**Status.** First-pass paper contract, not owner-approved balance or implementation. Limited carried oxygen, unlimited ship oxygen, shared capacity for spare oxygen/equipment/loot, carried-property return on death, full journal pause and the selected opening direction are owner decisions. All capacities, item sizes, starting parts, refill behavior and timing below are proposals.

The **active rig area** answers what can operate now. Only parts physically installed there can receive links or act; moving a part to inactive cargo frees rig area. The **shared carrying capacity** answers what the astronaut can transport. Every active rig part, inactive part, portable canister, objective item and piece of loot occupies this total once. Installing a carried part in the rig does not charge capacity twice, and removing it from the rig does not free carrying capacity.

Worn suit functions sit outside both spaces: the integral oxygen tank, navigation, journal and emergency cutter. They cannot be dropped, sold, linked into the rig or used as spare cargo space. The cutter is a deliberate close-range tool for common cutting interactions and desperate defence: it neither selects targets nor fires automatically, and using it occupies the astronaut instead of supplying a free second weapon. Ordinary automatic combat in the proposed opening comes from the rig’s Threat Sensor → Pulse Projector path.

Ship refill gear, packing benches and other home fixtures also stay aboard rather than entering either expedition space. Using a reusable part in a home preparation step does not consume it: the player may reclaim it before departure unless they deliberately leave it installed, in which case the manifest says so. This contract never requires a reusable home tool to be abandoned merely to make a packing choice costly.

For one legible opening example, propose **ten carrying units** and **four one-part rig spaces**. The opening rig’s Threat Sensor, Pulse Projector, Manual Trigger and Barrier Plate occupy all four rig spaces and four carrying units. Ship storage begins with two refillable portable vessels; the player may carry one or both. A canister occupies two carrying units whether full, partial or empty; the isolation bridge occupies two; the loose Fork Relay occupies one. These values expose the intended decisions but are not selected quantities.

Capacity is checked before a pickup, installation removal or departure. An over-capacity action refuses before commitment and leaves the item visibly where it was; nothing is silently dropped. Field rig edits, pickups, deployments and oxygen transfers are world-time actions. Opening the journal pauses enemies, oxygen, readiness and action progress; it cannot finish any of them.

The suit tank is the active breathing supply. A carried canister is reserve gas, not a second automatically draining tank. The player deliberately couples one canister to the suit; gas transfers while world time and threats continue. The display shows tank level, the selected canister’s remaining level, transfer progress and current shared capacity.

Transfer is conserved and incremental. If interrupted, the suit keeps only the amount already transferred and the canister keeps the remainder; neither duplicates or vanishes. A full, partial or empty canister keeps the same carrying size because the physical vessel remains. An empty vessel can be brought home for free refill, dropped at a known place, or used by a separately authored station fixture. No general fixture use or canister consumption is assumed here.

Aboard the ship, the player may connect the suit tank and any canisters in storage to the ship’s unlimited oxygen supply. Refill costs no scarce oxygen, currency, charge or maintenance resource. It may be stopped and resumed, leaving an honestly shown partial fill; the safe ship context adds no expedition pressure. Before departure, the manifest distinguishes full, partial and empty vessels rather than replacing them with an abstract total.

Breath and combat resources remain separate. Receiving oxygen does not heal suit condition, restore a weapon instantly, fill a Capacitor, create a trigger, reset a causal wave, refresh a barrier or power station machinery. During a field transfer, normal world time passes, so a weapon’s ordinary readiness may progress according to its own rule; the oxygen transfer did not cause that progress. A canister affects another system only when a later authored mechanism explicitly says what is connected and what is spent.

| State at the moment an expedition ends or an action is interrupted | Capacity / operation | Voluntary return | Ordinary or deliberate death | Interrupted action |

|---|---|---|---|---|

| Worn suit tank, with any remaining oxygen | Outside carried capacity; supplies breathing | Aboard at its remaining level, then freely refillable | Aboard; already breathed oxygen stays spent, then freely refillable | Field transfer leaves the tank at the amount actually received |

| Full, partial or empty carried canister | Two proposed units; inactive until coupled | Comes aboard in that exact fill state | Comes aboard in that exact fill state | Transfer preserves gas already moved and gas still in the vessel |

| Active rig part | Uses one proposed carrying unit and one rig space; linked and operating | Comes aboard in the rig | Comes aboard in the rig | Unfinished field edit commits nothing; last completed arrangement remains |

| Loose or inactive carried part | Uses carrying capacity, no active rig area | Comes aboard | Comes aboard | Pickup not yet completed leaves it at its source; completed pickup makes it carried |

| Newly found carried loot or freed objective item | Uses its stated capacity once | Comes aboard | Comes aboard | Before pickup completion it remains at the source; after completion it is carried |

| Part, canister or loot deliberately dropped | No longer carried; cannot operate unless its own rule says so | Remains at the recorded station location | Remains there without duplication; death may make the old route historical | A completed drop changes state; a cancelled drop does not |

| Fork or other part deployed in a station fixture | No carried capacity or rig area; operates only through that fixture’s visible rule | Remains installed | Remains installed; completed station work remains | Before installation completes it stays carried; after completion it is installed |

| Oxygen breathed or material consumed by an explicit effect | Already spent and occupies no capacity | Does not return | Does not return | Only the amount already transferred or consumed is spent |

| Survivor | Never cargo or a loadout object | Follows Rescue Rules | Death grants no delivery, loss or shift exception | Transfer state follows its owning rescue rule |

Voluntary return and death therefore use the same carried manifest. Death additionally ends the expedition at that point, starts the next trip aboard and shifts the station; deliberate death uses exactly the same rule. It gives no special refill, extraction gate, charge tax, property loss or survivor result. Completed fasteners and other completed work persist under their own rules; an unfinished stage is lost. A living return does not trigger a shift unless another future rule explicitly establishes one.

Both choices pursue the selected goal: reach Collar Control, free the isolation bridge and bring it aboard while deciding whether the loose Fork powers both the rack and patient-bay shutter.

| Departure choice | Manifest under the proposed nine-unit model | Strength | Cost exposed during extraction |

|---|---|---|---|

| **Retrieval-ready** | Four active rig parts (4) + one full canister (2) = 6 used, 4 free | Reserved space for the freed bridge (2), carried Fork (1) and one unit of other loot | Less breathing reserve; the player may need to return after a completed fastener rather than attempt the noisy final stage |

| **Air-heavy** | Four active rig parts (4) + two full canisters (4) = 8 used, 2 free | More time to observe, retreat or survive a longer route, while the bridge still fits | The Fork must stay deployed/behind unless another carried object is deliberately dropped; an empty canister still occupies two units |

Neither loadout is labelled sufficient or superior. In the air-heavy case, deploying the Fork buys the safer shutter state and removes it from carried capacity while installed. After the bridge clears, the player may retrieve the Fork only if capacity permits, leave it powering the shutter, or drop an empty vessel at a recorded location and carry both objective items. Every option remains recoverable by a later visit; death adds no confiscation.

Consider the same qualitative decision after two bridge fasteners are complete. The player has used part of the spare canister, the reverse breadcrumb records the outward path but cannot promise its present safety or exact oxygen cost, and the next stage is visibly noisy. **Return now:** the rig and partial canister come home, refilling is free, and both completed fasteners remain removed. **Press on:** spend more breathable reserve, trigger the horde hold and try to free the bridge; if it is freed before death, it comes home while carried, but if death interrupts removal the bridge remains in its rack and only completed fasteners persist. A deliberate death after freeing it is a legitimate return with the carried manifest, but it also causes a station shift and forfeits the current position. The decision is about time, route access, current work and capacity—not fear of an invented loot penalty.

Still open are the true capacity model and rig geometry; tank and canister sizes, transfer rate and readable return margin; the starting loadout; objective-item sizes; field-refill vulnerability; healing and suit-condition resources; which fixtures accept oxygen; alive-return world behavior; and how partial vessels appear in the interface. [Player Information](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Player%20Information) is a provisional interface input only: its continuous oxygen/capacity display, atomic pickup feedback and carried/installed labels are useful dependencies, but its focused review and pending author response are not accepted here as settled rules.

**First-pass planning envelope, from assignment through one focused review and one bounded response:** Systems authoring 6–10 active role-hours, Reviewer 3–5, Systems response 2–4; **11–19 role-hours total**. This includes the lifecycle, one opening loadout comparison, source reconciliation, one review and one response, but excludes PM waiting/disposition.

**Later exhaustive SMALL-band content and cue specification:** Systems/UX authoring 24–40 role-hours, focused review 6–10 and response 3–6; **33–56 role-hours total**. That later work would enumerate every canister/loadout variant, pickup/refill/deploy cue, accessibility equivalent, error state and cross-system edge case. It excludes implementation, assets, localisation, balance work and testing; TARGET/STRETCH remain unestimated until reuse is known.

Later owner-authorised implementation and real-player observation must establish whether oxygen creates useful rather than tedious pressure; whether both packing choices are understood and genuinely viable; whether players distinguish rig area from shared capacity and breath from readiness; whether partial transfers and interrupted pickups are legible under horde pressure; whether the cutter reads as a tool rather than a free weapon; and whether returning or deliberately dying creates the intended route-and-time consequences. This paper contract establishes none of those outcomes.