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 at the nearest visible valid target — an owner decision — 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. The wards are still spilling, but more slowly than you are killing, and on your way past you throw the ward door's lock and the flow stops. Silence. For breaking the crest and sealing its source, 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.

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. Your build kills faster than the routes can fill, you close a bulkhead or a source, or you outrun the woken area. The music, the flow and the room's silhouette all release together. The lull that follows 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. There is no secret timer, nothing appears behind you, and no extra wave arrives because your build was efficient.

A source keeps feeding while its route is open and disturbed. It stops when you seal its route, leave its attention range, exhaust the surge it holds, or kill faster than it can feed. Finite sources are fine. What the design avoids is an encounter that is over after five enemies.

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 source. Loud work, alarms and a Caller that finishes its call can each wake an adjacent area, and its route is always shown before the crowd arrives. Cutting an alarm, stopping a Caller or sealing the answering route prevents that wake; bodies already on their way keep coming.

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

Breaking a crest earns a lull: time to investigate, salvage and choose a route. A broken crest shows whether its source is sealed, exhausted or still able to feed. You can also earn quiet early by sealing a source before its crowd fully arrives, or simply get out by crossing a bulkhead or outrunning 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 place you actually cleared does not refill by itself.

What earns a temporary upgrade

Proposal. A temporary upgrade is earned by resolving a crest — winning the room or shutting it. You resolve a crest by breaking it, when the source runs dry or you out-kill it and the room visibly releases, or by sealing it, when you close its door, hatch or lock as a finished act. Running away does not count. Leaving the woken area saves your life but earns nothing, and stepping back in resumes the same unresolved crest rather than starting a new one, so there is nothing to farm.

Each source area pays out once per trip. A crest is the peak a room announces — its feeding mouths open fully, several movement patterns overlap, warning lights and music shift — not a straggler or a lone creature, so a small teaching room awards nothing. A large machine you deliberately wake is its own source and may offer a rarer choice. What the upgrades are, and how many you choose between, belongs to Build Rules.

Rhythm. An ordinary trip toward one objective crosses roughly three to five sources beyond ground you have already cleared: a small side source or two early, a larger hall or two, then the objective's own crest. A player who fights or seals their way through gets a choice every few minutes of travel, not only at the climax. Sealing gives a weaker player a way to earn power without winning every fight, at the cost of the bigger payoff a full break brings. How it could fail: crests 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 occupied source beyond it: the frontier. Cleared ground should be quick to cross, so that a reset upgrade does not mean a long flat walk before anything happens. Occupied areas beside a cleared route can still drift into it visibly. That is ordinary movement, not a respawn. Sources you already broke or sealed stay resolved on a living return, so they cannot pay out again; the next choices come from the frontier. 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 source. 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 gallery's far end are already crowded. Around you the station's own machinery keeps time: a Breath Bank draws across one lane on a three-beat rhythm, and a balance chamber tilts toward whichever side carries more weight.

The crest comes from both mouths at once. The Bellback's wave shoves bodies into the chamber, and the floor tips. 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 and lets both mouths empty into it — and then releases. In the break, one pin through the rib locks the chamber permanently, and on the far wall a mark that matches the sample counter turns an old record into a lead.

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

Still open

Target overrides and aim assistance; damage, health, warning timings and displacement; exact crowd sizes, performance and effect density on screen; how surviving creatures hold on a living return; the exact spacing of crests along an objective route and what the upgrades do; and whether the frontier stays close enough after a reset for the fresh climb to feel quick. Nothing here is tested.