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1 | # Hold the Flood — Cutter |
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3 | ## EQP101 — Cutter retained as a real campaign choice |
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| 5 | **EQP101 · r1 · 2026-09-06 UTC · Equipment and Build Designer · Proposed extension; Lead/Combat transfer pending.** |
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| 6 | Sources: this seed at [7a70ec](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter?revision=7a70ec) and [Design Document r14 / ec1b6c](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c), §§3–6. The PM-authored r13 snapshot below is preserved. This section supplies the current Equipment proposal; it does not declare the source rule transferred. [Equipment submission](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Equipment#eqp101-submission) · [Inventory and Charge](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Mechanics/Inventory%20And%20Charge) · [Alternative Tools](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Weapons/Alternative%20Tools). |
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| 8 | ### W1 — Completed item definition |
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| 10 | - **Trigger:** automatic attack at the nearest eligible organism within reach while the player moves. Position is the player's aiming action. Retain the source's roughly two hits/second and three hits per ordinary organism as provisional values; Combat owns exact reach, line of sight, tie-breaking and damage. |
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| 11 | - **Effect / target:** direct single-target damage that thins pursuers and a doorway's edge; one ordinary kill can drop charge only if that organism has not already shed. No built-in stun, penetration, knockback, power injection or signal effect. |
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| 12 | - **Space / resources:** occupies the free primary cradle, zero rack cells, no battery or ammunition. Only one primary is active. Equipping an alternative at shelter removes Cutter's automatic attack; it is not a free secondary. |
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| 13 | - **Information / restriction:** visible current target and attacks; distinguish already-spent organisms by a non-colour-only mark. Limited crowd reach and single-target coverage make an encircling surge a route problem, not something this item promises to clear. |
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| 14 | - **Combinations:** the proposed Arc accepts Cutter hits as its sole host; separate battery gives a chosen burst. Beacon can gather targets for that burst; Coil supplies control/harvest but does not make spent enemies yield twice. Siphon can finish an incomplete bank without requiring Cutter to fight another exposed straggler. |
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| 15 | - **Exploration interaction:** thin one pursuer at the edge of a salvage deposit, then hand-gather or use a live valve without spending the charge reserved for a gate. It does not cut persistent evidence or cables. Essential panels, valves and clue experiments remain available without another weapon. |
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| 16 | - **Acquisition:** freely issued from the start and on rescue, recipe already known. Always selectable again at shelter without salvage payment. It has no rarity tiers or mandatory damage-upgrade track in EQP101. |
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| 17 | - **Reason to keep it:** zero rack footprint leaves room for a bundle or protection; fast single-target retargeting helps against scattered pursuers; only it hosts Arc in this first catalogue. Rivet Driver trades those benefits for committed penetration; Prod trades them for local displacement. Those are branches, not a later stage that erases Cutter. |
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| 18 | - **Counterplay / weakness:** a basic crowd spreads along two approaches while charge is low; the cutter cannot hold both indefinitely. Choose a beacon route, a wet Coil opportunity, or retreat rather than assume the source's tuning proves survival. |
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| 20 | ### Transfer delta |
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| 22 | Keep the existing auto-fire, free-slot starting role and limited crowd clearing. Add explicit primary exclusivity, reacquisition and the Arc host choice. Combat owns shared grammar; Equipment owns this item. Lead must approve transfer from ec1b6c §§3, 5–6 before this page becomes the canonical detailed definition. |
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| 24 | --- |
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| 26 | ## Preserved PM source seed |
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28 | **PMU004 · r1 · 2026-09-06 · PM-seeded source summary; intended owner: Equipment and Build Designer (proposed); Lead interim; Combat owns shared attack rules · Awaiting author validation/transfer.** |
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29 | Source: [Design Document r13 / 50046f](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=50046f), section 3 and section 5. This records the existing proposal, not an accepted expansion design. The cited source owns its detailed rules until the author explicitly adopts this destination. [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary). |
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| 31 | ## Current weapon specification |
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| 33 | The cutter is the starting handheld weapon. It automatically fires at the nearest organism within reach while the player moves; positioning supplies the player's aiming choice. It occupies no rack slot. The source proposes roughly two hits a second and about three hits to kill the basic organism. Those are design numbers, not tested balance. |
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| 35 | Its stated role is to remove nearby stragglers and thin an edge or doorway. The same source describes a surge of roughly forty to one hundred and forty organisms over half a minute, so it deliberately gives the cutter limited crowd-clearing capacity. The arc module provides a separate stored-charge payoff in the current proposal. |
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| 37 | ## Missing decisions for the larger game |
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| 39 | - What choices develop basic combat from early to late campaign? The present cutter specification supplies no substantial weapon progression. |
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| 40 | - Which targeting behavior, range tradeoff or interaction would make another weapon a different choice rather than a higher damage number? |
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| 41 | - How do weapons support exploration or resource gathering while retaining readable crowd combat? |
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| 42 | - What must remain automatic, and what meaningful action does the player control? |
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| 44 | **EQP101 + CMB101:** describe the cutter's place among proposed weapon families, a reason to keep it, a reason to switch, and the acquisition/upgrade choices. Equipment owns this item's definition; Combat owns the common attack/status grammar. No new weapon family is implied to exist yet. |
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