Fighting the Horde

Combat rules. Owner decisions are recorded in the Owner Brief; crowd sizes, timings and effects are proposals to test later.

What a fight is

Crossing this station means crossing crowds. Ordinary weapons fire automatically, and by default each one picks the nearest visible valid target. So the player's combat is about where to be: which route to take, how close to let the crowd come, which line through it to walk, which automatic effects are connected, and when to press a manual special.

A rig may carry more than one ordinary weapon output. What limits it is power, heat, rig space and carrying capacity; Build Rules owns those limits and how outputs connect.

Opening the journal pauses everything, including enemies and oxygen, even in the middle of a fight. Build Rules places changing links between rig parts inside that pause. Picking up or first fitting a newly found part, and operating station machinery, still happen while the world runs.

An ordinary crossing

You need to reach a sampling loop at the far end of a long pressure hall. Through the entry glass you can see why nobody comes this way: the side wards are full, bodies slumped against their doors, and a few already shuffling in the main lane.

Wake. You step in and the nearest bodies turn. The sound carries. Two ward doors further down shudder, and you can tell which ones will open before they do.

Gather. Thirty or forty slow patients spill into the main lane and walk at you. A faster pack runs the side gallery. Your projector works without pause while you back up the lane, keeping the slow mass in front of you and the pillars between you and the pack. The pack and the two ward releases are three visibly marked pressure bands. Breaking the third banks one Tune choice and clears the ring for later marks while the hall is still dangerous.

Crest. The second ward door gives. There are seventy bodies in the hall now, and the fast pack has reached the pillar you were counting on. You have three choices: take the dense middle, where every spark in your arc chain finds another body; hug the wall, where fewer reach you; or run for the door and lose the hall. You take the middle. When the pack arrives you raise your barrier, and every blow against it charges the capacitor behind it.

Break. You release. A white wash rolls down the lane and takes everything that came through the first door. The second ward is still pushing bodies at its threshold, so on your way past you throw its lock and clear the remaining bodies already inside. Silence. That release is resolved — cleared on one side, sealed on the other. The temporary power earned while fighting stays with you for the rest of this trip; the cleared hall gives you room to use it on the next objective.

Quiet. The loop at the end is yours now, and in it is what you came for: a sample counter stamped with a date after the hospital was supposed to be empty.

What made it work: the danger was readable before it arrived, the build paid off because the crowd was dense, and the silence was earned rather than given. How it could fail: a crest that goes on too long becomes exhausting rather than exciting; bodies and effects bury the clue you came for; or the wall is always the safe line, so nobody ever takes the middle and the build never sings.

The four beats

Most fights follow a readable shape.

1. Wake. Something disturbs an occupied space — your arrival, noisy work, an alarm, a machine you started. You see sleeping bodies, moving shadows, opening doors, and you hear which routes are going to answer.
2. Gather. A slow majority fills the broad lanes. Faster packs take side routes, climbers come from ceilings and ducts, and a few heavy bodies bend the flow so you have to change course.
3. Crest. Two or three movement patterns overlap. You choose the dense line your build rewards, the safer line that protects your condition, or a costly retreat that spends oxygen and position. If you are working toward something that moves — a carriage, a rising lift, a walking scan — it keeps going through the fight rather than turning the room into a defence circle.
4. Break. The release is resolved: everything it sent into the room is cleared, or you complete a seal that closes its source. Killing faster than bodies arrive keeps a lane clear, but it does not stop a source that is still feeding. You can also get out past a bulkhead or outrun the woken area — that saves you, though it resolves nothing. Closing a source stops its incoming flow but leaves creatures already inside active. Once the current space is cleared or safely separated from them, the music and room silhouette release, and the lull belongs to looking, salvaging and deciding where to go.

Where crowds come from

Crowds come from source areas: wards, lift wells, ducts, flooded concourses, sealed volumes — places that physically hold bodies and connect to the route you are on. Bodies always arrive through routes you can see or hear, and no extra wave arrives because your build was efficient. A warned route can still carry enemies around or behind you.

Population initialization happens once, before an expedition begins. Where an authored route mapping names the source, allocation, standing positions and warnings, a finite group may already have walked from one named, still-open source aperture along the current open walking route and be standing farther down that route when the astronaut leaves the ship. Its bodies are deducted from that source's finite population; they are not copies, and loading, leaving and re-entering, waiting or fighting efficiently never initializes them again. Once play begins, a body not already placed on the route can arrive only by physically emerging from its shown aperture or crossing a visible neighbouring threshold after a warning. An initialized standing band is not a release that committed offscreen: its own approach warning and commitment occur when it wakes into the player's route.

A source's live release comes in stages: a finite surge the room announces, from a source you can identify. A stage commits when its announced attackers and arrivals are released. While it is feeding, out-killing it keeps a lane open but does not stop it. Once committed, it ends when you clear all its committed attackers or complete a physical seal that ends their access. Walking away ends your part in it, not the stage. A further stage exists only where the room announces and sources one — a machine waking, a new mouth opening. Finite sources are fine; what the design avoids is an encounter that is over after five enemies. Sources feed through apertures — grilles, hatches, ward doors, ducts — that are separate from the passages you walk through, so sealing one never closes a route you need.

Scale. In a broad ward, dock or gallery a developed crowd might show 80 to 150 bodies at once and pass several hundred through its full crest. A narrow corridor shows fewer at once but a continuous river through doors, lifts and ducts. A small room can host a short teaching moment — one new creature, one new warning — but the way to it still carries the crowd. Where a placed room is too small for the crowd its encounter needs, that is rework to do; Encounter And Mechanism Placement Inventory lists those obligations.

What wakes more

Noise and machinery wake the next stage. Loud work, alarms and a Caller that finishes its call can each wake an adjacent source, and its route is always shown before the crowd arrives. Cutting the alarm, stopping the Caller or completing a physical closure before the release commits prevents it. After commitment, cutting the alarm cannot recall attackers already released; completing a physical seal can still stop their access. Bodies already beyond that closure remain active.

Letting it happen can be a choice, too. A player with a strong build may want the second surge. Deliberately waking a large machine brings a much larger surge and often reveals new space — The Game shows one.

Earning quiet

Clearing the current space, or safely separating it from remaining threats, earns a lull: time to investigate, salvage and choose a route. The room shows whether each source is sealed, exhausted for the present surge or still able to release another announced stage. Clearing all committed attackers or sealing their access before the peak resolves that committed stage immediately. Creatures already beyond a completed seal remain dangerous until cleared or safely separated. Or you can simply get out past a bulkhead or outrun the woken area.

An occupied area next door can still send bodies through a visible route, with sound and door movement to warn you. Permanent seals remain closed. The arrangement and timing of further pressure must leave useful quiet for discovery; the rules for replenishment during an ongoing expedition remain to be designed. Returning home prepares fresh crowds for the next expedition, while permanent work remains done.

Growing stronger through fighting

Ordinary fighting supplies regular temporary combat growth. Larger transformations come at major horde milestones. Growth happens while the fight develops, so out-fighting an incoming crowd can strengthen the rig before its whole release is resolved. Major milestones mark bigger changes in what the build can do. Build Rules owns the upgrade effects and connections.

Proposed ordinary cadence: break the band, bank the choice

Each placed fight divides its standing group or finite release into one to three visible pressure bands. A band is a real, bounded set of bodies from the named source or approach—not a timer and not a stream invented by the growth system. Its source or approach warning shows one hollow Break Mark. When roughly half of that band's starting bodies have been defeated, the formation breaks and the mark fills automatically. Exact rosters and the half-band threshold are tuning proposals, but the rule is concrete: the player never has to collect a drop or find the last body.

Three Break Marks bank one ordinary Tune choice. A three-notch ring around the rig display fills without opening a screen. On the third mark, the ring converts into Tune ×1, clears, and immediately begins recording marks four to six. Further Tunes queue rather than replacing one another; this proposal has no queue cap within an expedition. The player may open the journal during danger or wait for earned quiet; automatic fire and movement continue meanwhile. The journal's full pause presents two behaviour-changing offers compatible with mounted parts. Taking one spends only one Tune and never clears the partially filled ring or later queued Tunes. For example, a player who defers at three marks and then earns three more sees Tune ×2 with an empty ring; spending once leaves Tune ×1. Every queued Tune, filled notch and chosen upgrade still expires on return aboard.

This makes growth regular without turning the station into cleanup work. Each marked band pays at most once in an expedition. Damage after its break, remaining stragglers, waiting beside a safe doorway, leaving and re-entering, and loading the same expedition add nothing. A further mark requires committing to another announced band. A new expedition renews the population and the marks because the entire temporary climb has reset; repeatedly farming the easiest room across returns cannot accumulate permanent advantage.

The selected tradeoff is explicit rather than solved: the half-band stop avoids a pickup vacuum and a hunt for the last body, but it can make the remaining horde feel unrewarded. Finishing or separating that crowd still buys quiet, safe work and freedom from pursuit; it does not secretly fill the meter. A plausible alternative is automatic fractional progress from every defeated body, with no pickups and a visible cap for each placed fight. In a later authorized observation, frequent departures immediately after a Break Mark—combined with continued engagement under the per-body alternative without corner sweeping—would favor that alternative. If per-body progress instead restores cleanup and safe trickle farming, the bounded bands have the stronger case.

Major change before the horde is over

A major horde milestone is a named physical event inside a major placement, not another three-mark threshold and not the reward for clearing the room. The representative Balance Gallery remembers two once-per-expedition facts in either order: horde engaged, when its first announced band commits either from an unsealed local feeding mouth or through the gallery's outer walking threshold from a named, currently connected source, and Bellback answered, when the first Bellback threat is countered or Bellback is defeated. A counter means its locked cone is escaped or put behind the fixed rib until the wave releases, a faced Barrier catches the wave, its unfinished brace is interrupted by displacement, or Bellback is defeated. Taking an unblocked hit does not set the answer, but a later valid counter or defeat can. A walking-threshold band counts only if the authored route identifies its source, conserves that source's finite population and warns the crossing in the gallery; adjacency alone creates no crowd.

As soon as both facts are true, the gallery announces transformation ready once. The no-special-equipment baseline is concrete: let the cone lock, step behind the rib, and let the wave strike structure; that records the answer. If a powerful rig defeats Bellback before the first gallery band commits, defeat records the answer and the later band commitment completes the milestone. If the band commits first, the next valid counter completes it. The first Bellback warning and first valid band commitment are staged during the early gather, before that band can reach its Break Mark, so answering their first opportunities leaves later bodies to fight. Bellback never becomes invulnerable, no replacement appears, and neither legitimate cover play nor efficient defeat loses the offer. The larger transformation remains separate from the Tune queue and can be taken in the paused journal while later bands and most of the crowd can still crest.

This timing gives the transformation a proving ground instead of handing it out after the spectacle. It also avoids requiring a particular earlier ordinary choice or any proposed special case from a sample build. Other major placements need their own equally visible midpoint event; merely crossing a threshold or retreating before the event earns nothing.

Early sealing is the safety branch

Closing a source before one of its bands commits prevents that band and its Break Mark. The preview counts that source's actual uncommitted bands: for example, seal now—less crowd, two fewer possible marks this expedition. If one or zero remain, it says one or zero. The payoff is immediate quiet, protected condition, less oxygen exposure and a safer route, not consolation combat power. Sealing after a band commits does not erase a mark already earned, but it does not award one for an unbroken band. In the Balance Gallery, sealing one mouth early still leaves Bellback and the other mouth able to reach the representative major milestone, so caution reduces density without locking out the expedition's large transformation.

Retreat preserves the temporary power already earned until the expedition ends. Leaving and re-entering a room does not by itself count as a new expedition. Reopening a seal or dying is not itself an ordinary fighting reward. Completed work keeps its owning persistence rule.

Rhythm target. The half-band threshold, three-mark Tune and two-to-four-minute target are one reversible proposal. One ordinary choice should usually become ready after two to four minutes of outward movement and forward fighting, depending on the route's band spacing; the player controls when to pause and take it. A named major placement should grant its larger transformation with enough committed crowd left to use it for roughly the final third of that fight. These are authored paper targets, not measured playtime or validated balance. How it could fail: a half-band break line feels arbitrary, three notches make different routes converge on the same tempo, players leave as soon as a mark fills and treat the remaining horde as waste, or every choice is postponed until quiet and loses the pleasure of changing under pressure.

Working under pressure

Some objectives are physical work: cutting bolts, turning a valve, framing a record. Prefer work that moves with you over work that pins you to a panel. When work does hold you in place, it shows its current stage, and every completed checkpoint stays done. You lose only the unfinished stage — by cancelling, being knocked off the control, or having a creature occupy it. Damage alone does not stop you. Capturing a record is all or nothing: interrupted before it commits, there is no record.

Coming home, dying and the next climb

An expedition ends when you are back aboard, whether you walked or revived.

• Temporary combat upgrades end on every return home. Unchosen temporary offers expire too. Each expedition starts a fresh climb toward spectacular power.
• Everything physical you carry comes home, even after death. Oxygen breathed and material consumed stay spent. Ordinary condition is restored for the next trip.
• Eligible combat routes receive a fresh finite population for each new expedition. Renewed fighting supplies fresh temporary growth after living returns and revival alike. Previously defeated crowds and previously earned temporary awards do not permanently spend combat, but each renewed group still needs a named unsealed source and current open walking route; a fully sealed branch with no such route stays quiet.
• Permanent changes remain. Unlocked doors, selected room connections, completed permanent work and permanent source seals keep their states. The new population must use sources and routes consistent with those changes.
• Walking home alive keeps the current room arrangement. It still leads to a new expedition with renewed crowds.
• Dying shifts the unjoined station as well as ending the expedition. Unconnected areas gain new neighbours. Death carries no extra penalty beyond losing your position and any unfinished work; the new crowd is never a reaction to how well your build did.

A familiar route with fresh pressure

This proposed renewal pass uses the existing Arrangement A route in human terms: Dock Mouth → R-3 Approach → Jammed Pressure Approach → Sampling Loop → Balance Gallery (R01→R11→R17→R20→R25).

First approach and permanent change. On the earlier expedition, the astronaut shut the R-3 Approach's quarantine grille and cleared the bodies already through it. That source seal remains closed. Farther on, they fought through the Jammed Pressure Approach's side wards without locking those wards. Their earlier marked-wall capture from Intake made its blank panel an informed cutter test; in earned quiet, they cut it open. The smallest necessary placement change is to make the successful cutter work a narrow two-way service passage from the near side of that long room to its far threshold at the Sampling Loop. It adds no room, source, objective or station-joining face. The passage remains open as a local shortcut. The astronaut returned alive, so the arrangement did not shift; all temporary power still ended aboard.

Later expedition and physical renewal. The quarantine grille is still visibly dogged shut, so no renewed body comes from it. A fresh Flanker band waits in the Jammed Pressure Approach's already visible side gallery and can run through its shown near threshold if alerted. Fresh Pressers occupy its two still-unsealed side wards and arrive only through their ward doors. The Sampling Loop has no source of its own: pressure there consists only of remaining creatures that visibly followed from the ward hall plus its existing Glass Siphon. The Balance Gallery renews from its two still-unsealed feeding mouths. The completed R-3 seal and the opened service passage are never reversed to make this possible.

The player deliberately takes the long ward lane outward. Breaking the Flanker band and both ward bands supplies three fresh Break Marks and one ordinary choice before the climax. The shortcut remains the safer walk home. A player can instead use it outward and forgo those bands; the Balance Gallery keeps a no-upgrade baseline and its own major milestone. Hordes and Builds describes the intended power climb.

Paper timeline for the later expedition

At the current proposal of 1 O per 30 seconds, 12 O in the suit plus one 8 O canister is ten minutes of base breathing. By 4:25, base breathing has used about 8.8 O, leaving 3.2 O in the suit. The full 80 seconds of coupling moves 8 O while another 2.7 O is breathed, so 5:45 shows 8.5 O in the suit and an empty vessel. The remaining 2:35 consumes about 5.2 O; total base breathing by return is about 16.7 O. Arrival at 8:20 therefore shows about 3.3 O in the suit, or 1:40 of base breathing. The full transfer, not its first 30 seconds, is included in the existing timeline.

That margin assumes the player avoids both Siphon tether drain and the Breath Banks' extra-drain lanes as described above, and that coupling is not interrupted. The display shows the actual suit and vessel oxygen, transfer progress and any added drain. The table is a proposed pacing example; delays and interruptions spend its margin. The reserve marker warns when actual suit oxygen crosses its set level. R12's stocked travel air sits on the rescue branch and remains rescue preparation, not assumed personal supply. No local refill is counted, and the default reserve marker remains only a warning. Survival And Loadout owns these provisional quantities and transfer rules.

After every local source is sealed

This reversible paper pass covers one harder state of the same living-return arrangement: R11's quarantine grille, both R17 ward doors and both R25 feeding mouths are permanently shut; R17's internal passage is open. It does not reopen or relocate any of them. To keep the source physical, this pass requires one explicit current walking adjacency beyond the mapped route: R27's outward threshold meets R35 Receiver Vault Approach's entry threshold. R35's two side-wall mouths remain unsealed. No new room, source or aperture is implied.

Those four bands are one allocation of R35's existing main group, not four new releases and not an extra copy of E10. The source preview and later R35 state show the main side-mouth population correspondingly spent in this expedition; reaching R35 does not restore it. R35's separate far-wall stage remains dormant unless its existing Caller completes the call. On the next expedition after a living return, the unchanged adjacency lets the still-open R35 mouths initialize a fresh finite allocation once. Immediate re-entry, loading and retreat do not.

The route still protects discovery. Clearing or separating the forward band earns the old R17 panel lull; clearing the next band earns the R20 counter lull; clearing the gallery pressure earns its far-wall mark. No timer or success-reactive wave ends those windows. The closed local apertures remain quiet throughout.

After a death, an unjoined R27→R35 boundary can move with the external neighbour and becomes historical; this rule does not silently keep R35 connected. A newly visible source-bearing neighbour may populate the familiar route only after its own source, apertures, walking path, finite allocation and warnings receive an authored mapping. If no such source is currently connected, R17, R20 and R25 stay quiet and the fresh climb begins at the next unsealed frontier. This explains the named death case without claiming every shifted layout is solved.

Strongest alternative and cost. Make the sealed familiar route permanently quiet and renew combat only at the first still-open source host beyond it. That is the clearest possible expression of permanent safety and requires no migration rule. Its cost is that a known route no longer supplies a fresh combat climb, the shortcut becomes mostly travel compression, and the player reaches the next major fight with less opportunity to make a new build develop. The migration pass preserves that climb but carries the opposite risk: stretching R35's group across several rooms may weaken R35's own setpiece and make source ownership hard to read. Its band allocation, spacing and warnings therefore remain reversible paper targets, not established fun or balance.

The creatures

Combat And Enemy Roster owns each creature's warning, action and recovery. In a crowd they play distinct parts. Pressers are the slow majority that fills the lane. Flankers are the fast packs on side routes. Callers wake the next stage. A Boltspitter demands a ranged line, a Clampcrawler occupies the control you are working, and a Veilbearer briefly hides the crowd behind it. Three special creatures — Bellback, Shutterback and Glass Siphon — change force, cover or your oxygen clock enough to deserve a featured entrance.

Everything attacks on sight, investigates recent noise and pursues what it saw, then searches locally and gives up. Nothing knows where you are without perceiving you, and nothing tracks you across the station.

A climax

The balance gallery is broad, and it is the right kind of room for a big fight. As you enter, a Bellback plants itself across a fixed rib, its chest filling for a pressure wave, while the two feeding mouths at the far end of the gallery are already crowded. The station's own machinery keeps time around you. A Breath Bank draws across one lane on a three-beat rhythm, and a balance chamber's two plates tilt toward whichever side carries more weight.

The stage pours from both mouths at once. The Bellback's wave shoves a dozen bodies onto one plate, the ribs swing, and the floor tips under you. A cautious player seals one mouth early, shelters at the rib and crosses on the Bank's quiet beat. A player with a crowd build steps into the neutral lane, lets the stage come to them — and releases.

The gallery remembers its first committed band from a valid local mouth or mapped outer source route and the first valid Bellback answer in either order. On the baseline path the astronaut waits for the cone to lock, steps behind the fixed rib and lets the wave release harmlessly into structure. That counts even though the brace was not interrupted. Defeating Bellback first also counts; a later valid band commitment completes the same once-per-expedition milestone without a replacement enemy. It is not victory music: later bands and most of the gallery still remain. Taking the offer changes how the current rig meets that density; refusing or deferring it leaves the baseline route intact.

In the quiet after, the chamber is still live. Freeing one rib takes two cutter releases, each a job that stays done once finished, and seating the pin then fixes that rib for good while the other still swings. On the far wall a mark matching the sample counter turns an old record into a lead.

How it could fail: three rhythms at once become unreadable, and the player dies to something they could not see coming.

Open questions

• Target overrides and aim assistance, including whether nearest-visible stays the default.
• Damage, health, warning timings and displacement.
• Exact crowd sizes, performance and effect density on screen.
• Renewal placement for the other station arrangements after permanent doors, joins and source seals change their routes; this page demonstrates only one route.
• How further pressure or replenishment works during an ongoing expedition, while preserving useful quiet.
• Whether the proposed half-band break, three-mark choice and player-timed journal selection produce a readable cadence; this requires later authorized validation.
• Major milestone events for placements other than the representative Balance Gallery.
• The particular temporary offers and their compatibility rules remain owned by Build Rules.
• Whether early sealing needs a reward beyond the proposed safety, oxygen and quiet trade.
• Whether the Jammed Pressure marked panel should become the proposed local shortcut or another equally small placement repair should carry that job.
• Field healing and lasting injuries are not yet designed.