Fighting the Horde

Proposed combat rules. Crowd sizes, timings and effects are hypotheses to test later. Owner decisions are marked where they appear.

What a fight is

Crossing this station means crossing crowds. Ordinary weapons fire automatically — an owner decision — and the proposed default is that 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 (also an owner decision).

A rig may carry more than one ordinary weapon output. What limits it is power, heat, rig space and carrying capacity, not a fixed rule of one gun; 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 — an owner decision. Changing links between rig parts inside that pause is the current proposal in Build Rules. 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.

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 — and your rig offers you a temporary upgrade for the rest of this trip.

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, if it works: 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.

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.
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.
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.
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. Crowds do not materialize without a physical approach, and no extra wave arrives because your build was efficient. A warned route can still carry enemies around or behind you.

Each source releases its crowd 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, as a hypothesis. 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, not free capacity; 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. A completed source seal after release commitment can earn its upgrade while creatures already inside remain dangerous. The room shows whether each source is sealed, spent or still able to release another announced stage. Clearing all committed attackers or sealing their access before the peak resolves that committed stage immediately. Preventing a release before it commits gives safety and access without a combat-upgrade offer; neither kind of closure deletes creatures already inside. Or you can simply get out past a bulkhead or outrun the woken area.

Quiet does not last forever. An occupied area next door can still send bodies through a visible route, with sound and door movement to warn you. But a stage you resolved does not come back by itself.

What earns a temporary upgrade

Provisional stage-only proposal. Once a release commits, resolving it earns one temporary upgrade choice, the same whether you clear all its committed attackers or seal their physical access. Resolving early counts immediately. Closing access before commitment prevents the release and gives no combat-upgrade offer: the benefit is safety and access, with less temporary combat growth. Completed work keeps its owning persistence rule. The owner is still choosing this rhythm versus regular growth from defeated enemies with larger milestone transformations.

Running away earns nothing. Leaving the woken area saves your life, and you still bring home everything you carry and everything you learned, but there is no consolation upgrade. Stepping back in resumes the same unresolved stage, so there is nothing to farm, and reopening a seal you closed does not create a new one.

Each stage pays once for the current arrangement of the station. It stays spent across a living return, and ground you already cleared earns nothing when you cross it again. Offers you earned but did not choose expire when you get home, along with the rest of your temporary power. A large machine you deliberately wake releases its own stage and may offer a transformation rather than an ordinary choice. Dying pays nothing. What the upgrades are belongs to Build Rules.

Rhythm, as an illustration. A sustained outing might bring three to five meaningful choices: a foundation first, then a branch, then refinements or changes, with a larger optional stage able to transform the build. A short trip can earn one. That rhythm needs routes that actually offer stages between major encounters. The proposed Arrangement A route supplies E06 before R25 while E06 is unresolved; after it is spent, the next return can leave that approach without another ordinary award stage. How it could fail: stages that come too often turn choosing into a chore; too rarely, and the build barely grows between climaxes.

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 — an owner decision. Each expedition starts a fresh climb toward spectacular power.
Everything physical you carry comes home, even after death — an owner decision. Oxygen breathed and material consumed stay spent. Ordinary condition is restored for the next trip; field healing and lasting injuries are not yet designed.
Walking home alive leaves the station as it was. Places you cleared stay cleared, and places still occupied stay dangerous.
Dying shifts the station — an owner decision. Unconnected areas gain new neighbours, transient crowds reset, and a new set of crowds comes with the new arrangement. That is never a reaction to how well your build did, and death carries no extra penalty beyond losing your position and any unfinished work.

Where the fresh climb happens. After a living return you walk back out through ground you cleared, at your starting power, and the climb begins again at the first stage you have not yet resolved. In proposed Arrangement A, after a first living return that leaves R11 cleared, the route R11→R17→R20→R25 crosses E06 before the R25 setpiece. If the astronaut resolves E06 and returns home again, that second living return removes temporary power while E06 stays spent. The same route then reaches R25 through cleared ground with no ordinary award stage between. Every major encounter therefore keeps an approach that works without temporary upgrades. This route provides an initial growth opportunity, but does not guarantee a fresh one after every return; the distance to another unresolved frontier remains a design cost. Occupied areas beside a cleared route can still drift into it visibly; that is ordinary movement, not a respawn. What the upgrades do is described in Hordes and Builds and Build Rules.

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.

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.

Still open

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; how surviving creatures hold on a living return; whether actual routes offer stages between major encounters; and what the upgrades do. Nothing here is tested.