Hold The Horde — Survival and Loadout

The owner has decided on limited carried oxygen, unlimited ship oxygen, shared space for equipment, air and loot, carried-property return on death, full journal pause and the selected opening direction.

One trip: leave room for the impossible thing

Before opening the airlock, the astronaut makes a bet. They can carry ten units. Four one-unit parts fill the four-space opening rig: Threat Sensor → Pulse Projector fires ordinary shots automatically, while Manual Trigger → Barrier Plate gives one faced manual defence. Two reusable vessels are available aboard; one ordinary-full canister costs two carrying units. Departing at 6/10 C leaves four spaces for whatever the station reveals.

That empty space feels wasteful until Cargo Turn. A crowd spills across the isolation rack while the Projector worries at the nearest visible target and the player turns the Barrier toward the dangerous lane. Behind the crowd, a loose Fork Relay (the splitter) makes one service pulse reach two lamps. It is the first proof that one reusable part can change both a weapon and station machinery.

Picking up the Fork uses one space. Freeing the two-unit isolation bridge uses two more. The astronaut can now carry the four-part rig, one canister, Fork and bridge at 9/10 C, with one space still empty. Taking two canisters instead would have started at 8/10: the bridge could still fit, but the Fork could not come too unless the player deliberately left or dropped something. Nothing is silently discarded and no loadout is labelled sufficient.

The oxygen display is low enough to make the next noisy stage tempting rather than obviously correct. The player can trust completed fastener work to remain, but cannot treat the route or a reserve marker as a guaranteed return margin. They turn back with the Fork and bridge. When the airlock closes, the horde noise stops, ordinary ship air is free, and the equipment becomes a new set of possibilities: trade the Fork into the four-space rig by packing another starter inactive, lend it to a home fixture, or carry it back into a station that may change after the next death. Preparation was a wager; the find changed the wager; home is the relief and the place to make the next one.

What the astronaut can carry and use

Superseded in form on 2026-09-17: the owner chose a grid of squares holding shaped items. Read the unit counts below as squares at four to a unit, and the rig area as the lit block. The Pack owns the rules.

The active rig area (A) answers what can operate now. Only a physically mounted part can receive links or act. The shared carrying capacity (C) answers what comes on the expedition. Active parts, inactive parts, canisters, objective objects and loot each occupy that total once. Mounting a carried part does not count it twice; moving it inactive frees A but not C.

This page uses 10 C and an opening 4 A rig. The four starter parts cost 1 C / 1 A each. A canister costs 2 C whether full, partial or empty; Fork costs 1 C / 1 A when active; the isolation bridge costs 2 C / 0 A. Mechanical Interfaces And Opening Quantities owns the complete quantity sheet and operating limits.

Worn suit functions—the integral oxygen tank, navigation, journal and emergency cutter—sit outside both totals. They cannot be dropped, sold, linked into the rig or converted into spare space. The cutter is a deliberate close-range tool for cutting work and desperate defence, not a second automatic weapon.

Capacity is checked before pickup, fixture retrieval or departure. If the object will not fit, the action refuses before commitment and leaves it visibly where it was. A deliberately dropped object stays at its recorded station location. A part installed in station infrastructure stops using C and A, works only through that fixture's visible rule and remains there until the same instance is reclaimed. Home fixtures stay aboard; a lent part can be reclaimed safely before departure, turning off that fixture's function rather than consuming or duplicating the part.

Compatible links among accessible mounted parts can be changed in the journal. The journal fully pauses enemies, oxygen, readiness and action progress. It does not perform physical work: pickup, dropping, mounting, removal, fixture use and oxygen transfer all happen while the game runs. Ordinary weapons mostly fire themselves when their own source, target and readiness allow; the player uses manual controls for labelled specials such as Barrier, Nozzle or a stored discharge.

Oxygen is time, not a toll booth

The suit tank is the active breathing supply. This page uses a 12 O suit tank, 8 O ordinary-full canisters, 12 O bench-prepared canisters, base breathing of 1 O per 30 seconds, and transfer of up to 3 O per 30 seconds while breathing continues. A canister is reserve gas, not a second tank that drains automatically.

To use one, the player deliberately couples it to the suit while the world continues. In this proposal, a carried vessel stays coupled during walking and ordinary automatic fire. A manual special or station operation that needs the occupied control interrupts the transfer; the same visible interruption rules below still apply. Opening the journal freezes the transfer along with everything else. The display shows exact suit oxygen, the selected vessel's oxygen, transfer progress and carrying use. A player-set reserve marker defaults to 4 O, but it is only a warning level: it never estimates the route or orders an automatic return. Damage alone does not cancel transfer. Explicit cancellation, displacement out of reach, loss of the coupling or another occupied control can interrupt it, preserving exactly what has moved.

One boundary example shows the rule. Starting at 11 O in the suit and 5 O in the canister, after 15 seconds the suit reaches its 12 O ceiling: 0.5 O was breathed and 1.5 O moved, leaving 3.5 O in the vessel. Transfer stops immediately. If another 15 seconds pass, breathing lowers the suit to 11.5 O while the canister remains at 3.5 O. Gas is neither duplicated nor discarded at a ceiling, empty vessel or interruption.

Aboard the ship, unlimited oxygen provides free ordinary refill to the suit and raises a canister only as far as 8 O. Refill may stop and resume at an honestly shown partial amount. A commissioned packing bench can raise an eligible vessel to 12 O prepared-full without changing its 2 C size. That improved fill belongs to the vessel and remains if the lent bench part is reclaimed. If prepared gas is used, ordinary refill never recreates that four-unit surplus: below 8 O it fills to 8; above 8 O it neither vents the remainder nor tops it back to 12. Another completed bench cycle is required.

Oxygen stays separate from combat resources. Transfer does not heal condition, ready a weapon, refresh a barrier, create a trigger or fill a Capacitor. Time passing while the game runs may let an independently recovering part become ready, but the oxygen did not cause it.

This pressure is useful when another thirty seconds might reveal a clue, finish a physical task or make room for a startling find. It becomes annoying busywork if the player is repeatedly coupling vessels when no real choice changes, or if exact arithmetic pretends to certify a route. Clear state, incremental conservation and free home refill are meant to keep the decision on what is worth risking now, not on avoiding hidden loss.

Air, spectacle and room for discovery

The opening choice above contrasts one canister and four free spaces with two canisters and only two. Later, the same trade becomes sharper because the game still allows a ridiculous build.

Compare two loadouts aboard the same eight-space rig with the same available parts (8 A / 10 P):

Both leave with ordinary automatic shots and a manual shove. Imagine a later point in the trip when each has earned Rebound Disc and Fragment Wake: both can bank shots along a curved crowd lane and turn their endings into fragment fans. The lighter kit can still be spectacular. The extra Dynamo and Capacitor let the heavier kit build and retain charge, then pursue the stored master-disc special described in Mechanical Interfaces And Opening Quantities. If that later transformation is earned, its larger charged disc supplies an additional manual climax; those parts do not grant it on departure.

Now the fight reveals the existing two-space regulator core. The lean kit can take it and still leave one space free. The stored-disc kit must first put down a part, canister or another object to make room. The choice is between that extra charged command and carrying flexibility. Both kits can grow through combat, and neither is promised the necessary upgrade or enough oxygen for a particular route.

Regular fighting provides temporary combat growth, alongside major transformations. They reset whenever the astronaut returns aboard, alive or revived. Combat areas refill for each new expedition, while completed permanent changes such as unlocked doors and joined rooms remain. That gives each trip another climb toward spectacle; see Combat Rules for growth and renewed encounters. The physical parts and knowledge that enabled the build remain, so packing still expresses a plan rather than erasing progress.

What returns, and what stays behind

Voluntary return and death use the same carried manifest:

• The worn suit, active rig, inactive carried parts, canisters and newly acquired carried loot come aboard once, preserving their last completed object and fill states. Oxygen already breathed and explicitly consumed material stay spent; free ship refill happens afterward.
• A completed pickup makes the object carried. If pickup or removal was interrupted before commitment, the object remains at its source. An unfinished rig edit commits nothing, leaving the last completed arrangement.
• A deliberately dropped object or completed infrastructure installation remains at its recorded station location without duplication. Death makes the old route historical and does not promise convenient retrieval.
• Completed station work persists under its own rule; an unfinished stage is lost. A survivor follows the separate rescue rules.

Death ends the expedition, wakes the astronaut aboard and shifts the station's unconnected areas. Deliberate death follows the same rule: no recovery cache, confiscation, extraction gate, charge tax or special property loss. Walking home alive does not itself cause a shift.

Home is therefore relief without being a free undo. Air is safe and ordinary condition is restored for the next expedition, but current position is gone, and the player must decide what the changed station makes possible next.

Open questions

• The true capacity model, starting kit, final oxygen quantities and transfer vulnerability.
• Field healing and lasting injuries.
• How renewed enemy placement works around permanent changes; any other living-return world changes remain open.
• Survivor mortality, transport and cargo delivery.
• What happens to a survivor during an unfinished crossing.
• Which fixtures accept oxygen.
• Whether stored Capacitor charge survives return or death.
• The exact cadence and presentation of regular combat growth and major transformations.

These rules are untested; numbers are proposals.