Hold the Flood — Coil

EQP102 / Coil r3 · 2026-09-07 UTC · Equipment and Build Designer · Current shared/Combat effect definitions mirrored for the Tram comparison; catalogue remains in review. Source: Design Document r14 / ec1b6c, §§4–6 and 8; World r20 / 7699de, W1 and price of the panel. Design Index · Expansion Brief · Glossary.

C1 — Full catalogue specification

Player action and trigger. Select Coil and discharge while the player stands in the connected water to be energized. Require a full linked battery; a dry target or insufficient charge refuses the action without spending. The player positions and times the discharge; there is no automatic firing whenever a battery fills.

Effect and target. Spend all ten units from the full linked bank. Inject current into the connected water for two seconds, following shared contract 8644ea §§2/4. Combat 6129ea §0.2 now mirrors the eight-second stun and adopts sampling conductive bodies present in the wet footprint at firing. Later arrivals receive no stun from lingering ordinary power. A fresh paid pulse resets recovery to eight seconds, never adds duration or restores yield. Connected devices work while a live source reaches them; fixed-powered water remains hot after the Coil's contribution expires. No enemy damage and no signal. Complete-ten yield marks the sampled fresh cohort spent; Heavy counts as ten under Combat §6. The earlier eight-second power proposal and pending-Combat wording are withdrawn in history, not alternative live rules. The Equipment effect disposition and Inventory carry accounting and pulse boundaries.

Space and resources. Two adjacent rack cells, rotated at shelter; a separate battery costs one more. Insulation adds a fourth if the player wants protection from the water they energize. A reserve bank adds a fifth but does not link in parallel; shelter rewiring remains necessary.

Visible information. Full-bank readiness; connected water and observed devices highlighted before firing; separate power remaining and stun recovery cues, because two seconds and eight seconds are different states. The power cue remains active while any fixed source still supplies the channel. Steady powered beacons never show a dispatch pulse. Separate remaining-yield markings from non-conductive Crust outlines; no reliance on tint alone or claim of verified readability.

Restrictions and price. No dry-ground mass stun, no signal generation, no intake change, no repeated charge from a spent crowd. Uninsulated users suffer the existing water hazard. A valve or cable may extend power to an unwanted beacon; do not secretly restrict it to the selected door. Partial charge never produces a weaker hidden discharge. Charged water can be abandoned, but money spent is not refunded.

Combinations and reasons to retain it. Coil + Insulation makes gathering inside a hot channel possible; second Battery saves more of a fresh harvest; Arc spends a separate bank during or after the control window; it cannot fit its full ten-second burst inside an eight-second stun. Cable Reel can extend its temporary power to a reachable terminal. The coil remains the catalogue's independent temporary power source and wet mass-control action; no later item upgrades those jobs away.

Acquisition. First visible machinery cache reachable with the free panel/valve route. Inspect to learn the recipe, pick up into a legal two-cell space, fit/link at shelter. Later machinery caches and workshop choice use the acquisition contract. It starts uncharged; early trigger opportunities must include reachable charge, not assume one Siphon fills an empty battery.

One route and one failure

Illustration: with panel on Causeway and its crowd holding at nearer B1, shut the junction valve and discharge in the isolated junction pool. The indicator and gate receive two seconds of power; B1’s crowd stays. A Coil-assisted crossing is valid only if the named operating position and doorway traversal actually fit that window. Do not assume a long run through successive gates fits it. The free alternative is opening the valve and powering the yard, accepting its crowd/water cost. Campaign must state a short crossing or a mechanical action that retains its progress; Equipment does not add an unapproved latch to rescue the example.

Counterplay using existing enemies: a crowd spreads across dry ground or has already shed. The coil can neither harvest that dry crowd nor fund a second wet stun from spent organisms. Use the cutter to thin a safe edge, attract a fresh crowd into water, or leave. “Harvest forty and refill both banks” elsewhere is conditional on fresh targets and actually reaching the motes, never a guaranteed result.

Integration delta

Retain two-cell size, full-bank spend, water propagation, shelter links and once-only yield. R1 alternative retained in history: eight seconds of power aligned with stun, at Coil a7d2d5. Adopt Lead’s two/eight split because it preserves a possible uninsulated collection choice after an isolated pulse while making Insulation valuable for sustained fixed power or Spark exposure. The shorter interval weakens machinery access and requires revised district examples; it is not an established balance improvement. Build Paths EQP102 applies the current rules to a wet-yard departure, explicitly excluding a Heavy on the dry rail. Collector 75c09e's five-second winch still needs Campaign's correction; Equipment does not extend Coil duration to rescue it.