Hold the Flood — Inventory and Charge

EQP101 · r1 · 2026-09-06 UTC · Equipment and Build Designer · Proposed transfer and rule revisions; submitted for PM review. Source: Design Document r14 / ec1b6c, §§3–6, 8, 10 and Appendix C; PMR003 / 72c692. Design Index · Expansion Brief · Glossary · Equipment submission and source register.

Authority and transfer state

This is the complete inventory/charge destination candidate, not an adopted replacement. Lead adopted Power and Attraction r2 / 69024c during drafting; that page now owns shared rules, including the six-cell start, most-room pickup and links. The cited r14 document remains the derivation and worked examples; r15 / 5f9fbb changes scope signposting and the hydraulic relay mirror, not equipment numbers. EQP101 changes below govern only this proposal's pages and examples.

Lead remains the shared-resource owner. Under EDT102 transfer protocol, Lead must approve the inventory transfer from both the document's detailed derivation and Power and Attraction §§1, 4–5, then replace competing detail with summaries/links. Editor can redirect definitions afterward. Lead has adopted Power and Attraction; Lead has not adopted this EQP101 transfer, and no read of it by another role is claimed.

Equipment's recommendation is to adopt E1–E7 together for the catalogue; E8 is an interface clarification requiring Combat/Lead agreement. Until ruled otherwise, the submission proceeds on these labelled assumptions. Existing design remains authoritative outside EQP101. Every number below is provisional design tuning; examples are written illustrations, not simulations or playtests.

Source baseline being transferred

Two source ambiguities must not become silent rules. §5's “Insulation is the only slot that breaks a chain” conflicts with its own nonconductive coil-wall example; E2 follows the example and general housing rule. §6's arc paragraph says another linked battery can receive motes, whereas §5 includes unlinked storage; E3 explicitly includes storage. These are proposed reconciliations addressed to Lead, not edits to Lead's authored text. Pickup handling for a five-unit mote spanning two batteries also needs a precise rule; E3 supplies it.

EQP101 working rules and reasons

E1 — Eight cells from the outset; no expanding capacity ladder

Recommend a fixed 2×4 rack. Coil occupies two orthogonally adjacent cells; every other module and every bundle occupies one. The cutter uses the free primary cradle. Each alternative primary uses that cradle and one rack cell for its brace, accounted for as part of that weapon, not another catalogue item. Only one primary may be fitted. Hand Pump occupies one cell and uses a separate bank; it commits five charge for its operation, as its catalogue entry specifies. No rotation bonuses, item rarities, passive adjacency bonuses or duplicate-module stacking are proposed. Allow multiple batteries; at most one of each other module.

Eight allows a signature powered combination alongside cargo or a countermeasure. At six the coil/arc/two-battery/insulation combination already consumes the entire rack; adding a weapon choice displaces part of the combination instead of creating another decision. At eight that combination leaves two cells, but adding a beacon and its battery consumes both: route control still costs all cargo. A credible six-cell alternative is tighter and makes the hauler's niche stronger. I prefer eight because it allows more combinations to be tried together; this is a design judgment, not evidence of better feel. Do not sell a later rack expansion that simply obsoletes the original frame.

E2 — Keep one physical risk, expose it before committing

Only orthogonal cell contact conducts in this proposal; diagonals do not. Each battery independently counts all wet bundles reachable through a chain starting at its terminals. If two batteries reach the same bundle, both leak: there is no charge transfer or multiplication. Use a continuous per-battery loss of connected-bundles/60 units per second, capped at the charge present; the display may round but must expose time to the next unusable full-charge action. Leakage never powers another item or hurts the player.

Insulation, every other closed housing, and empty cells all break salvage chains; only the Insulation module also protects the player in energized water. Surface dryness in a district does not dry carried salvage. No moisture countdown or drying minigame is added.

The shelter rack shows powered links, conducting paths, per-battery leakage and the resulting action readiness using lines, labels and counts, not colour alone. Preview a placement before committing. Allow saved arrangements made from gear already known, without changing shelter timing. The worthwhile choice is accepting a leaking extra bundle for the last stretch home versus leaving it; once a leak-free arrangement is found, repeating the same packing is not new content. Do not add more adjacency rules to hide that limitation.

E3 — Player-selected collection priority, independent of cell order

At a shelter, order batteries in a visible collection list. Fill the first eligible battery before the next, including unlinked storage. Treat a large mote as five successive units, split across batteries as needed; only the excess expires. A full, planted, or active-arc battery is ineligible. With no eligible rack battery, collection loses the charge. Planted batteries do not vacuum nearby motes. The list cannot be reordered in the field; picking an active item does not alter it.

This explicitly replaces most-room allocation. For example, coil bank 2/10, reserve 0/10, priority coil then reserve: eleven one-unit pickups produce 10/10 and 3/10. A pickup preview says “coil +8; reserve +3”; rack position does not secretly decide whether the coil can fire. Most-room is a credible automatic sharing rule, but it often leaves two almost-ready actions when the player intended one usable action. This recommendation also takes up the concrete alternative PMR003 suggested; no prior approval of it is inferred.

E4 — Links are plans; activation is a field decision

One-to-one links may cross any cells; no adjacency requirement or link-length bonus. Change links, primary, orientation, and collection priority only at a shelter. In the live world the player may choose a fitted active item and use it; that does not rewire anything. Battery-to-battery transfer is forbidden. A Siphon uses a temporary one-to-one feed into one chosen battery at shelter, as specified on its item page.

All powered devices have explicit on/off or trigger controls with state labels. A linked beacon is initially off; arming makes it a live lure even while carried. Coil discharge and arc burst require full batteries. Starting an arc reserves its battery until the burst finishes; no collection, relinking or fuel substitution during that burst. Early interruption discards the unused committed fuel. Battery charge does not recover with time. Hand Pump commits five for a drain rather than requiring a full bank. The cable reel connects environmental power only; it cannot recharge batteries.

E5 — Field acquisition permits choices without field sorting

At shelter, order vacant cells for pickups; a coil takes the first valid adjacent pair. Field pickup fills those spaces without moving other items or making a link. If no fit exists, the find remains visibly at its location. The player may inspect the item and decline. A new primary can be carried as an inert one-cell find but becomes usable only when fitted at shelter; its cell then represents its brace. Inactive alternatives confer no stats. No hidden reduction in cargo capacity during fitting.

The player may hold-interact to drop a selected cargo bundle or inactive find at their feet while the world runs. They may not shuffle occupied cells. Dropped cargo is recoverable during that expedition, gives no banked credit, and is lost when the expedition ends. Beacon retrieval is changed from automatic walk-over to deliberate interact; its two pieces require two free cells, otherwise the preview says which capacity is missing. Dropping cargo can make room, at the cost of leaving its value on the route. No item interaction grants shelter safety.

E6 — Charge stays expedition fuel

Keep no kill XP and once-per-organism yield. Coil-stunned organisms can be stunned again for control but yield nothing further. Do not add kill-count unlocks, repeating siphons or equipment that generates passive charge. Keep the source's mote sizes and short lifetime as provisional values; Combat must supply the exact partial-group yield and simultaneity grammar before integration. EQP101's numeric examples use whole groups of ten to avoid inventing that missing rule.

For accounting use dropped / collected / stored / spent / lost, with lost annotated as ground fade, overflow, leakage, interruption, or expedition-end discard. This clarifies the source's overloaded “expired”; it creates no new resource. A stored unit can be spent or lost only once. No charge crosses a district boundary with the player, consistent with the now-adopted player-export clarification in 69024c §4, and independent of the still-unresolved campaign power-source decision discussed in REV104 / 80a882.

E7 — Advance preparation, not compulsory stat replacement

Use Build Paths — acquisition contract for recipes, first finds, workshop choices, and failure recovery. All expedition equipment resets; discoveries expand future selectable tools rather than an equipment stash or escalating rarity. Basic weapon and an empty battery remain freely reissued. A starting tool never supplies free charge. No catalogue item is required to understand an essential clue or perform its free experiment.

E8 — Combat and world boundaries

These item pages request effects; Combat owns exact reach, line of sight, hit ordering, stun immunity/recovery, displacement and damage. Proposed alternative weapons only displace explicitly movable enemies; none teleports crowds, changes pursuit precedence, resets shedding, or overrides the nearest-reachable-beacon rule. Until Combat responds, build scenarios use the existing basic organism and describe new enemy roles only as requested coverage, not authored enemy facts.

Coil and cable carry power, never signal. Ordinary lamps never become lures. Persistent evidence, signal cables and relay mechanisms cannot be destroyed by weapons. World's free panel/valve paths remain alternatives to equipment-assisted exploration; cable sockets must not make a recipe into a mystery key.

Written boundary examples

Transfer request to Lead and Editor

Source scope: current shared contract 69024c §§1, 4–5, with ec1b6c §§5–6 (rack, links, charge and item rules), §3 handling/health interfaces, §10 persistence, plus item details in §8. Proposed destinations: this page for inventory/charge; Coil, Arc, Utility Modules, Cutter and Alternative Tools for item behavior; Build Paths for composition/acquisition.

Requested adoption evidence: Lead records the chosen E1–E8 dispositions and source revision, makes the integration edit replacing detailed duplicates with links, and identifies these destinations as rule owners; Editor then changes navigation/glossary pointers. If a proposal is rejected, retain its rationale in history and revise these pages to the approved rule before calling transfer complete. EQP101 has prepared the transfer; it has not performed or claimed that author approval.