Hold The Horde — Horde Encounters

This page shows two ordinary encounters in one area and argues which kind should be common. Rules for controls, perception, reinforcement and interruption belong to Combat Rules; this page applies them to the player experience. Build Comparison explains the two loadouts used below, and Hordes and Builds shows the current detailed build examples.

The area

A segment of the long service route: a junction opening onto a straight run of working light, and at its far end a pressure door jammed on its manual bolts. The run is in vacuum. Both encounters below happen here, in one trip.

Encounter one — the run

Objective. Get to the door at the far end.

What the player sees before committing. From the junction mouth the whole run is visible and lit. The crowd's spread is readable: thick across the middle, thinner along the left wall. And halfway down there is an alcove that ordinary enemies path around — none enters it, and none is standing in it.

All of that is observable from the mouth without fighting anything. The player has no grounds to conclude the alcove is safe for them — it is an anomaly worth recording and testing, not a proven refuge.

Decisions. Push the middle, where the crowd is densest and a cascade has most to work with. Move along the thin wall, trading damage for exposure and timing. Or back out and take a branch route, which costs oxygen and time and is a legitimate answer, not a failure. With ordinary fire mostly automatic and special abilities triggered by hand, these are positioning and timing choices: the run is crossed by deciding where to be and when to spend a special, not by landing individual shots.

With the Relay Cascade Array. Density is the Array's best case: moving into the packed middle puts its automatic output where the chain has most to branch through, and the run empties. That is simply a win: the run's crowd stays defeated in the current station arrangement, and the player has bought the direct route and the oxygen they would have spent going around. No replacement wave arrives and no compensating elite appears. A build that trivialises an ordinary crowd is the point of having built it.

What it does not buy is a quiet door. The run up to the door vestibule is this encounter's boundary; clearing it does not defeat the caller beyond, or consume groups in connected spaces. Nor does "clear" mean sealed: something living outside can later walk in along a real route, cued by sight, sound or door movement along that connected route. It does not spawn as a penalty for clearing the crowd.

With the Cargo-Cycler Rig. The Cycler does not clear the run and does not need to. A shove displaces the middle group off the left wall — displacement, not a wall, since nothing here builds a lasting barrier — and a fragment burst opens a lane long enough to cross. The run stays occupied behind the player, which matters on the way back.

The two rigs spend differently, and neither is simply cheaper. The Array's modules occupy capacity while carried but are not consumed per use. Keeping or changing that loadout commits space; equipment can still be acquired, removed or left during an expedition under the build rules. The Cycler keeps capacity flexible but spends chosen salvage each time, so its lane costs colony-bound material during the trip. Which is dearer depends on what is scarce that expedition.

Why fight rather than pass. The intended payoff is seeing an assembled rig clear the crowd and win direct access. The alcove is also visible to someone who slips past; noticing it does not require a fight. Enemy behaviour is information in its own right, not a reward for combat, and manipulating it is not the experiment.

Temporary growth. Under the stage-only growth described in Combat Rules, clearing an announced release's committed attackers or sealing their access earns one upgrade choice. Preventing the release before commitment buys safety and access without an upgrade; escape leaves it unresolved. All temporary upgrades end on any return aboard.

Withdrawal. The player can attempt to reach the junction past occupants and pursuers. Enemies continue pursuing while they perceive the astronaut, then search and settle after losing the cue. Withdrawal spends time and oxygen and may defer the objective.

On return. A living return preserves the arrangement and defeated creatures; surviving creatures can still move in along visible routes. A resolved stage stays spent. Death shifts unconnected areas and resets transient crowds, while selected permanent changes and recorded evidence remain.

Encounter two — the jammed door

Objective. Cut the door's jammed bolts and hand-cycle it open with the suit's baseline cutter — the established act on this route.

What the player sees before committing. The door's state and its remaining bolts are readable at a glance, as are the two approaches to the panel and which one has cover. So is the reason this will be harder than it looks: cutting and cycling are loud, and the run's occupants investigate loud things.

The pressure is caused, not scheduled. Nothing escalates because the player is doing something interesting. The door grinds, and grinding is a physical event ordinary enemies come to look at. This example also holds one caller — an ordinary enemy that, allowed to finish its warning, brings a group from the adjacent space. Before committing to the first bolt the player can see or hear it, recognise its warning behaviour, and see the connected entrance it would summon from. Dealing with it first is a real priority decision with a readable consequence. The ordinary-fire default takes the nearest visible valid target, so reaching the caller with it means positioning until nothing else qualifies first — which may mean clearing what stands between. The alternative is spending a manual special to stop the warning in time. That is the choice: rearrange yourself, or spend something. The run in encounter one has no additional Caller or alarm release.

Decisions, and what they cost. Resolve the caller/source, present enemies and travelling groups before working, committing the relevant equipment or inputs up front. A separately cued later arrival can still change the situation. Work in bursts between arrivals, using a Cycler shove to displace what arrives and buy stages. Or take what has been done and leave.

The middle option has a price that lasts: taking hits spends condition, with no passive field recovery. It narrows the margin before a damage death for the rest of that expedition, including the walk home. So working under fire is not free just because damage cannot cancel a stage — it borrows against every later margin on the trip.

Interruption. The work has named visible stages — each bolt, then each cycle of the door. Leaving before the current stage completes loses that stage and the time and oxygen already spent on it. Completed stages are checkpoints and do not roll back. Damage alone does not cancel the work; an enemy stops it only by a readable physical result, such as forcing the astronaut off the control or occupying it. So withdrawal has a real opportunity cost without permanent loss: the trip that ends here bought fewer stages than it hoped, and the bolts already cut stay cut.

Backing out is a route decision, not a guarantee. The way to the junction can be held by something, and choosing to leave is not the same as being able to.

With the Array. Resolving the door area's caller/source, present enemies and travelling groups buys quiet working time.

With the Cycler. A shove can temporarily displace the approach's occupants, spending salvage to buy a work window.

Room to think. The journal pauses enemies, oxygen and action progress, so reading stored records and the already-visible frozen view is free. Capturing is not: framing and committing a record of the painted mark on this door frame happens while the game runs, and physically studying it spends oxygen while the run's occupants keep moving. Looking raises no attention by itself, but it is not outside time. Compatible links between accessible mounted rig parts can also be changed in the paused journal under Build Rules; physically fitting or removing a part still takes running time.

On return. Cut bolts and completed cycles persist across expeditions. What can still block progress is a genuine new change — a new visible obstruction or an engaged powered brake. That prevents the next stage without rolling back a completed one, and must be a change the player can read.

Comparison

Which should be common

The route crowd should be the ordinary case; the contested mechanism should be occasional.

Contested actions can tie combat closely to the immediate objective. Making that pressure common may also produce a repetitive "activate, defend, inspect" pattern. The lower frequency follows from that risk.

Route crowds carry the ordinary rhythm better because they ask a question with several legitimate answers — fight, slip past, go round — none of which is a failure state.

How the preference is applied. The intended frequency is expressed through placement: how many of the actions an area asks for while the game runs are loud ones like bolt-cutting rather than quiet ones; whether a mechanism sits in a connected area holding population or off a dead run where grinding reaches nobody; whether an area has a caller or alarm source at all; and how entrances connect, since a cued approach from a known direction reads differently from one the player cannot anticipate. Choosing this rhythm means placing those causes deliberately.

What the branch offers. Here the branch that avoids the run loops behind the alcove and reaches it from the far side, so a player who declines the crossing meets the same anomaly from an angle the run never shows.

Strongest alternative. Make contested actions the default. Its strongest case is a more consistent link between combat and the immediate objective. It remains credible if that rhythm proves desirable and the repetition risk is smaller than expected.

Accepted costs. Two encounter kinds at different frequencies risk reading as two disconnected modes, and a player may meet contested work rarely enough not to get good at it. The alcove-style oddity depends on placement, so it is not free. And a powerful build gets no compensating penalty because oxygen and capacity already constrain the player — a bet that those limits are sufficient.

Open questions

• Why the alcove is avoided, and whether such anomalies stay interesting once explained.
• Whether route crowds without additional escalation remain tense.
• Whether detours generally pay off in discovery: the branch above is one worked example, and it depends on placement doing that work.
• The sources, stage boundaries and placement for these sketches; no campaign placement or balance values are set.
• No frequency figures for route crowds versus contested mechanisms are set.
• Temporary growth: stage-only is the current proposal; regular growth from defeated enemies with larger milestone transformations remains the unselected alternative.
• Field healing is not specified here; Combat Rules owns condition and its recovery, on which the door decision above depends.
• Target overrides, optional aim assistance and equipment exceptions remain open within the current nearest-visible default; Combat Rules owns that contract.
• Whether oxygen and capacity limits are sufficient to balance a powerful build without a compensating penalty.
• Combat And Enemy Roster owns the creature proposals.
• These rules are untested; numbers are proposals.