Hold The Horde — Opening Mechanism Detail

Status. Representative M4 design sample for the selected service-board opening, not owner-approved timing, balance, final geometry, implementation or evidence of usability. It details only the existing R02 Cargo Turn/R03 Collar Control window: the fixed board, rack, patient-bay shutter, one Fork Relay, two fasteners and one isolation bridge. It adds no room, encounter, portable part, mechanism identity, enemy, route, controller, resource or story fact. Quantities and occurrence-level control details introduced below remain proposals. All five owner questions remain unanswered.

The player-facing sequence

The astronaut leaves the ship through unchanged R01 Dock Mouth and enters R02 Cargo Turn. From the entry they can already distinguish two hostile lanes, the waist-high rack, the glass-front board, its two output lamps and the fixed glazed throat into R03. The board says that one local feed can hold either the bridge rack or the patient-bay shutter. A loose Fork in the maintenance cradle has one input and two ordered outputs matching the rig grammar. The player can therefore form the useful hypothesis before committing: this exact part may let one board command reach both holds.

At the exposed R02 work position the player chooses. Seating Fork keeps the rack arms clear and the patient-bay shutter closed together, but the part is now installed at R02 rather than carried. Leaving it in cargo preserves the opening rig and guarantees it belongs to the carried set at death, but the selector must remain on rack hold and the side lane stays open. A third legal choice moves Manual Trigger into inactive cargo and fits Fork into the four-space rig: Sensor → Fork → Projector + Barrier. Ordinary fire remains one reserved Projector launch; Barrier becomes sensor-timed and the player gives up manual Barrier timing. The station board still has no Fork, so its rack/shutter trade remains.

The astronaut crosses the permanent R02⇄R03 throat. At R03, retaining arms and two numbered fasteners are visible through the rack cover. Each fastener is a separate completed checkpoint. The second is labelled as the final noisy fastener: committing it starts the finite hold and may let the already-present Caller complete its one call. Nothing spawns. If rack hold is lost before the bridge is pulled clear, the arms relock safely around the current completed state. When the pickup commits, the same 2 C bridge leaves R03 and enters the astronaut's carried set.

The player may retreat after either fastener, return alive with the bridge, or cross back to the R02 board and reclaim Fork if capacity permits. A death seals the exact lethal-boundary membership: carried rig, inactive cargo, canisters, loot and a carried bridge return once; an installed Fork stays at R02; a bridge still in the rack stays at R03; spent oxygen stays spent. R02 and R03 shift only as one compact unit, while the old R01→R02 approach becomes historical. The record can still say where Fork and completed fasteners are. It cannot reveal the compact pair's new external route.

Physical and control contract

Place and access

• R01 Dock Mouth is the fixed ship threshold and withdrawal route. In this opening arrangement its outer threshold reaches R02. The patient-bay shutter never closes R02→R01.
• R02 Cargo Turn owns the local board, Fork cradle, selector, Fork seat and patient-bay shutter view. Its bent aisle exposes the board work position to both cued lanes. Board operation, Fork installation/reclamation and rig editing require the astronaut to be physically at their respective accessible controls.
• R03 Collar Control owns the rack, both fasteners and bridge pickup. Its glass shows the rack and shutter result before the next stage. Glass grants sight, not remote operation.
• R02 and R03 are one rigid compact assembly. Their walkable throat and hard control conduit never separate, stretch or swap ends. External unbound neighbours may change after death, but the board never sends a signal through an independently shifting room.

Proposed local selector detail

The board has one maintained two-detent lever. The placeholder detents are RACK HOLD and BAY SHUTTER. This is an occurrence-level proposal that makes “the selector must hold the rack continuously” implementable without adding a second player or off-room control: once a detent commits, the lever remains there and the board maintains that one receiver until the player locally changes it, Fork changes the routing, or current is lost. It is not a timed hand-hold.

With no Fork seated, RACK HOLD commands only the retaining arms and leaves the patient-bay shutter open; BAY SHUTTER commands only the shutter and leaves an uncollected bridge safely relocked. Switching away from rack hold never restores a removed fastener. After the bridge pickup commits, the rack no longer needs hold, so BAY SHUTTER is the useful single-output state.

The board supplies the signal source and actuator energy. Fork supplies neither. Completing Fork installation connects the board's bare local control trigger to ordered output 1 RACK HOLD and output 2 BAY SHUTTER. Both accepting fixed receivers then maintain their own powered hold while board current is present. Because this is a bare trigger, no U is divided or created. An invalid orientation, wrong socket or inaccessible seat refuses before commitment and leaves Fork in its prior one location.

The selector detent and installed Fork location are durable local states; live board power and current actuator motion are current states. Within this sample the board feed is available. If a later permitted arrangement makes the feed unavailable, work refuses visibly, rack arms rest relocked and the shutter rests open. Whether restored power automatically reapplies the last command or requires a local reactivation is deliberately not decided here and must be authored before that power-loss variant is admitted.

Fasteners, bridge and interruption

There are exactly two opening fasteners, numbered 1 and 2 at R03. Each uses the worn cutter and one staged world-time action. Explicit cancel, displacement beyond reach or a creature occupying the work face loses only the unfinished stage; damage by itself does not. Leaving the work face also interrupts it. On completion, the fastener visibly leaves its seat and that checkpoint persists. Fastener 2 is the final/noisy checkpoint and begins the authored E01 hold. A journal visit freezes the stage and the hold without advancing either.

The bridge pickup is a separate world-time action after both fasteners are committed and rack arms are clear. Capacity is checked before pickup. Failure of those preconditions names the reason and moves nothing. Once pickup commits, the exact bridge becomes 2 C carried property; the source rack becomes empty and never manufactures another bridge. A bridge whose pickup is interrupted remains at R03. A completed pickup is not undone by loss of rack power.

P01 Triage Relay, its cuttable alarm lead and manual dog remain separate mechanism states. Board Fork does not power P01, erase its alarm or close the control-room grille. The board only determines the patient-bay shutter and rack holds. The finite opening population remains two separated Pressers, one Caller and one visible adjacent pair eligible to move exactly once on a completed call.

Personal rig choices

The baseline four active parts occupy 4 C / 4 A: Threat Sensor → Pulse Projector and Manual Trigger → Barrier Plate. Sensor offers a target-bearing trigger only when the designated Projector is ready and has the nearest visible valid hostile in the shared arc/reach. Target plus one readiness spend seal one reservation; Projector executes that launch once. Manual Trigger starts the separate faced Barrier wave.

Fork carried inactive is 1 C / 0 A and changes no combat behavior. To use it in the rig, the player completes a world-time edit: Manual Trigger moves to inactive cargo, freeing one A but not its 1 C; Fork becomes active; the legal graph is Sensor → Fork → Projector + Barrier. It still has one independent ordinary launch and one designated ordinary actuator. Fork copies that committed bare wave. A ready Barrier responds on the same wave; an unready one refuses locally and queues nothing. Manual Barrier timing is unavailable until the player reverses the edit. The same Fork cannot simultaneously be in the board, inactive cargo and active rig.

Moving a rig Fork into the board first disconnects its links and completes the rig edit, then completes the separate board installation. Returning to the baseline reverses those transitions separately. The last completed rig graph remains if an edit is interrupted; no half-link operates.

Finite transition inventory

Suspend/load is not another transition: it resumes the exact current arrangement and unfinished stage under Save And Content State, without completing an edit, fastener, pickup, call, oxygen transfer, death or shift. Journal pause likewise advances nothing. A generic field capture commits only after its own world-time action and records room, arrangement/life, source and factual limit; opening the journal cannot take it.

Capacity and oxygen cases

The proposed suit is 12 O. Base breathing is continuous at 1 O per 30 seconds. A carried 2 C canister holds 8 O ordinary-full or 12 O prepared-full; deliberate coupling transfers up to 3 O per 30 seconds while breathing continues, stopping at suit 12 O or vessel 0 O. The default 4 O reserve mark is a level, not a route prediction or automatic return.

Retrieval-ready leaves with four active starters plus one canister: 6/10 C, 4/4 A. Picking up Fork makes 7; board installation returns the manifest to 6; bridge pickup makes 8; reclaiming Fork makes 9, leaving one C. Air-heavy leaves at 8/10 C with two canisters. Board-installed Fork leaves it at 8 and the bridge fits exactly at 10. Reclaiming Fork would make 11 and therefore refuses unless another carried object is deliberately dropped or left. The bridge, not the Fork, is the item that still fits in the air-heavy branch.

The rig-Fork configuration does not erase carrying cost: four active parts use 4 C, inactive Manual uses 1 C, Fork is one of the four active parts, and one canister uses 2 C, for 7 C before the bridge and 9 after it. With two canisters it is 9 before the bridge and cannot carry the 2 C bridge without a deliberate unload. Moving Manual to inactive changes A, not C.

Mechanical35's published hand check begins with one fastener remaining: current out-and-back, one two-interval fastener and bridge pickup consume 7 O at base drain; adding Fork installation and reclamation consumes 9 O. For this fresh two-fastener detail, the additional first fastener is another two 30-second intervals, so the same no-enemy-delay accounting is 9 O without both Fork steps or 11 O with both. This derived accounting changes no rate and certifies no route. Enemy delay, displacement, transfer, door wait and wrong turn can only make the actual case differ. Crossing 4 O is information, never a verdict.

Placeholder cues and equivalent forms

These are localization placeholders, not final prose or assets. Colour and sound may reinforce them but never carry the fact alone.

During world time, tank O, the 4 O reserve mark, condition, Projector readiness/selected target, Manual availability or sensor-timed Barrier state, fastener stage and local threat warnings remain independently readable. The reduced display may move branch explanation into the paused journal, but it may not hide actuator readiness, a locked strike, Caller brace or the reserve level. Inspection shows current facts; a record becomes persistent only after a separate atomic capture.

Covered cases and completeness boundary

The sixteen transitions cover eighteen materially distinct authored cases: first observation; no-Fork rack selection; no-Fork shutter selection/relock; Fork pickup refusal or commit; board installation; board reclamation with capacity or rack consequence; inactive carried Fork; active rig Fork with Manual inactive; interruption before either fastener commit; one checkpoint then retreat; final checkpoint/finite hold before pickup; bridge pickup with each loadout; living return; death with bridge still R03 and Fork installed/carried; death with bridge carried and Fork installed; death with both objects carried including Fork active in the rig; post-shift rediscovery; and an already-empty rack. Cases that differ only in exact O or enemy timing reuse the same transition rather than multiplying state rows.

This is complete only for a powered instance of the current R01→R02⇄R03 opening and the named ordinary E01 population. It does not enumerate every external approach, current-power restoration behavior, shutter collision/occlusion dimension, camera, cover measurement, input binding, animation length, exact fastener/installation timing, enemy health/damage/readiness, Caller timing, warning priority at every density, difficulty-option permutation, localization, final presentation, save-slot policy or permitted station arrangement. It does not settle final starting gear/capacity, retained Capacitor charge, any survivor branch, 40/40 stabilization, first survivor, acquisition model or ending behavior. A later author must reject any arrangement that breaks the compact throat, hides the local controls, removes recovery access or requires off-room operation.

Simpler authored alternative. Lock the board/Fork choice when the first fastener begins and allow no reclaim or rig reassignment until the bridge pickup resolves. That reduces mid-objective property/control combinations and lets the opening use a shorter six-state specification. It is not chosen here because it contradicts the existing promise that an accessible Fork can be installed or retrieved later and removes the experiment of changing approach after one completed checkpoint. The chosen detail's cost is the larger transition/cue set, explicit lethal-boundary membership and more recovery variants.

Content and authoring requirements

New detail beyond the first pass is limited to: one maintained two-detent selector convention; exact output mapping; two numbered fastener checkpoints; sixteen transition records; eighteen case classes; thirteen placeholder cue families; the full fresh-state oxygen hand check; and the explicit board-current restoration gap. Existing R01–R03 identities, E01/P01 population, Fork/bridge objects, four rig parts, C/A/O values, event/wave rules, journal behavior, death transaction, compact topology and information policy are cross-references, not newly authored content. No new art, audio, animation, room, encounter, mechanism, part, evidence object or narrative scene is counted.

Decision record

Proposed choice: use the detailed maintained-selector, locally reconfigurable Fork contract above for this representative sample. Reason: it preserves the selected discovery—that one reusable part changes both personal rig and station infrastructure—while making object location, control ownership, commits, refusals and recovery inspectable. Accepted cost: sixteen transitions, more cue variants and a difficult but explicit control trade under horde/oxygen pressure. Reopen if: focused review finds a source contradiction; an authorized later implementation cannot keep the two lanes and controls legible; or real-player evidence shows the mid-opening reconfiguration cannot be understood. This paper walkthrough establishes none of those outcomes.