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1 | # Hold the Flood — Districts |
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| 2 | ||||||||
| 3 | **CAM101 · r1 · 2026-09-06 · Campaign and District Designer · In review; first deliverable of this role. Nothing here is an owner approval, a validated length, or tested behaviour.** |
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| 4 | ||||||||
| 5 | **This page does not replace [Campaign (DES104)](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign).** The lead published the integrated campaign proposal before this role was staffed, and its own bookkeeping says section 2's map and count and section 3's districts "would transfer to Campaign and Districts" when the role exists. It exists now. **I adopt the lead's seven-plus-one district set and its three deep districts as written, rather than proposing a rival campaign** — two campaign plans on one wiki is the failure [Wiki Conventions §6](/Wiki%20Conventions) is about. What this page adds is the part of CAM101 that DES104 does not yet carry: an independent count test, the progression map with its optional branch and its later-discovery return, travel and order rules, a bottom-up duration hypothesis, one consequence of failure, one alternative route, and the two undesigned districts written to the standard of DES104 §3. |
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| 6 | ||||||||
| 7 | **Sources read 2026-09-06, at these revisions.** [Campaign / DES104 r1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign) (read in full; §2 the shape and count, §3.1–3.4, §4–§10 and the bookkeeping) · [Hub 42488e](/Hold%20the%20Flood?revision=42488e) · [Brief 1bd68a](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief?revision=1bd68a) (D009, D013, D016, D019–D021) · [Tasks eb8c03](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=eb8c03) (CAM101) · [Expansion Brief cdc0c5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief?revision=cdc0c5) · [Design Index dd01c7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index?revision=dd01c7) · [Design Document ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) (§2–§4, §10–§13) · [World and Mystery 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de) (W1–W4, WLD103's campaign question and six-part contribution rule) · [Design Review 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882) (REV104-1 to -5) · [Pumping District 7161a5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District?revision=7161a5) · [Power and Attraction 8afc3c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=8afc3c) · [Expansion Prompts ed17df](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Team/Expansion%20Prompts?revision=ed17df) · [Reference / Content Scale fcf9d4](/Reference/Content%20Scale?revision=fcf9d4) · [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions). |
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| 8 | ||||||||
| 9 | ## District pages |
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| 10 | ||||||||
| 11 | | District | Designed where | Page | |
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| 12 | | --- | --- | --- | |
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| 13 | | Pumping District | Design Document §2–§4, §11; campaign role here | [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) | |
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| 14 | | Lock Flight | [DES104 §3.1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#31-the-lock-flight) — lead's, deep | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 | |
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| 15 | | Tram Incline | [DES104 §3.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#32-the-tram-incline) — lead's, deep | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 | |
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| 16 | | Exchange | [DES104 §3.4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#34-the-exchange-in-outline) — outline; mystery on the World page | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 | |
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| 17 | | The Collector | **Here** — was a sketch in DES104 §7; written to the §3 standard | [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) | |
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| 18 | | Tidal Barrier | [DES104 §3.3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#33-the-tidal-barrier) — lead's, deep | Page planned; not created as of 2026-09-06 | |
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| 19 | | The Head-works | **Here** — was a sketch in DES104 §7; written to the §3 standard | [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) | |
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| 20 | | The Refuge | DES104 §5, as a played district | **Recommended against as a district** — see §2.3 | |
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| 21 | ||||||||
| 22 | I have deliberately not created pages for the Lock Flight, the Tram Incline or the Exchange. Their content is authored and current on the lead's page; copying it here would create the divergent second copy the conventions warn about. When the lead is ready to transfer, the pages should be cut from that page and linked back, in one edit, by agreement — not by me lifting them. |
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| 23 | ||||||||
| 24 | --- |
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| 25 | ||||||||
| 26 | ## 1. Three contrasting districts, and what "contrasting" has to mean |
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| 27 | ||||||||
| 28 | CAM101 asks for three contrasting districts in depth, with the pumping district as the candidate opening and two areas of my own design. The three are the **[Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District)** (§3 below and its own page), **[The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector)**, and **[The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works)** — the two the lead's coverage table marks "Not designed". |
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| 29 | ||||||||
| 30 | They contrast on the thing that matters, which is **what the player's lever sets**: |
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| 31 | ||||||||
| 32 | | District | The lever sets | Where it applies | When you feel it | |
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| 33 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
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| 34 | | Pumping District | **Where** the Flood enters, and where an entered crowd walks | Here | Now, in front of you | |
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| 35 | | The Collector | **How much** Flood another district gets | Elsewhere | On a later expedition, somewhere you are not | |
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| 36 | | The Head-works | **How often** every district dispatches | Everywhere at once | Permanently, from the moment you set it | |
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| 37 | ||||||||
| 38 | Three levers, three different cells, one rule set. That is the contrast this campaign needs and it is not achievable by changing tilesets. |
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| 39 | ||||||||
| 40 | --- |
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| 41 | ||||||||
| 42 | ## 2. The count: seven districts, not eight |
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| 43 | ||||||||
| 44 | **I recommend seven.** The lead recommends "eight districts counting the refuge, seven without it" ([DES104 §10.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#10-decisions-for-the-owner-and-one-question-for-pm)). **I agree with the seven and disagree with counting the refuge**, for the reason in §2.3. This is a small disagreement about one entry, deliberately: the lead's district set survives an independent test, and saying so is more useful than manufacturing a rival plan. |
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| 45 | ||||||||
| 46 | ### 2.1 The test I applied, which is not the lead's |
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| 47 | ||||||||
| 48 | The lead's test is: *a district must have a written expedition whose choices could not occur in another district.* That is a good test and it is expensive — it needs a written expedition per district before it can be run, and three of the eight do not have one. |
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| 49 | ||||||||
| 50 | **My test is cheaper and can be run on a sketch: the lever ladder.** Every district's outward consequence occupies one cell of *(what it sets) × (where it applies) × (when it is felt)*. **A district whose lever shares a cell with another district's is a reskin, however different its ground looks.** This is the same instinct as the lead's, made checkable before the expedition is written — which is what the Expansion Brief's "avoid eight renamed pumping yards" actually needs. |
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| 51 | ||||||||
| 52 | ### 2.2 The ladder applied to the lead's set |
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| 53 | ||||||||
| 54 | | District | What its lever sets | Where | When felt | Verdict | |
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| 55 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
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| 56 | | Pumping District | Where the Flood enters; where an entered crowd walks | Here | Now | **Distinct** | |
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| 57 | | Lock Flight | Where the *water* is — which makes roads and completes circuits | Here | Now | **Distinct** — it moves the medium, not the crowd | |
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| 58 | | Tram Incline | Where the *light* is, continuously, on a rail | Here | Now, continuously | **Distinct** — the panel sets an entrance at a dispatch; the tram sets a lure that moves while you watch | |
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| 59 | | Exchange | Which district is announced, forecast and routable at all | Elsewhere | Next visit there | **Distinct** | |
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| 60 | | The Collector | How much Flood a district receives | Elsewhere | Next visit there | **Distinct from the Exchange** — one sets readability, the other quantity; a player can want a thin surge they cannot read, or a large one they can | |
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| 61 | | Tidal Barrier | Whether a second, unannounced source exists at all | Here, permanently, and at the refuge | From the moment it is shut | **Distinct** | |
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| 62 | | The Head-works | How often every district dispatches | Everywhere | Permanently | **Distinct** | |
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| 63 | | The Refuge | — nothing; it is where other levers land | — | — | **Fails**: see §2.3 | |
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| 64 | | Salt Pans (candidate) | — nothing new; one body of water is a topology variant of conduction | Here | Now | **Fails** — agrees with the lead's own decision to leave it a candidate, and gives the reason: it changes the *cost* of a known action, not the action | |
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| 65 | ||||||||
| 66 | Seven pass. That the ladder independently reproduces the lead's seven is the strongest thing I can say for the set, and I would rather report that than invent a disagreement. |
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| 67 | ||||||||
| 68 | ### 2.3 Why the refuge is not the eighth district |
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| 69 | ||||||||
| 70 | The lead writes: *"the refuge as a played district is the least designed idea here and the one most likely to become a tower-defence mode by accident; it should be designed last and cut if it does."* I think the risk is structural, not a matter of care, and I would state it more strongly. |
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| 71 | ||||||||
| 72 | - **It has no lever.** Every other district is somewhere the player goes to *set* something that is felt elsewhere or later. The refuge is the one place where the consequences of all the other levers arrive. Making it a district asks the player to travel to the place they already are, to change the thing they already changed. |
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| 73 | - **It inverts the objective, not the rule.** Six districts ask *what can I do with this machine*; the refuge asks *can I survive this*. That is a different game's question, and it is the question the survivorlike genre already answers everywhere else — which is exactly why it will drift toward a defence mode. The Expansion Brief's warning about "eight unrelated minigames" is aimed at this shape. |
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| 74 | - **It costs the campaign its best pressure.** A dry dock is a hard stop: the one thing the player can always rely on ([Design Document §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#3-core-play)). Every route decision in the campaign is priced against that guarantee. A refuge that can be attacked removes the guarantee, and every district's dock-route pricing has to be redone. |
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| 75 | ||||||||
| 76 | **What I propose instead, which keeps what the lead wants from it.** The owner's word is *hold*, and a refuge that is only a menu cannot be held — that is right. But the holding should happen **through** the other districts, not at home: a district outcome that sends the Flood toward the refuge should change the refuge's *state* (its dock wet, its beacon drawing, its board dark), and the player's answer should be to go and change a lever somewhere else. That is the campaign the districts already support, and it makes the refuge the thing at stake rather than another arena. **If the owner wants an arena, it should be an explicit second mode with its own budget, not the eighth district.** |
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| 77 | ||||||||
| 78 | ### 2.4 What would change my recommendation |
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| 79 | ||||||||
| 80 | - **An eighth district earns its place the moment someone names a lever cell none of the seven occupies.** I could not find one; the two I looked hardest at were *when a district dispatches relative to the others* (that is the head-works' governor, one cell) and *what a surge is made of* (that is Combat's roster, not a place). |
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| 81 | - **If the owner's "far too little" turns out to mean distinct places specifically** — the reading the lead's §10.1 asks for and PM has not yet had answered — then the cheapest honest growth is **wings**: a second dock and a new topology inside an existing district, reusing its assets and its lever cell. I would add a wing to the Lock Flight and to the Collector before I would add a place. |
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| 82 | - **Corroboration, not the reason:** [REF107 fcf9d4](/Reference/Content%20Scale?revision=fcf9d4) records two shipped survivorlikes carrying five and six distinct environments with their variety inside each, as current rather than launch content, and proposes no count. I did not choose seven to match it and it is not evidence for any number. It is worth the owner seeing that a seven-district plan sits at the upper end of what comparable games carry, while this design's per-visit variety currently sits far below theirs — which is an argument for spending the next content budget on Combat's roster and Equipment's modules rather than on district eight. |
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| 83 | ||||||||
| 84 | --- |
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| 85 | ||||||||
| 86 | ## 3. The order, the geography, and what travel costs |
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| 87 | ||||||||
| 88 | ### 3.1 The map, as an order of play |
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| 89 | ||||||||
| 90 | The lead's §2 establishes the geography: one water system, from the head-works at the top to the tidal barrier at the mouth. What follows is the **order**, which is my domain, and it is not the same thing as the geography — the player does not walk down the hill. |
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| 91 | ||||||||
| 92 | ``` |
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| 93 | THE HEAD-WORKS (7; the source; the governor) |
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| 94 | | \ |
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| 95 | races ------+ \---- boat, after the Barrier's dry dock |
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| 96 | | (lead's colony unlock, DES104 §5) |
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| 97 | THE EXCHANGE (4; time routed) |
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| 98 | / \ |
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| 99 | TRAM INCLINE (3) \ (the tram's summit is the way in) |
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| 100 | | \ |
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| 101 | LOCK FLIGHT (2) THE COLLECTOR (5; the Flood's supply) |
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| 102 | | / |
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| 103 | PUMPING DISTRICT (1) ---/ TIDAL BARRIER (6; the clock, at the mouth) |
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| 104 | | | |
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| 105 | ============== THE REFUGE: the colony's dock ============== |
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| 106 | ||||||||
| 107 | MAIN ROUTE 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → {5, 6 in either order} → 7 |
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| 108 | OPTIONAL the weir dock (2) · the depot gates (3) · the mole (6) · the second approach to 7 (§7) |
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| 109 | ``` |
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| 110 | ||||||||
| 111 | **Why this order and not another.** The first four districts each hand the player one new thing to *set* — an entrance, water, a moving light, a network — in increasing distance from where they are standing, which is the campaign's whole shape: the player's reach grows from the room they are in to the city they are not in. Districts five and six are the two that act on quantity and on a clock, and they are interchangeable because neither depends on the other. Seven combines all of it. |
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| 112 | ||||||||
| 113 | ### 3.2 Travel rules |
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| 114 | ||||||||
| 115 | - **One expedition, one district.** The colony's boat goes out and comes back. There is no travel between districts inside an expedition. This keeps the expedition the unit of pressure the whole design already uses, and makes *which district am I spending this trip on* the campaign's top-level decision. |
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| 116 | - **Travel costs no salvage.** The no-mandatory-upkeep baseline holds ([Design Document §10](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#10-progression-and-persistence), and the Expansion Brief's instruction to retain it). The cost of a trip is opportunity, not a toll. |
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| 117 | - **A district opens by knowledge, never by a key.** Every entry condition on these pages is something read or seen, recorded in the notebook, which then makes a dock selectable at the colony. A found object is never the gate — [REV102-2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review/Archive/REV102) is right that a found key is the definition of an item gate. |
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| 118 | - **Every district has at least two ways to be found.** Stated per district; it is the geography-level version of WLD103's rule 5 on redundant clues, and it is what stops a missed inspection from stalling a campaign. |
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| 119 | - **The colony holds one dock dry per district reached** — the lead's rule ([DES104 §5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#5-the-colony-across-the-campaign)), adopted here unchanged. I considered proposing one dry dock city-wide, to make the choice bigger, and rejected it: it would make every unvisited district's dock wet ground, which turns the campaign's later half into a series of districts with no hard stop, and the pricing of every route in DES104 §3 assumes one. |
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| 120 | ||||||||
| 121 | --- |
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| 122 | ||||||||
| 123 | ## 4. The progression map: main route, an optional discovery, and a later discovery that changes an earlier return |
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| 124 | ||||||||
| 125 | ``` |
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| 126 | MAIN ROUTE (required) |
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| 127 | ───────────────────── |
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| 128 | PUMPING ─ tier-2 plan ──▶ LOCK FLIGHT ─ upper canal ──▶ TRAM INCLINE ─ summit pass ──▶ EXCHANGE |
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| 129 | │ |
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| 130 | ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ |
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| 131 | ▼ ▼ |
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| 132 | THE COLLECTOR TIDAL BARRIER |
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| 133 | │ │ |
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| 134 | └──── races (§7 alt.) ──▶ THE HEAD-WORKS ◀── boat ─┘ |
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| 135 | ||||||||
| 136 | OPTIONAL DISCOVERY |
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| 137 | ────────────────── |
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| 138 | THE COLLECTOR ─ the intake gauge and the crews' quarantine notes ──▶ THE HOLDING BASIN |
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| 139 | (a sealed wing of the Collector; never required; carries the campaign's sharpest |
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| 140 | evidence for which of the World designer's two final answers is true) |
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| 141 | ||||||||
| 142 | LATER DISCOVERIES THAT CHANGE AN EARLIER RETURN |
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| 143 | ─────────────────────────────────────────────── |
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| 144 | EXCHANGE bank ──▶ changes PUMPING, LOCK FLIGHT, TRAM, COLLECTOR, BARRIER |
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| 145 | COLLECTOR gates ──▶ changes any district's first surge (the empty flash) |
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| 146 | HEAD-WORKS gov. ──▶ changes every district's cadence at once |
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| 147 | ``` |
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| 148 | ||||||||
| 149 | **The optional discovery: the Holding Basin.** A sealed wing of the Collector, behind a gate the crews shut and gauged. Reachable only by holding the Collector's own water low enough to walk its inflow — which means giving up the outfall lever for that expedition. Inside: the intake gauge with a full log, and the crews' notes on why they sealed it. Nothing required depends on it. What it gives is certainty rather than capability: a player who finds it reaches the head-works knowing which of the two candidate answers on the [World page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery#two-candidate-final-answers-for-the-owner) is true; a player who skips it makes the final choice on inference. Both are complete campaigns, and they are not the same experience. That is what optional content is for in a mystery game, and it is why this one is a wing rather than an eighth district — it costs the Collector's assets and no new ones. |
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| 150 | ||||||||
| 151 | **A later discovery that changes a useful earlier return, worked through.** In the pumping district the three yard deposits and the pump hall's tally board sit at the far end, and the hatch opens only while the yard branch is powered — so the early campaign's characteristic squeeze is that opening the door is what invites the Flood to the door. After the **Exchange**, the player can set the pumping district's bank position dark. On the next visit there: no announced dispatch, no forecast, no flashing beacon — the Flood arrives by the sluice as unannounced trickles that spread, per the shut regime the endings table already defines. **The far end is workable for the first time in the campaign.** And the panel is worth less, because a spread crowd with no schedule cannot be routed around; the forecast board is dark; and the trickles reach the dock road as readily as the interior. The return is genuinely better in one dimension and genuinely worse in another, and the player who wants both makes two trips with the bank set differently. That is what a late power should do to an early place, and it costs no new content at all: the state already exists as the pumping district's shut ending. |
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| 152 | ||||||||
| 153 | **One mystery, not seven key hunts.** Every district above contributes to the single question WLD103 states — *what, upstream, is still keeping time, and for whom* — and none contains a key. The Collector answers where the Flood comes from and that it is metered; the Head-works asks who is metering it. Both are written to the six-part contribution rule on their own pages, with their redundant clue forms named. Where I have proposed clue content it is a proposal in the World designer's domain and marked as one. |
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| 154 | ||||||||
| 155 | --- |
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| 156 | ||||||||
| 157 | ## 5. How long this campaign is: a bottom-up hypothesis |
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| 158 | ||||||||
| 159 | **The lead declines to give hours until three districts have full beat lists ([DES104 §8](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign#8-length-honestly)), and that caution is right about the evidence.** CAM101 asks me for a bottom-up hypothesis, so I give one — with its method exposed, wide bounds, and required, optional and repeated content separated. **It is a hypothesis derived from designed beats, not a measurement, and no figure below is one district's estimate multiplied by seven.** |
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| 160 | ||||||||
| 161 | **Method.** Each district is given a tier count (a tier is a recombination of the rule that opens something, in the Design Document's §11 sense, not a new room), a range of expeditions per tier, and its own expedition length. Ranges are low–high throughout; the low column assumes a player who reads the machinery quickly, the high a player who does not. |
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| 162 | ||||||||
| 163 | **Expedition lengths (proposed).** Pumping, Lock Flight, Tram, Collector 15 min; Exchange 10 (one room, one interaction); Tidal Barrier 12 (one tide cycle); Head-works 18 (the only district with two approaches and a final decision). |
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| 164 | ||||||||
| 165 | ### Required — first discovery |
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| 166 | ||||||||
| 167 | | District | Tiers | Expeditions (low–high) | Minutes (low–high) | |
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| 168 | | --- | ---: | ---: | ---: | |
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| 169 | | Pumping District | 3 | 5–8 | 75–120 | |
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| 170 | | Lock Flight | 2 | 3–5 | 45–75 | |
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| 171 | | Tram Incline | 2 | 3–5 | 45–75 | |
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| 172 | | Exchange | 2 | 2–4 | 20–40 | |
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| 173 | | The Collector | 2 | 3–5 | 45–75 | |
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| 174 | | Tidal Barrier | 2 | 3–5 | 36–60 | |
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| 175 | | The Head-works | 1 + the choice | 2–4 | 36–72 | |
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| 176 | | **Required first discovery** | **14** | **21–36** | **302–517** | |
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| 177 | ||||||||
| 178 | ### Required — returns the main route actually needs |
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| 179 | ||||||||
| 180 | | Return | Why required, not optional | Expeditions | Minutes | |
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| 181 | | --- | --- | ---: | ---: | |
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| 182 | | Exchange, to set the bank before the Barrier or the Collector | Both districts are designed around what the trunk permits there | 1 | 10 | |
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| 183 | | Collector, after the Barrier | Shutting the barrier gates starves the Collector; its state must be re-read before the head-works run | 1 | 15 | |
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| 184 | | A district darkened on the bank, watched | The campaign clue that the trunk *permits* dispatch is only observable in a district you have darkened | 1–2 | 15–30 | |
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| 185 | | Head-works, if the choice is deferred | The design lets the final choice be deferred, as the relay's can be | 0–2 | 0–36 | |
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| 186 | | **Required returns** | | **3–6** | **40–91** | |
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| 187 | ||||||||
| 188 | **Required total: 24–42 expeditions, 342–608 minutes, or 5.7–10.1 hours of expedition time.** Adding dock time — repacking, the notebook, planning, and the deaths a first player will have — at a proposed 25–35% overhead gives **about 7 to 13.5 hours required, centred near 10.** |
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| 189 | ||||||||
| 190 | ### Optional |
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| 191 | ||||||||
| 192 | | Optional content | Expeditions | Minutes | |
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| 193 | | --- | ---: | ---: | |
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| 194 | | The Holding Basin (§4) | 2–3 | 30–45 | |
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| 195 | | The weir dock, the depot gates, the mole (the lead's optional exploration) | 3–6 | 42–90 | |
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| 196 | | The second approach to the head-works (§7) | 1 | 18 | |
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| 197 | | Evidence beyond the minimum for narrowing the final answer | 2–4 | 30–60 | |
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| 198 | | **Optional** | **8–14** | **120–213 (2.0–3.6 h)** | |
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| 199 | ||||||||
| 200 | With the same overhead, optional content adds **about 2.5 to 4.5 hours**. **Required plus optional: roughly 9.5 to 18 hours, centred near 13.** |
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| 201 | ||||||||
| 202 | ### Repeated content — counted separately, and not in the totals |
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| 203 | ||||||||
| 204 | Hauling trips to bank salvage for colony repairs; free expeditions in a district after its outcome is set; repeats after a rescue. These are unbounded and they are **not** campaign length; the Expansion Brief is right that repeated hauling to pay a price is not new designed content, and none of it is in the tables above. |
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| 205 | ||||||||
| 206 | **A constraint that follows, for [COL101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Colony) and the lead's §5 workshop tiers:** every colony unlock must be payable out of salvage collected during the required expeditions above. If it is not, the campaign silently becomes a grind and every figure on this page becomes false. I would rather the colony have fewer tiers than have the campaign padded to pay for them. |
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| 207 | ||||||||
| 208 | ### What the number is sensitive to, and what I will not claim |
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| 209 | ||||||||
| 210 | Almost all of the width is *expeditions per tier*, which cannot be validated before an authorised play phase. The tier counts themselves are firmer, because they come from designed beats. **The honest sentence for the owner is: this plan is designed to contain roughly ten hours of required play and thirteen with optional content, against the three to four you rejected, and the range around those numbers is wide and belongs to a phase that has not been authorised.** No claim is made here about enjoyment, balance, pacing or difficulty. |
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| 211 | ||||||||
| 212 | --- |
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| 213 | ||||||||
| 214 | ## 6. One consequence of failure |
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| 215 | ||||||||
| 216 | **The baseline stands: a rescue never costs banked salvage, notes, observed rules or colony state** ([Design Document §3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document#3-core-play) and §10). I am not proposing a loss spiral. What a campaign adds is that a failure can leave a *district* half-changed, and one of those costs a route rather than a resource. |
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| 217 | ||||||||
| 218 | **The case: the Collector's outfall, left shut.** Shutting it is what withholds another district's next first surge (the empty flash). While it is shut, this basin has nowhere to drain. |
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| 219 | ||||||||
| 220 | - **Player action.** Shut the outfall on the lower gantry, then extract. |
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| 221 | - **On failure.** If the expedition ends in rescue with the outfall shut, the state persists — the same rule that makes every district outcome meaningful. On the next visit the Collector starts one level higher: the lower gantry is under water, so the short crossing between the second and third basins is gone, and the outfall is reachable only the long way round the upper walkway. |
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| 222 | - **Visible in advance.** The outfall's indicator and the starting level are both on the refuge's board before launch, so the player launches knowing which Collector they are getting. |
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| 223 | - **Recovery, and its cost.** The outfall can always be opened from the upper walkway, which is above every level the basin reaches. It costs the long crossing and, for that visit, the delay lever: you cannot both withhold another district's surge and have your short route back. |
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| 224 | - **Why this is the right shape.** Failure makes the world less convenient for one visit, is fully recoverable by an action the player already knows, and is caused by their own successful lever rather than by a penalty bolted onto dying. It never makes the campaign longer, and it never makes the player poorer. |
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| 225 | ||||||||
| 226 | --- |
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| 227 | ||||||||
| 228 | ## 7. One alternative route through the plan |
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| 229 | ||||||||
| 230 | **The head-works can be reached two ways.** The lead's colony section unlocks the boat's range from the Tidal Barrier's dry dock, which is the reservoir approach from the water. I propose a second, and it is the reason the Collector is worth mastering rather than visiting. |
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| 231 | ||||||||
| 232 | - **The boat route (the lead's).** Requires the Barrier's dry dock, which requires shutting the barrier gates. Arrives at the reservoir from below, at the weir. The approach is a conduction problem: the reservoir's own water is the first thing the player meets, and everything they learned about joined bodies applies. |
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| 233 | - **The race route (mine).** Up the head race from the Collector. Requires the Collector's water held low — outfall open, gates set to drain — so the race channel above the third basin is walkable rather than submerged. Arrives at the head-works from the side, in the governor gallery. The approach is a *timing* problem: the race is walkable only between dispatches, because each one raises the level behind it. |
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| 234 | ||||||||
| 235 | **What this buys.** A player who bounced off the Barrier is not locked out of the finale, and vice versa; the redundancy WLD103 rule 5 asks of clues becomes structural as well; and the optional content in §5 has an obvious thing to be — going back and arriving the other way, which shows the player the half of the head-works they did not see. **The two routes also matter to the ending**: the boat route arrives with the Barrier shut, which starves the Collector; the race route arrives with the Collector open and running. The head-works' governor reads differently in the two states, which is detailed on [its page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works). |
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| 236 | ||||||||
| 237 | **A second, smaller alternative:** districts five and six are order-free. A player who takes the Collector first learns how much Flood there is before they learn there is a second source; one who takes the Barrier first learns the reverse. Both reach the head-works. |
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| 238 | ||||||||
| 239 | --- |
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| 240 | ||||||||
| 241 | ## 8. Asset reuse and gaps, for the districts I own |
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| 242 | ||||||||
| 243 | **No availability of any free asset is claimed anywhere on this page, and nothing here authorises creating one** ([Brief D009](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief); no AI-generated art of any kind, including concepts and placeholders). The lead's §7 covers the campaign-wide burden; this adds only the two districts written here. |
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| 244 | ||||||||
| 245 | - **The Collector.** Reuses: water planes and wet/dry tinting, gates and valves, cable, lamps, beacons, panels, walkway and gantry props, boards, signs, the humanoid mass. **Gaps:** turning wheels with readable meters; a stepped-basin drainage set; and the *held mass* — a crowd standing still in water in numbers larger than a surge, which is a crowd-rendering question as much as an art one. |
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| 246 | - **The Head-works.** Reuses: races, weirs, drums, cable, boards, gallery and walkway props. **Gaps:** a large reservoir and dam exterior, the campaign's biggest single art ask; and the governor as an oversized multi-position panel. **And one conditional gap the owner should see attached to a decision they are being asked to make:** if the World designer's Answer B (the keepers) is chosen, the head-works needs one human presence, which is an asset category this design has otherwise avoided entirely. The lead recommends Answer A; that recommendation is also an asset decision and it should be said out loud when it is put to the owner. |
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| 247 | ||||||||
| 248 | --- |
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| 249 | ||||||||
| 250 | ## 9. Dependencies, disagreements and open questions |
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| 251 | ||||||||
| 252 | **Depends on, and does not decide.** |
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| 253 | ||||||||
| 254 | 1. **[REV104-1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review), the drum-and-trunk contract** (World, ratified by Lead). Both pages here assume the critic's minimal change: *the drum makes the moment, the trunk permits it.* The Collector's empty flash and the Head-works' governor both rest on it. |
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| 255 | 2. **[REV104-3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review), the empty flash** (Lead). W1 needs the clause *a surge enters there if the collector supplies one*, and the light convention a row for a flash with nothing behind it. The Collector's outward consequence is unreadable without it. |
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| 256 | 3. **[REV104-2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review), what charge may leave a district** (Lead, with World). My position is on [the Collector page §5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector#5-discovery): word it *"never leaves with the player"* and keep the meter clue, because the meter reading the player's own unit at city scale is the campaign's central inference. |
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| 257 | 4. **The World designer (WLD103)** owns every clue proposal on both new district pages, including the Holding Basin's evidence and the redundant form I have offered for the head-works' clue, which their own PM report and REV104 both record as missing. |
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| 258 | 5. **The Lead (DES104)** owns the transfer in the table at the top of this page, and owns whether §2's count correction is accepted. |
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| 259 | ||||||||
| 260 | **Where I disagree, stated in place rather than routed.** |
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| 261 | ||||||||
| 262 | - **The refuge is not a district (§2.3).** The lead's own risk note is right and I think the risk is structural. My recommendation to PM and the owner is seven, with the refuge as the thing at stake rather than an arena. |
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| 263 | - **The Salt Pans should be closed rather than left a candidate**, with the reason in §2.2: they change the cost of a known action, not the action. Leaving a candidate open with no lever cell to fill invites it back later on grounds of variety. |
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| 264 | ||||||||
| 265 | **Open, and not resolved by me.** |
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| 266 | ||||||||
| 267 | - Whether the Collector's held mass is legible at survivorlike crowd density is a runtime question and no design page can answer it. The Collector page states a cheaper fallback. |
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| 268 | - Whether a campaign whose first district ends in a persistent choice makes the later districts' outcomes feel smaller. I think not — the head-works is the same choice at scale, which is the point — but it is a real risk and I have not resolved it. |
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| 269 | - The duration bounds in §5 are wide because the expeditions-per-tier assumption is unvalidated, and it is the single number most worth checking first if a play phase is ever authorised. |
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| 270 | ||||||||
| 271 | --- |
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| 272 | ||||||||
| 273 | ## CAM101 — submission |
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| 274 | ||||||||
| 275 | **Task:** CAM101 ([Tasks eb8c03](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=eb8c03), listed *Blocked — role not yet created*; the role is staffed by this submission). **Artifacts:** this page r1; [The Collector](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Collector) r1; [The Head-works](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/The%20Head-works) r1; a campaign-role section added to [Pumping District](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Districts/Pumping%20District) preserving PM's seed. **Status: In review.** I do not mark my own task accepted. |
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| 276 | ||||||||
| 277 | **Delivered against the assignment.** An eight-district campaign evaluated with a purpose stated for every district and an independent test (§2); a recommended count of seven with reasons and the eighth's cut argued rather than asserted (§2.3); three contrasting districts in depth, the pumping district as the candidate opening and two areas of my own with genuinely different decisions (§1 and the three pages); entry and revisit conditions, machinery problem, enemy and build pressure, discovery, outward consequence and asset reuse or gap for the districts I own, and the lever-cell audit for all of them (§2.2 and the pages); a progression map with a main route, an optional discovery and a later discovery that changes an earlier return (§4); a bottom-up duration hypothesis separating required, optional and repeated content, with its method and its sensitivity (§5); one consequence of failure (§6); one alternative route through the plan (§7); asset reuse and gaps (§8); explicit dependencies (§9). |
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| 278 | ||||||||
| 279 | **Not delivered, deliberately.** Pages for the Lock Flight, the Tram Incline and the Exchange: their content is current and authored on the lead's page, and duplicating it would create a divergent second copy. Any enemy, item or colony design, which belongs to the roles those pages name. Any claim about fun, balance, performance, feasibility or asset availability, none of which a design page can establish. |
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| 280 | ||||||||
| 281 | **Evidence.** Written reasoning against the revisions listed in the header. No research, no assets, no code, no prototype, no simulation, no playtest. |
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