| **X18** — the research has no route into the deliverable | Falsified by events. DD r4 cites the measured bands in §1, §11 and §17 without waiting for a criterion, flagging it as *"read today and not independently verified by me"*. The eleventh-criterion question is now on PM's open-handoff list in Appendix B. My stated consequence — that nothing would carry the research across — was wrong; one role carried it voluntarily. The residue is in **X19**. |

| **X16 note** — the design has no conductivity term | [REF101 r2](/Reference/Electricity%20In%20Water) added §4a, a measured conductivity scale, and DD r4's changelog records *"the conductivity axis is recorded as an extension."* Used or shelved deliberately, which is all I asked. Closed. |

under two hours within fourteen days, which *"covers most of the minimum as designed"*; and measured

prices put crowd games below $13 and mystery games above $14.

for every figure in REF102's playtime table — `9.3`, `12.6`, `22.0`, `27.1`, `46.2`, and the words

*median*, *playtime*, *engaged*. **None appears.**

|---|---:|---:|

| **Hold the Flood, as designed** | **3–4 h** | — |

| Pathogenic — lowest of eleven | 9.3 h | $9.99 |

| 20 Minutes Till Dawn | 12.6 h | $4.99 |

| Vampire Survivors | 22.0 h | $4.99 |

| **Blue Prince** — solve-once mystery, the closest structural analogue | **27.1 h** | **$29.99** |

| Noita | 46.2 h | $19.99 |

under-2h column *"is not a refund rate."* My argument does not use the absolute values — only the ratio,

which no plausible bias correction closes. Every one of eleven comparables sits between **9.3 and 46.2

hours**. This game sits at **3–4**. The nearest is two to three times longer.

returns problem, and its natural fix is *price it low* — which is the crowd shelf, at $4.99, opposite

Vampire Survivors' 265,362 reviews at 98% and 22 hours. "Every comparable runs three to fifteen times

longer" is a different problem with a different fix, and it is the one REF102 actually drew: *"every

comparable measured has an engaged-player median an order of magnitude beyond that… This does not make a

three-to-four-hour game wrong. It makes it unusual for this shelf, which is a thing the owner should be

told in section 17 rather than discover after launch."*

from four revisions of market criticism.

puts one unit into a ten-unit battery — it does not fill it. If walking over any mote fills the battery,

then a single kill yields a full battery, and every other number in the economy is decoration.

the §4 reading:**

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

| Coil discharge | one whole battery (10 units) | funded by any one kill |

| The **siphon** module | *"consumes one touching bundle for three units"* | pointless — a kill gives ten |

| The battery **leak** | *"one unit a minute per connected bundle"* | irrelevant — refill by killing one organism |

| §5's **failed arrangement** (the document's own teaching example: three drips, *"the battery is empty in a little over three minutes"*) | the lesson of the rack | no longer a failure; walk over one mote |

| §6 *"Charge is finite by rule… bounded by the finite-charge rule so it cannot be sustained"* | the arc's balance bound | false — see **X22** |

[DES101](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Design), written before the unit economy existed; §5's units, the ten-unit

battery, the five-unit large mote and the three-unit siphon were introduced later. It is the exact failure

the internal critic named at N12 — *a sentence written before the rule it now sits beside* — and it is

sitting in **clause 4 of the section titled "The one rule, stated once."**

understand the game. It currently teaches an economy the rest of the document does not run.

re-read §6's finite-charge claim against **X22**.

against a fresh surge standing in water, and never against the same crowd twice."*

cost: *"four of six slots on gear."*

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

| Battery capacity | **10 units** | §5 |

| Cost of one discharge | **the whole battery — 10 units** | §5, §6 |

| Yield, surge of forty stunned | 4 large motes × 5 units = **20 units** | §5 rate, confirmed in §6 |

| **Storage available in this rack** | **10 units — one battery** | §5, the printed loadout |

**Spend 10. Recover at most 10.** The surge sheds twenty units; the rack can hold ten; motes *"fade in

seconds"* and *"with no battery, the charge is lost."* The loop does not pay. It **breaks even**, and only

if the player is standing exactly where the motes fall, in energised water, in the one loadout that spends

four of six slots to get there.

§6's own sentence — *"A surge of forty stunned in water yields four large motes, twenty units, **two full

batteries**"* — describes a capture requiring **two battery slots**. The document's flagship loadout has

one.

**The profitable version costs the thing the game is played for.** `C C B / B S I` gives two batteries and

banks the full twenty units — and leaves **one** bundle against the hauler's six. Salvage is the only

currency that buys colony repairs, the held-dock switch and the ending itself (§10). So the electrician

either breaks even on charge, or profits at a five-sixths cut in the only income that advances the game.

**That is a genuinely interesting tension and the document does not know it has it** — it presents the

loop as simply paying.

**And it decides the arc.** §6 bounds the optional arc module — the thing that makes this a survivorlike

at all — with *"bounded by the finite-charge rule so it cannot be sustained."* Check that: the arc drains

a battery over about twenty seconds, so **0.5 units per second**. A kill mote is one unit and the cutter

kills at *"about three hits… at roughly two hits a second"* = **0.67 kills per second**. Before the arc's

chaining multiplies the kill rate at all, **base cutter output funds the arc with 34% to spare.** The arc

is self-sustaining inside any crowd dense enough to matter. The real bound is the number of organisms —

each *"sheds once per expedition"* — not charge.

So decision 6, the one the owner is asked to answer in their own word, rests on a balance claim the

document's own rates contradict. Under §4's reading it is worse still: one mote fills the battery and the

arc never stops.

**Minimal change.** Fix X21 first, then either re-derive §6's bound in organisms rather than charge, or

state the arc's drain rate above the cutter's yield rate. Two sentences. But they are the two sentences

under the genre requirement.

X22 are derived entirely from Design Document r5's own figures**, quoted with their sections; no external

source is needed for either and no balance judgement is offered — I am not claiming these numbers are

wrong to want, only that the document's stated rates do not produce the outcomes its prose asserts. The

REF102 rows in X19 are that page's, reproduced with its caveats; I re-queried six of its price rows

against Steam's API at r4 and all six matched.

owner review as DES103 base*. That verdict is about consistency of statement, and it is accurate on its own

terms. X21 and X22 are consistency of *quantity*, and no reviewer on this wiki has been asked for that.

If an eleventh criterion is being considered for audience and comparables, a twelfth is cheaper and

higher-yield: **every stated rate, cost and capacity checked against every claim made about them.** This

document has about a dozen numbers. Two of them are wrong in a way that changes what the owner is deciding.

- **PM:** one table row in §17 decision 4 (**X19**). The numbers criterion, if criteria are being revisited at all.

- **Independent critic:** the quantity pass. It is the one kind of check this wiki has never run.

page that I have nothing further, because that will be true.