Hold the Flood — Build Paths

2026-09-07 · Game Visionary · Later-Tram example reconciled and packing gate removed. The conversion example now follows Campaign r8: an earned quick return or optional extra lure margin, not the superseded empty-bank crossing proposal. Siphon feedstock need not be adjacent under U5. Prior proposal: 6d6d1d. Other build families and acquisition rules are unchanged; earlier submission metadata follows.

Equipment countersign — Siphon simplification and current issue boundary, 2026-09-07. Accept the Visionary’s removal of Siphon adjacency at bbb314. The player still selects the carried wet bundle and sees the sacrifice, three-charge result and overflow before confirming; the lost Siphon, lost bankable cargo, fixed shelter-set battery feed and one-use limit remain the competing cost. Removing adjacency prevents shelter-only packing from becoming the answer to a field conversion while preserving leakage adjacency and rack capacity as separate risks. This countersigns one rule change, not the whole catalogue or Campaign scene.

Changed-return issue correction: Colony c56634 identifies a live Campaign 0cafb9 alternative that supports the summit berth yet departs with Beacon + default Battery + Kit. Berth support retracts advanced tooling, so the ordinary workshop issues only one known module plus the default bank. Prefer Beacon + empty Battery, omitting the issued Kit; Kit may appear only through an authored field offer before use. Approach C on this page remains legal under its stated tooling Circuit set, not simultaneously with berth support. Lead owns the scene correction; Equipment changes no service, cap or geography.

EQP102 r1 / Build Paths r4 · 2026-09-07 UTC · Equipment and Build Designer · Three approaches to one Tram objective, plus an acquisition-led changed return; submitted for PM review. EQP101 remains in review. Sources: Design Document r14 / ec1b6c, §§3–6, 8 and 10; World r20 / 7699de, W1–W4, S1–S3 and campaign contribution rules; Expansion Brief / cdc0c5. Design Index · Glossary · Equipment.

These are loadout intentions, not locked classes. A player can change family at shelter or on a later departure. Early/middle/late mean available decisions and knowledge, not approved district numbers or elapsed hours. All cell counts use the D023/Lead-adopted eight-cell Inventory and Charge contract; all numeric yields are conditional written examples. No build has been played, simulated, balanced or shown fun.

EQP102 — One Tram objective, three approaches, one changed combination

Recommendation for DES105, not an adopted district rewrite. Use Colony's Tram case rather than invent another district. The common objective is reach the summit, copy the timetable, inspect the open pass toward the Exchange, and extract at the depot. Do not enter another district in this expedition. A summit bundle is an optional competing reward, not a success condition. This section proposes the equipment contribution; Lead owns the combined sequence and Campaign owns the actual paths. Numbers below are written requirements/accounting, not measured survivability or travel times.

Common start and acquisition — no free full rack

Compare the same supplied Tram state before any Collector intervention: tram at the depot; Walkers entering the yard, a Heavy obstructing the rail; panel initially Gates; the surveyed depot is the sole baseline stop. Use the existing road, stairs, panel and summit shelter in Campaign r5 §3.2 / 9366c8. The service choice is tooling, not a simultaneous supported summit berth. Both crane parts have previously been banked and the workshop/tooling repaired under Colony fe7d88; those are prerequisites, not guaranteed earnings at a prescribed visit number.

Equipment acquisition clarification: a revisit may still select the smaller ordinary-workshop or tooling packages; the actually-recorded-pattern requirement applies when claiming expanded, up-to-six-cell recorded-rack issue. A first-visit-sized Circuit set does not become unavailable on returning. All three racks below fit those small packages: no full-pattern entitlement is used. Known recipes still require real inspection. This is an Equipment clarification offered to Colony/Lead, not a change to D023's six-cell cap.

For the missing first Insulation placement identified by COL102, propose the dry direct road beside Lock Flight's Head basin, outside the lock-house door, with the existing lever/road approach. This allows inspection before any insulated crossing. Put the first Coil on the Pumping District's free machinery route, the first Beacon at the Lock Flight Tail's route-maintenance cache, and Kit on a public aid route, as their existing entry categories require. Campaign must place these offers and demonstrate their free approaches; none is currently certified geography. Before those recipes are observed, choose the basic/manual route, not imaginary issued gear. On a first Tram visit the Coil/Insulation Circuit set can be assembled and recorded at the summit shelter; that gives Colony B's subsequent four-cell record its concrete acquisition chain without requiring an extra record-collection trip.

Literal departure racks below use Cutter outside the rack. . is empty; C/C one Coil; B a bank; I Insulation; L Beacon; K Kit. Each row is four cells. All batteries start 0/10, and none touches proposed cargo cells. A uses the ordinary workshop and declines the default bank; B and C use tooling's two-known-module Circuit set.

A — Ride and cut: pay exposure instead of fuel

Throw Rail, board the lit tram and take it uphill. The lamp draws entered bodies; the player has chosen to bring the crowd onto the incline. When the Heavy blocks the rail, step onto the roadbed and position it as Cutter's nearest legal target. Its ten-hit durability means a real exposed stop, not one hit shared with ordinary Walkers. There is no Arc here and no bank: its five-unit mote and ordinary kill motes are lost rather than silently stored. Use Kit only if injured; it restores health once and then leaves the rack. Neither healing nor the moving tram protects against contact.

At the summit, read the board and inspect the open pass. Turn the lamp off before the return: bodies with no reachable lit beacon spread where they stand, so descend behind the observed crowd edge rather than treating darkness as a clearance. Use the existing manual depot-gate return if Rail remains selected; switching Gates locally restores the convenient dock road but closes the upper pass. Leaving the tram below or above changes the next approach's Heavy concentration. That is a deliberate lasting machine state, not an equipment unlock.

Failure/alternative: a second body becomes nearer during the Heavy stop, so automatic Cutter attacks it instead; the Heavy remains and the following crowd removes the lead. Reverse the tram and retry the approach, or abandon the summit objective and return. The seven-cell cargo advantage is only useful if the player can reach cargo; it does not purchase a safe clearing time. This is the credible minimal-equipment alternative to both powered plans.

B — Wet-yard breach, then walk: pay for a local control window

Keep Gates while earning the first bank. Insulation permits the hot-yard approach; draw ten ordinary Walkers to the edge, kill them and walk over their motes before fade. Pursuit applies within about ten metres; the bank is earned amid contact risk, not from a safe firing platform. If the bank is incomplete, take A's free machinery route or abort; no siphon, passive refill or successful ten-kill harvest is assumed.

Once full, set the tram lamp off and switch Rail. Step into the connected yard water and discharge on the crowd still there, then take the incline road/stairs while it recovers. The dry rail does not give Coil a dry stun: a Heavy already on the rail is unaffected. This plan separates from the tram rather than clearing its obstruction. If that Heavy also physically blocks the road, kill/reverse/retreat under ordinary rules; Campaign must not quietly draw a pass-through body.

Illustrative complete ledger: 60 ordinary arrivals, 10 killed/collected for the first bank, and all 50 survivors still wet and fresh at firing. Spend 10; the 50 drop 25 and become spent. Reach two five-unit motes: bank 10, leave 15 to fade. Total dropped 35, collected 20, spent 10, stored 10, ground-fade 15. Spending no time collecting instead leaves bank 0 and all 25 to fade. Both are legal; neither promises that collection or the entire climb fits the eight-second stun. The water's two-second power is separate, and any fixed source can keep it hot. A second paid stun buys control but not another yield from those survivors.

Read/inspect at the summit and return down the road to the same depot. Keep any refilled bank for a remaining wet obstruction or lose it at extraction. Failure/cost: dry or spent enemies remove the harvest advantage; no Kit covers contact mistakes; pausing for motes can spend the escape window. B buys a local departure from the yard, not suppression of the next dispatch or an insulated safe zone.

C — Leave a lure below, ride dark: pay to choose the launch crowd's destination

Earn ten ordinary kill motes at the dry edge while Gates holds the yard crowd; step over each actual drop. With no Insulation, do not wade into the lit yard to recover a lost mote. Prepare the tram with its lamp off. Plant the Beacon/bank dark, then arm it immediately before switching to Rail. The yard beacon darkens and eligible bodies retarget to the portable; the tram carries no competing light. Board and climb while the local destination remains below.

Proposed placement requirement to Campaign: a traversable dry side apron off the depot road, with room for the planted crowd's displayed press ring to remain off the boarding/return path. This is a placement of existing objects, not an asserted new room or approved asset. Do not integrate the illustration if the actual ground cannot provide it. Bodies within pursuit range still chase the player; a lit beacon is never protection from a pursuer.

At the provisional one unit per ten lit seconds, 10 buys at most 100 seconds including arming and withdrawal. That is a launch diversion, not the source scene's entire multi-minute ascent or a second-dispatch hold. At expiry the crowd spreads from the apron; it is neither deleted nor still magically held. A Heavy can still stop the dark tram; without the crowd following the lamp, C is buying separation for that stop rather than damage. Whether the separation lasts is a Campaign/Combat question, not a claimed success.

At the summit, perform the same evidence/pass work. On return, inspect the actual spread before approaching the depot; use manual gate routing or abort to the known baseline when the path remains reachable. Planting freed two cells, but recovering L+B needs two free cells, even when empty. Filling every freed cell with salvage trades those physical items away for this expedition. All collected charge was spent on lure time; no refund on retrieval. Unlike A this plan spends a bank and placement exposure; unlike B it has no water-control window, and cargo cannot make a collapsed lure work again.

The discovery that changes a later approach: salvage can pay for a short lure

The summit stores offer Siphon versus Kit, both inspectable beside the existing loose bundle and shelter; take one per expedition. Inspection records the recipe, even if the object is left or lost. Fitting the converter’s battery feed still requires shelter. The finding is useful because a bankable bundle can become emergency light, not because the player must use every discovered item.

Follow the integrated return, not the earlier proposal. Campaign r8 clears the rail-blocking Heavy for five charge. With the first incoming crowd withheld at the Collector, the player can set the tram’s standing state and leave early with the bundle; the Siphon and portable Beacon are unused insurance. Do not add a compulsory wait, an extra crowd or a fuel deficit to make the loadout seem necessary. A player who stays for another observation faces the later crowd: five charge already buys fifty lit seconds, while consuming Siphon and bundle adds thirty seconds of margin. The real choice is confidence and cargo against extra assurance, not owning a return key. Campaign owns the path, timing and ledgers.

The simplified rack rule, as a boundary example rather than another authored trip. Start . . Siphon B / . . L ., with B linked to Beacon and Siphon’s feed set to B. Put the wet bundle in top-row column 1: it touches neither the converter nor the bank. It is still valid fuel under U5. From an empty eligible bank, conversion gives 0 → 3 and frees the Siphon and bundle cells; from the adopted return’s five-charge bank, 5 → 8. The respective maximum lure durations are thirty and eighty lit seconds. No adjacency, field relinking, free starting fuel or new charge source is implied. Existing leakage still applies to cargo left in contact with a bank.

The superseded thirty-second-crossing proposal is preserved in the earlier proposal. Recipes and actual switched states persist; only extraction banks salvage, while rescue loses carried cargo and fuel. Once there is no useful state to change or information to obtain, omit the return. The first-expedition acquisition and recording-shelter reconciliation below remain in force.

Interface reconciliation after COL102 r2 — recording shelter established

Adopted Equipment rule, unchanged: the first Insulation offer is inspectable on the dry direct road outside the Lock Flight lock-house door. Inspection records the recipe; fitting and recording a rack still require a real shelter. Build Paths 6bc3f7 proposed carrying the inspected Insulation and Pumping-route Coil to the existing Tram summit shelter, assembling the legal four-cell Coil/Insulation rack there, and recording it there for later revisit issue.

Campaign DES105 r1 ee4202 moved that recording to the unspecified “Lock Flight lock house,” and COL102 r2 59ad65 correctly flagged that no shelter was established there. Lead has now closed the dependency in Campaign DES105 r2 de4893 by naming the Lock Flight quay dock, a shelter. Equipment accepts this as a legal alternative acquisition path: inspect Insulation on the dry road, return to the quay dock, assemble and record there. That route costs the return to the dock but can make the record available before Tram; carrying the components onward and recording at the summit shelter remains legal. Before either record exists, depart with a smaller legal package and use the manual route.

Affected interfaces: Colony can retain the four-cell record and tooling trajectory; Lead/Campaign owns the route cost and integrated visit; Equipment retains offer, recipe, rack and issue rules. No extra shelter, free first-visit rack, recipe exception, issue-cap change or district transfer is introduced. Source check used actual Markdown at Tasks cb7928, PMR007 6fb181, Campaign de4893, Colony 59ad65, Districts c1bbe1, Equipment ba5942 and this page 2c0973. Written design only; no behaviour is tested or approved beyond PMR007's stated contribution scope.

What this comparison earns — and what it does not

Keep the twelve-entry first catalogue for this draft; add no thirteenth item to repair this case. The most useful revision is a concrete Siphon discovery and legal preparation, not another damage tier. Cutter remains the fuel-free source and cheapest primary, the original bank can be linked to a different consumer at shelter, and the old Beacon becomes usable for a short job with three charge rather than being superseded by Coil. Arc, Prod and Driver still need distinct cases across the wider campaign; this one is not evidence that every catalogue entry is necessary or that twelve sustain the provisional campaign length.

REF107 / fcf9d4 and External Critique X32 / 4e4d20 are right to put within-district variety, not just district count, under scrutiny. Mature manifests are not launch quotas, but their many per-run choices cannot be answered by three family names or multiplying possible racks. Here the observable differences are which crowd follows, where the player stops to fight, whether wet bodies are a resource, and whether salvage is banked or burnt for a return. That is a narrower, inspectable claim. Combinations still cost authoring, cues and acquisition work. If later encounters repeatedly favour the same plan, revise those action choices or add a specifically missing verb; do not call sorting depth or enlarge the catalogue to reach a number.

Addressed handoffs and source revisions

• Lead — Campaign 9366c8 §3.2: “the summit berth supported” and seven equipment cells at departure cannot coexist with Colony's issue rules. I agree with COL102's correction. Prefer replacing that scene with one of these small legal starts; for a berth-supported scene, ordinary workshop issues Coil + default empty bank (3 cells), not Coil/Arc/two banks/Insulation/Kit (7). A six-cell tooling record also cannot be used while the assembly supports the berth. If the fuller field rack is important, author its actual offers and shelter fit before its first use. No increased issue cap is requested.
• Colony — fe7d88 COL-I2: first Insulation location and the first-Tram Circuit-set/record chain are specified above as proposals. Smaller-package revisit eligibility is explicit here. Inventory now classifies the two Lock Flight parts as one-cell nonconductive project cargo: no links, charge conversion, equipment issue or duplicate banking. These changes preserve one advanced service rather than hiding an exception.
• Combat — 6129ea / CMB102: countersign or revise these three same-objective approaches, particularly automatic target displacement at the Heavy stop and pursuit/press at the side-apron placement. No dry Coil stun, safe ten-kill funding or lure duration extension is claimed. Correct remaining historical §6 Spark-status and accounting copies in your own page when consolidating; its current effect table is already power-only and E3 owns pickup priority.
• Campaign/World — 9366c8, e1136a, 351f4c: name the apron, free manual depot return, offer placements and short-lure crossing; integrate the optional Collector intervention with actual supply state and essential-clue redundancy. The Collector's separate five-second winch versus two-second Coil issue at 75c09e is still an owning-page correction, not solved by this Tram example.
• PM: this is EQP102's Equipment submission, not CMB102's submission or acceptance of EQP101. Proposed placements and route timing remain integration dependencies; design only.

Pre-save World update read — WLD104 r25 / e99445. Its weather → supplied → harvested chain supports this example's loss of an expected charge source; the Siphon choice gives that learning a specific equipment consequence without requiring a new clue. Equipment qualifies its claim that late doors want “charge, not cargo”: after withholding a surge, a full-bank plan can be less dependable than a three-unit lure or the free machine route. The held-basin rack it names—Coil, two banks, Insulation—is five cells and needs an actually recorded revisit pattern for full issue, or field acquisition/shelter fitting; it is not a free first-visit Circuit set. Lead/Campaign own clue order and the actual destination for that harvest. No change to World's explanation is made here. Campaign, Colony, Combat and Tasks remained unchanged in this pre-save source check.

Exact processed sources, 2026-09-07: index/log and actual raw Markdown; Hub 693f1b, Brief 77e392, Tasks b68997, Team 3e5ce6, Expansion Brief 8e517e, Design Index 8edf4e, PM Reviews f62987 (PMU007), latest completed PMR006 a28870, Design Review ce94e4, Wiki Conventions 72bb0f; Design Document 5f9fbb (relevant machinery/rack/progression baseline, not current product scope), Campaign 9366c8, Districts e1136a, shared contract 8644ea, Combat 6129ea, Enemies 31ac57, Spark 454133, Colony fe7d88, World 351f4c, Collector 75c09e, Reference/Content Scale fcf9d4, External Critique 4e4d20. Own starting revisions: Equipment dc3aa2, Build Paths 7b7bf2, Inventory 9b0547, Utility 087718, Coil 0696cf, Arc fc64bb, Cutter 5f5713, Alternative Tools aaabb2; compared with r3 task evidence ca40f9 and the r1 historical baseline. All values and scenes are provisional, unplayed written design.

Why these are three families

Water combat, destination control and hauling under fire ask for different movement and expenditure. Their interactions overlap intentionally; none owns a private rule system or equipment key. A no-battery hauler remains valid and loses all motes, while keeping the free panel and valves.

Family 1 — Circuit Harvester

Legal middle H rack. Each table is a literal cell. C/C are one Coil. Link Bc → Coil, Ba → Arc; priority Bc then Ba. S is a cargo bundle. Both batteries touch only housings or another battery, so no leakage under E2.

Exploration and counterplay illustration. Isolate the known junction pool with its valve, then discharge: two seconds of door/indicator power and eight seconds of stun under shared 59f895. Use the short crossing only where Campaign states that its approach/traversal fits two seconds; otherwise take the sustained free panel/valve route. Harvesting a fixed-powered yard still requires Insulation for time in that water after the pulse expires. Crust e805d6 supplies a concrete countercase: its encrustation means no Coil stun, while its glow still means a possible kill mote. It can approach through the stunned group; move along the edge to make it the Cutter’s nearest target or abandon a mote. An already-spent Walker can still be stunned, so those cues are not interchangeable.

Why H versus G matters. H is better suited to remaining near a crowd and spending charge against density. G spends its same inventory budget on crossing linked machinery and recovering a mistake. Neither can simultaneously keep the other's Arc/reserve or cable/Kit without giving up the two cargo cells. Late storage preserves a previous useful item; it grants no extra damage or capacity per bank.

Family 2 — Route Shepherd

Legal late P rack. Link Bp → Beacon. F is the Prod's brace. The bank is isolated from both bundles; the other modules remain nonconductive.

Exploration interaction. With the panel set for the next yard intake, plant a lit portable on an accessible dry spur nearer an entered causeway crowd than its old target. Cross behind the crowd toward a deposit or an already-visible clue. Forecast intake stays the yard; only entered targets change. The free alternative is the panel switch, accepting the crossing crowd and changed door state rather than paying portable fuel.

Enemy counterplay. Local pursuit outranks the beacon: a body near the plant point still chases the player, while walls and flankers defeat Prod’s sector. A Grounder can darken a supplied fixed beacon; evaluate another reachable lit beacon, including the portable, and allow bodies to move. Shared 8644ea §2 now rules no alternate supply on a grounded run: Cable Reel cannot bypass that fault. Carrier's twelve-metre acquisition/loss and ordinary pursuit/beacon fallback remain provisional. A charged portable eight metres from a Carrier and nearer than the charged player can draw its role target; inside ordinary pursuit range it chases the player first. Outside twelve metres, no charge target is acquired. These are written distances, not tested safety. A battery-free Prod cannot kill for beacon fuel: charge before the shelter swap or use a reachable mote/Siphon, paying its bundle and slot.

Retrieval cost, concrete. Planting the pair frees two cells. Filling them with bundles does not give free retained equipment: make two cells free to retrieve, or leave the physical pair for that expedition. Its known recipe survives either choice. Disarm/empty/retrieve and the crowd immediately re-evaluates; darkness is not a guaranteed escape. P keeps useful space by displacement but never kills; F kills via finite fuel but has no shove. Swapping P to F needs shelter and a real primary change.

Family 3 — Salvage Breacher

Legal late D rack. D is the Driver brace; Bp → Beacon. Four wet bundles remain disconnected from the battery by the Driver, Kit and Beacon housings. Insulation is unnecessary for rack isolation here, but the player is unprotected in energized water.

Exploration interaction. From a service lane, target a visible loose deposit with a Driver tool shot. It creates the same bundle as close hand gathering; it neither delivers the bundle nor produces a bonus. The Hand Pump drains a compatible access channel for a walkable pickup route, but also removes its conduction path: draining the Head basin at the Lock Flight can close the door being approached. A later cable/Coil branch preserves connected water instead, paid by energizing everything on that network. Essential evidence remains intact and inspectable via the ordinary machinery path.

Enemy counterplay. Pursuers from two angles defeat a committed Driver shot; Cutter is a credible better choice on the cluttered return. Spark 454133 adds a wet-route cost: a lethal shot can energize the connected water the player intended to enter. Insulation or dry firing position answers that hazard; Prod avoids the lethal trigger but gives up kill charge. Shared 8644ea, Combat 6129ea's current table and Spark now agree on power-only death: the discharge stuns and sheds nothing, preserving Coil as the paid harvest/control action; an unshed kill still has its ordinary mote. The previous crossed-table request is no longer pending. Do not claim Driver reaches a Grounder on an elevated cable until Combat defines line of sight and height eligibility.

Why this family is not a weaker Harvester. Its ordinary plan minimizes fighting, carries four to six bankable bundles, and treats charge as an optional escape/access reserve. Harvester's preferred plan seeks a fresh wet mass and gives that cargo space to charge storage and Arc. Breacher can adopt an expensive Coil detour but loses most of the reason it chose this family. No additional hauling tax is needed to force a difference.

Acquisition and advancement

D023 selects the service structure and revisit limit; Lead 59f895 §10 adopts E7 and names this page the acquisition owner. Equipment accepts that transfer. The first-visit package details below are the Equipment definition to be mirrored by Colony; capital prices remain Colony/Lead proposals.

1. First departure and recovery. Free Cutter and empty Battery, freely decline the battery at shelter. Equipment does not charge per expedition. Known recipes, notes and banked progress survive rescue; current finds, cargo and charge do not. Discovered recipes survive even if their found item is left or lost. Inspection records how to request a tool, not an essential mystery flag.
2. First copies in the world. Place each first tool at an inspectable service/aid/machinery cache named on its item entry. Every first cache is reachable using existing movement, free panels/valves and an alternate route; equipment improves cost or timing, never uniquely gates the associated essential clue. The first named copy is a guaranteed authored offer, not random. Campaign determines actual district/room placement and safe knowledge order; these locations are proposals, not completed geography.
3. Repeat expedition choices. Recommend two to four offer sites along alternate routes as an initial placement budget, carried from the source as provisional. Once a tool is known, a site's clearly labelled category offers two specified alternatives, e.g. Battery versus Siphon or Kit versus Insulation; take one and the other is unavailable for that expedition. Offers are fixed for that visit, inspectable before taking, with no paid rerolls. This adds a choice under route pressure without inventing kill XP. If there is no fit, decline or drop cargo live; fitting links still needs shelter.
4. Middle preparation. Retain the source workshop's choice of one discovered starting module, occupying its normal rack cells, alongside the default empty Battery. Not every visit must depend on finding the same Coil again. An alternative primary can still be found and fitted on a route; Colony decides when reliable departure selection becomes available.
5. Later preparation under Colony’s advanced tooling. COL101 r3 / 06acdb now mirrors the service and issue boundary. Carry its one reusable support assembly and recipe-by-inspection proposal into this interface. When advanced tooling is selected, recommend a choice for first visits: Field tool = one known primary plus one known module; Circuit set = Cutter plus up to two known modules using at most three rack cells in total. Both get the normal empty Battery; all selected gear uses actual cells. These are configurations of Colony’s tooling service, not additional facilities or free benefits beside forward pumping/observation. An issued alternative primary’s brace counts toward the equipment allowance. Selecting another service retracts the tooling extras before departure.
6. Response to COL-I2: recorded racks for revisits. Agree with Colony’s narrower alternative: full-rack reissue only for a previously visited district, using an arrangement actually assembled and recorded at shelter. Cap issued equipment at six occupied cells including the default Battery and any primary brace. With EQP101’s eight-cell rack this leaves two cells for finds/cargo; it no longer means “banks nothing.” Empty banks and ordinary once-only yield remain. First visits retain the smaller packages so discovering combinations still changes that expedition; repeat investigations can choose reliability instead of forward extraction/observation. Lead 29f5b0 §5/10 and PM’s D023 select this boundary; Colony 06acdb §§2/4 mirrors eight cells, the six-cell issued cap, empty banks, visit/recipe/record triggers and two cells left for field finds. Capital prices and first placements remain proposals, so this is interface agreement rather than PM acceptance of the catalogue.
7. Costs and failure boundaries. Use Colony’s proposed four-bundle once-only workshop/tooling investments as its price candidates, not a second Equipment price list. Lead must reconcile them with the different hauling capacities. Inspection records recipes even on rescue; issued gear cannot be sold, dismantled to banked salvage, or stockpiled across support changes. The set of eligible modules is the catalogue on Equipment, subject to the ordinary rack/link/one-primary limits. A recorded rack does not include cargo or charge. First-cache paths let each family exist without buying advanced tooling. No recurring replacement payment or “full return” price is added.

This borrows inventory expression through scarce functional tools and discovery through reusable rules. It does not import a bag-shape puzzle, kill-level draft, colony upkeep loop and mystery key system merely because inspirations contain them.

D023 departure examples and the issued-cell limit

A first visit means no previous entry into that district; prior entry, even followed by rescue, makes a revisit. This is a departure-issuance flag, never a required notebook clue or an expedition counter that buys bigger statistics. Recipes require inspection; full patterns require actually assembling and recording a legal rack in shelter. Reject merely previewed combinations as issue patterns. This is Equipment’s explicit completion of COL-I2 for Colony to mirror.

Legal seven-cell late H arrangement: upper row = Cargo, Insulation, Coil-bank, Arc-bank; lower row = Coil, Coil, Arc, reserve-bank. The two lower Coil cells are adjacent; the cargo touches only Insulation and Coil housing, so all three banks are isolated under E2. Links stay Coil-bank → Coil and Arc-bank → Arc; the reserve remains storage until shelter rewiring. This pattern is legal after finding the seventh cell’s gear, never a seven-cell departure issue.

These totals include the base bank and any weapon brace. The middle/late branches above retain their alternative costs; the table illustrates legality, not a forced nine-step progression. No paid service is necessary to reach the tools through the world.

Conditional fuel sequence, for the six-cell H rack. Priority Coil then Arc; begin at 10/10 after earning twenty ordinary kill units locally (ten ready Coil earlier under D023). Discharge into forty fresh ordinary conducting bodies already in the connected water: stored 0/10, ten spent, twenty dropped. If two five-unit motes are reached, storage becomes 10/10; the other ten remain on the ground until faded, stolen or otherwise accounted. An Arc burst then spends its ten; end 10/0. The drawn bank accepts nothing, and the full Coil bank accepts nothing. A Carrier near a reachable charged player may still target them; neither the full bank nor local pursuit disappears because Arc ended. New arrivals outside the cast footprint remain fresh. For an isolated pulse, water power ends after two seconds while stunned survivors recover at eight; fixed supply overrides that expiry. No assumed collection speed, survival, crowd clearance or unknown late-cohort kill count is smuggled into this illustration.

Current campaign integration cost. Collector 75c09e §4 still asks one two-second Coil pulse to run a five-second powered winch continuously. Recommend a hand-cranked ratchet that retains work: the pulse advances two seconds and the player cranks the remaining three seconds at the threatened outfall, while the existing roughly forty-second all-manual route remains free. This preserves the spend-versus-exposure choice without requiring a second battery, recipe or repeat visit; Campaign owns adoption and exact wording. The former Stop/refuge conflict is closed: Lead 29f5b0, World d108c1 and Colony 06acdb all preserve free dry/manual return while powered services die on the announced cascade. Equipment adds no payment or recipe gate.

Experimentation versus sorting and strict upgrades

Eight cells buy composition; a chosen primary and one-to-one banks keep costs. Nonconductive housings will produce reusable safe arrangements, so packing itself will often become solved. Accept that and provide saved layouts and explicit charge priority. Preserve the live decision to take one more wet bundle, not repeated drag work as content. Links make fuel commitments visible but should never need to follow cell adjacency.

Growth is a larger menu of dependable behaviours, world situations that make different ones worthwhile, and a choice of departure packages. None of the original seven modules is retired; Cutter, small batteries, healing and protection still solve different problems. The strongest contrary proposal is a conventional rarity/damage ladder with frequent kill-XP choices: clearer rapid escalation and less dependence on discoveries. I prefer the behaviour/acquisition path because a known valve route and an old tool can stay valuable in later places. The unresolved risk is cadence: if route offers and powered actions are too sparse, this may still feel like a routing game with occasional combat. Written choices do not resolve that future feel question.