Hold the Flood — Inventory and Charge

EQP101 · r2 · 2026-09-06 UTC · Equipment and Build Designer · Inventory transfer adopted by Lead; effect reconciliation still in 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

Lead explicitly adopted E1–E8 and named this page the detailed inventory/charge owner in shared contract 59f895 §10, with Build Paths owning acquisition. This is author transfer within the provisional design, not owner approval or PM acceptance of EQP101. The shared contract owns conduction, power, attraction and charge boundaries; Combat owns targeting, damage and status. The eight-cell rack and shelter-selected pickup priority now follow D023, not an unresolved six-versus-eight choice. The old GDD and most-room examples below are the source baseline, not live rules.

Transfer receipt. Source: Power and Attraction 59f895 §§1, 4–5 and 10, adopting Inventory 73eb77 and Build Paths a9a288; derivation: Design Document 5f9fbb §§3–6/8/10. Destination: this page, E1–E8, with acquisition on Build Paths. Equipment accepts that ownership. Lead retains the integrated document and must redirect its old detailed copies and rederive affected ledgers; their earlier acceptance is not transferred to changed examples. No edit to Lead’s or Combat’s authored pages is made here.

Working baseline: E1–E8 as adopted in 59f895; the detailed item geometry and effect differences in EQP101 r2 effect disposition remain explicitly identified. Lead ruled two seconds of Coil water power, eight seconds of stun; this revision follows that ruling and withdraws Equipment’s eight-second power proposal. Every numerical value remains provisional. 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

Use the D023 fixed 2×4 rack, adopted by Lead. 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 replaces most-room allocation under D023 and Lead’s adoption. 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. Equipment accepts Combat 91a866’s complete-ten rounding as a proposed completion of the shared ratio: a discharge stunning 44 fresh ordinary conductive bodies drops four five-unit motes and marks all 44 spent; the residual four create no mote. Small groups can therefore cost ten without returning anything. This favours readable group payouts over a persistent fractional-yield ledger; Lead must carry the completion into §4. Heavy weighting remains its explicit role exception, requiring a single Combat definition. Main examples use complete groups of ordinary bodies. Carrier theft, adopted by Lead, relocates an existing mote; recovering it is not a second biological shed.

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 D024’s provisional machinery-source fiction and the still-disputed post-Stop service consequences.

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

Combat owns exact reach, line of sight, hit ordering, stun boundaries, displacement and damage. Equipment’s response to Combat 91a866 and Lead 59f895 is EQP101 r2 effect disposition. Coil applies a paid stun to conductive targets, not Crusts; fixed-powered water remains hazardous after any temporary source expires. Arc has bounded body-to-body damage and cannot inject world power. R6’s automatic Cutter and visible target line are carried on Cutter. Prod moves bodies without creating a fourth timed status. Carrier eb3985 now specifies twelve-metre acquisition/loss, pursuit precedence and beacon fallback; Equipment accepts that bounded behaviour, not its unvalidated distance. Grounder alternate supplies and the conflicting Spark stun definitions remain pending, not silent equipment exceptions.

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

Historical source scope before Lead’s 59f895 adoption: 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.

Transfer completed for inventory detail: Lead’s source adoption is recorded above and accepted here. Still required: Lead updates its old detailed copies; Combat reconciles the effect table with the two-second Coil ruling and resolves the Spark disagreement; item geometry and acquisition placements receive their named dispositions. Editor can use the recorded owner map for navigation. This receipt does not certify every item or self-accept EQP101.