating draw, heat capacity and cooling are centralized in Mechanical Interfaces. They are replaceable written hypotheses. They make conservation inspectable but cannot establish performance, dominance, readability or fun.

A proposed reward rhythm

Provisional pending owner choice. The model below grants temporary upgrades only for resolved stages. Regular growth from defeated enemies with larger milestone transformations remains the owner-facing alternative; its meter, thresholds, pickup behaviour and interruption cost are not designed here.

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.

Three ordered transformations, not recipes

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, insulation and hard cover interrupt routes; it runs hot and has no Barrier. A front absorber can make a costly setup feel wasted if the preview is unclear.

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. Open space, soft surfaces and absorbers kill routes. Spending the shove on setup may remove the escape tool; an absorber can end the disc without its fan.

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. Heavy bodies and hard cover resist or divide the effect; ranged attackers keep firing. Holding for a larger knot brings danger closer, and a blocked bloom may feel much smaller than the gathered crowd.

These are ordered behavioural ladders, not XP thresholds, guaranteed pickups or a selected reward frequency. They work under either open growth alternative: resolved-stage choices, or regular defeated-enemy growth with larger milestones. They use only existing reusable parts and temporary effects that all expire on return. The player may hybridize them, stop early or use the same parts for defence or station machinery. The meaningful question is what the machine does in this expedition and what it costs, not whether the player completed an authored set.

Property and unresolved boundaries

Everything physical still carried returns aboard after death. Consumed salvage remains consumed; a dropped part or one deliberately installed in station infrastructure remains at that location. Link changes never duplicate an object. Equipment Acquisition and Rig Growth owns source, pickup and property examples; Hordes and Builds shows three developed visual fantasies.

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.