Hold The Horde — Home Projects

Status: working systems contract for the ordinary-return example in Coming Home. It tracks one relay, two projects and their information/material results. It is not a currency, project queue, upkeep system or colony economy. Benefits and emotional effect remain unvalidated.

Arrival and ownership

The scarce object is one ordinary relay-family part carried from the station. Before a live return it occupies capacity and would remain in the ordinary death cache. Crossing into the ship banks it; it then appears in ship storage unless it remains installed in the astronaut's rig. Dorn and Yeva can show their incomplete projects, but neither silently takes or reserves it.

The player may seat or remove the relay at either project, carry it on departure, or postpone with it stored. Seating is commitment only while installed: this is a reusable equipment family under Build Rules, so removal returns the same part and stops the powered device. No timer, upkeep, degradation or relationship penalty advances while either project waits.

The relay never powers two devices or stays aboard and in the carried rig simultaneously.

Dorn's listening rig and information flow

Dorn has built the coupling, line and headset. The relay routes a concrete input from a hull sensor line: pressure movement at a particular point along the section he sealed. The player explicitly seats the relay and Dorn listens. This can establish that the line carried movement and roughly where; it cannot identify the cause, establish that the entire seal held or say the section is safe to open.

The relay may be removed immediately afterward. The rig stops receiving, but Dorn retains what he heard. That result does not become common colony or player journal knowledge automatically: Dorn must tell the astronaut, and someone must tell Yeva if the player wants her to know. On departure the account can make that particular point worth inspecting while leaving route, risk and interpretation open.

Yeva and Dorn's packing bench

Yeva installed the compressor head and worked out the ship-power routing. Dorn services the pressure hardware and retained his marked maintenance card on the housing. The relay supplies the required power route only while seated.

Before power, ship-produced oxygen receives the ordinary proposed fill. While powered, the bench prepares canisters with more usable charge, the existing proposed Dorn contribution from Rescue and Home. The ship still produces unlimited oxygen and earlier canisters were not secretly degraded. Removing the relay stops future dense preparation. A canister already prepared retains its own charge; it is an embodied result, not continuing operation of a dark bench.

On the following departure, dense canisters can support greater reach for the same carried pattern or similar planned reach with more room for equipment or salvage. No exact capacity, charge or preparation duration is asserted.

The valid sequence—and the missing tradeoff

The current rules permit a full sequence aboard:

1. Seat the relay in Dorn's rig and receive his limited account.
2. Remove it and power the packing bench.
3. Prepare the intended departure's canisters.
4. Remove the relay and carry it in the astronaut's rig.

The final manifest then contains the one relay, the prepared canisters and Dorn's retained knowledge. Nothing is duplicated: the projects are dark, while their produced results persist.

This sequence is honest, but it means the three uses in Coming Home do not presently compete. Ship oxygen is unlimited, no meaningful shipboard preparation wait exists, and prepared canisters retain their charge. Leaving the relay in the bench therefore provides no additional established benefit for that departure while withholding it from the rig. Skipping either free shipboard step or postponing may express the player's wishes about participation and sharing, but is not a material tradeoff under these rules.

The article will not repair that by inventing a packing delay, erasing prepared charge, duplicating the relay or allowing the bench to run after removal. A real persistent choice needs a different prerequisite.

Coherent alternative commitment

The smallest alternative is the pressure-regulator core from the independent proposals: ordinary salvage with a thin diaphragm brazed into a custom pressure housing. Cutting it free destroys the seal, so installation in the packing bench is physically irreversible. A recoverable relay could still be loaned to Dorn's information rig, but it would be a separate object; the scene would no longer compare two uses of one part.

With one core, the real choice is install the permanent bench improvement, retain the core for another pressure project, or postpone. That supports an honest commitment but changes Coming Home's chosen material and personal-versus-shared comparison. A continuously operating project that genuinely matters during the expedition could instead justify leaving a relay installed, but no such benefit exists in the submitted scene.

Necessary authored states

Room states are limited to both devices incomplete/dark, listening rig powered, bench powered, and both dark after reclamation; prepared canisters and shared accounts are separate results. Dialogue needs inspect/ask, seat at each device, share or withhold Dorn's account, remove, postpone, and return after following the lead. Yeva and Dorn continue authored ship activity in all states rather than freezing at request markers.

The recoverable sequence has the strongest support from current equipment rules and lets one object connect two people's work. Its accepted cost is that the intended scarce choice disappears. The one-use core restores commitment at the cost of changing the scene and authoring a new material property. Reopen between them only by choosing which experience matters here; prose cannot establish attachment, pacing or production cost.