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1 | # Hold the Flood — Combat Rules |
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3 | **CMB101 · r5 · 2026-09-06 · Combat and Enemy Designer · In review — countersigning the Lead's rulings.** |
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| 4 | r5 brings this page onto [the shared contract r3](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction), which ruled on every proposal here: **R1, R2, R4, R5 and R9 adopted; R10 declined; R3 ruled at two powered seconds and an eight-second stun.** The effect table is amended to those numbers — **no page keeps eight seconds of powered water** — and [Equipment's partial countersignature](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) is recorded row by row. Adds the presentation-category table [PMR006](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR006) assigns to Lead and Combat, the arc's hop reach and Crust eligibility, the Heavy's yield exception, and the pulse-overlap boundary Equipment proposed. The **Spark row is the one open disagreement**, and it is stated as such rather than resolved on this page. |
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5 | Sources read: [Design Document r14 ec1b6c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) §§3–6, 8, 12–16 and Appendix A; the shared-rule contract [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) and its r1 seed 8afc3c; [Campaign 34dc09](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign); [Design Document r15 5f9fbb](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=5f9fbb); [Design Review REV104 r1 80a882](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review?revision=80a882); [Enemies c63228](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies?revision=c63228); [Cutter](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter); [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment); [World and Mystery r20 7699de](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de); [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief); [Design Index dd01c7](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index?revision=dd01c7); [Tasks eb8c03](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Tasks?revision=eb8c03); [PMR003](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR003); [Design Review REV103 r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review); [Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Brief) D013/D016/D019–D021; [Wiki Conventions](/Wiki%20Conventions). |
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6 | [Design Index](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Index) · [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) · [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) · [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) |
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| 8 | **Nothing on this page has been built, prototyped, simulated or played.** Every number is a proposal. Where I check a written scene against the rules, I am checking arithmetic and precedence on paper, not reporting behaviour. |
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| 10 | --- |
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| 11 | ||||||||
| 12 | ## What this page is for |
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14 | The Lead owns the spine rule — conduction, power, attraction, charge — and as of [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) that page is the shared-rule contract, with [Design Document §4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Document?revision=ec1b6c) as its derivation. **That rule is canonical there, not here.** This page does three things the spine rule deliberately does not: |
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15 | |||||||
| 16 | 1. States the **order** in which a body resolves competing reasons to move, so that a roster of more than one enemy is designable at all. |
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17 | 2. States the **shared grammar** of targeting, damage, status and charge, so that [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) and this page cannot invent two incompatible systems. |
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18 | 3. Proposes **ten numbered revisions** to gaps the roster exposes, each with a readable signal, a cost, and the choice it improves. |
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| 20 | Where I restate an adopted rule it is a copy for legibility and the Design Document wins. Where I propose something it is marked **[Proposal]** and numbered. |
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| 21 | ||||||||
| 22 | --- |
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| 23 | ||||||||
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24 | ## 0. Current state: what is adopted, proposed, or withdrawn |
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25 | |||||||
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26 | *This section replaces the two stacked reconciliation appendices r2 and r3 added. [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) asked for one current contract rather than another layer, and it is right: the older narratives are in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat/history) and are summarised in the revision log at the foot of this page.* |
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27 | |||||||
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28 | **Where the rules live.** The Lead owns the spine rule, and [Power and Attraction r2 69024c](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction?revision=69024c) is the shared-rule contract — the page to cite for conduction, power, attraction and charge. [Equipment](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) owns items. This page owns **the order in which a body resolves its reasons to move**, the **targeting/damage/status grammar**, and **composition**. Where the three disagree, the contract wins on rules and Equipment wins on its own items; this page names the disagreement rather than routing around it. |
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29 | |||||||
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30 | ### 0.1 The intensity rule |
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31 | |||||||
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32 | Everything PMR004 asked to be separated — fixed power, the coil, the arc, a Spark's death — separates on one principle the design already has. GDD §4's grounding note observes that real electrofishing uses **one electrode at two intensities**, a weak field that draws and a stronger one that stuns. Applied to bodies: |
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33 | |||||||
| 34 | > **Current does two different things to two different kinds of body.** |
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35 | > **To the surveyor**, energised water is *damage* — one health per second, prevented by insulation, at any intensity. **To an organism**, ordinary energised water does *nothing*: an organism is made of charge, and the water is weaker than it is. Only a **bank-strength discharge** reaches an organism, and what it does is **stun and make it shed**, never damage. **Nothing in this game damages an organism with electricity.** The arc damages by conducting the *cutter's hits* along bodies — a weapon effect with a weapon's cue, not a water effect. |
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36 | |||||||
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37 | This is a **proposal to the Lead**, not a deduction: it is the smallest rule that answers all four of PM's questions at once, and it is what stops a [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark)'s death quietly supplying a chain-kill rule. |
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38 | |||||||
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39 | ### 0.2 The effect contract — Combat's half, for Equipment to countersign |
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40 | |||||||
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41 | PMR004 asked Combat and Equipment for **one** table. This is Combat's half, written to match [Coil C1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Coil) and [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc) rather than against them. **Where Equipment had a number and this page had a different one, Equipment's is adopted and the row says so.** It is not agreed until Equipment says so. |
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42 | |||||||
| 43 | | | **Fixed power** (panel-supplied) | **Coil** | **Arc** | **Spark's death** | |
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| 44 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
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45 | | **Power duration** (water energised) | While the branch is switched to it — a state, not an interval | **2 s — [the Lead's ruling](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction), countersigned here. r4's eight seconds is withdrawn, and so is Equipment's original eight;** the Lead's reason is that a short power window separated from a long stun lets the surveyor collect inside the water without insulation being compulsory | **None.** The arc does not energise water or machinery ([Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc), adopted) | **2 s.** The one place a second number is kept, and its reason: one body's charge, not a full bank's | |
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| 46 | | **Stun** | **None** — below bank strength | **8 s**, every conducting body sampled in the connected water at the instant of the discharge | None | **Disputed — see 0.5** | |
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| 47 | | **Damage to the surveyor** | 1/s in the water unless insulated | 1/s for its 2 s unless insulated, so **an uninsulated discharge costs two health of five** | None | 1/s for its 2 s unless insulated. **Multiple overlapping sources do not multiply the one-per-second hazard** (Equipment's boundary, adopted) | |
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| 48 | | **Damage to organisms** | **None** | **None** — it stuns; it does not hurt | The cutter's hit, conducted: **at most 3 additional bodies per direct hit**, each once per hit, each hop needing proximity and line of sight ([Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc), countersigned both ways). **Hop reach, ties and Crust eligibility are specified in §6** at Equipment's request | **None** | |
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49 | | **Propagation** | The whole connected water body of that circuit | The whole connected water body the surveyor touches | **Body to body only**, bounded as above | The whole connected water body the Spark stood in | |
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50 | | **Refresh / repeat** | Continuous while switched | A fresh discharge re-stuns; a spent crowd sheds nothing more | One burst per full bank, ~10 s, no extension, no retrigger from a chained hit | Once, on death. A stunned Spark is alive and discharges if killed during the stun | |
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51 | | **Charge yield** | None | 5 units per **complete ten** stunned bodies that have not already shed; the remainder is lost, which is the price of a small pulse (Equipment countersigns the rounding). **The Heavy's exception is defined in §6** | 1-unit mote from each killed body that has not already shed; the drawn bank takes none of it, and a [Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) may take it off the ground | Its 1-unit mote if unshed — that is the *kill*. **Whether the discharge itself sheds is the disputed row** | |
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52 | | **Readable state** | Steady beacon; arcs along the water's edges | Arcs; stun posture; a flat, mote-less feedback when nothing sheds | Direct hits distinguished from chain links; bank commitment and remaining seconds | Flickering outline before; arcs after; no stun posture on anything | |
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54 | **Boundaries between overlapping pulses** — proposed by Equipment, adopted here as Combat's rule. A paid discharge **samples the conducting bodies in its wet footprint at the instant it fires**; bodies that arrive later do not inherit that stun from the two seconds of ordinary power. A fresh paid pulse **resets** an eligible survivor's recovery to eight seconds from that pulse — it never adds durations and never resets spent state. Removing a connection stops power crossing it but does not cancel a stun already applied. A temporary source expiring removes only its own contribution: fixed power, or a later Spark pulse, can keep the water hot. **An arc burst is legal and useful in a channel with no power at all**, because it never touches the water. |
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56 | **Still unresolved, and now load-bearing in two directions:** whether fixed panel power energises a branch's open channel water. The contract lists the district's switched circuit as a source of current but never says the branch's water is a standing hazard. **The two readings pull opposite ways, and that is why it needs a ruling rather than an inference.** [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) told this page that a lit yard's channel *is* fixed-powered and cannot go inert. But the Lead's stated reason for ruling two seconds is that a short window lets the surveyor collect *without insulation being compulsory* — which is false in a lit branch if the panel is holding that same water hot. **My recommendation, reversing r4's:** fixed power should **not** energise open channel water. Otherwise a lit branch is un-waded without insulation, which deletes the electrician's whole invitation play, and the Lead's own reason for the two-second ruling stops working. Equipment reads it the other way and countersigns a "continuous supplied-water hazard". **Lead owns it (C2); Encounter A prices both readings rather than assuming one.** |
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57 | |||||||
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58 | ### 0.3 The roster, and who owns which part |
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59 | |||||||
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60 | Eight roles. Three are the Lead's, on [Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign); four are this page's; one is a merge. **[PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) accepts the Walker naming for coordination and treats the merged roster and the bounded Carrier as proposals**, which is what they are. |
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61 | |||||||
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62 | | Role | Owner | Precedence line it exercises ([§2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)) | Status | |
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| 63 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
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| 64 | | **[Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker)** | Campaign / Combat | **Line 3**, ordinary attraction | Base role. Naming accepted by PMR005 | |
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65 | | **[Floater](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Floater)** | **Combat**, transferred from Campaign by the contract r3 §7 | **Line 2 while its water flows** (its target is the flow); **line 3 when it stops** | Adopted unchanged, and now carried on a role page here with the Lead's definition attributed | |
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66 | | **Heavy** | Campaign ([§4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)) | **Line 3.** It is a Walker that a doorway cannot be cleared past quickly | Adopted. **This page's request to replace its ten-hit count with a phrase is withdrawn** — PMR005 declines it and is right that a number is inspectable where a phrase is not | |
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| 67 | | **[Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier)** | Combat | **Line 2**, nearest reachable loose charge in acquisition range | Merge of Campaign's Static with this page's Carrier. Proposal | |
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| 68 | | **[Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor)** | Combat | **Line 2**, nearest wet ground | Proposal | |
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| 69 | | **[Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust)** | Combat | **Line 3.** Ordinary behaviour; only its physics differ | Proposal | |
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| 70 | | **[Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark)** | Combat | **Line 3.** Ordinary behaviour; only its death differs | Proposal | |
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| 71 | | **[Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)** | Combat | **Line 2**, nearest reachable powered cable run | Proposal, pending the R9 questions in 0.4 | |
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73 | **The roster is eight, and the contract's §7 now lists all eight as Combat's**, with the Floater transferred here. r5 stops this page saying "six" anywhere. |
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| 75 | **Corrected in r4:** r2 of this page said all four Campaign roles sat at line 2. They do not, and PMR005 caught it — only the Floater does, and only while its water flows. Ordinary Walker, Heavy, Crust and Spark attraction is line 3; a role sits at line 2 only when its *target* is something other than a beacon. |
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| 77 | ### 0.5 The Spark row — the one open disagreement, and my recommendation |
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| 78 | ||||||||
| 79 | [PMR006](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR006) names this as a live contradiction and asks Lead and Combat to choose one row. The two rows are: |
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| 81 | - **The contract r3 §4:** a Spark killed in water energises it for two seconds, **and the conducting bodies in it that have not shed are stunned and shed by the ordinary rule**; an uninsulated surveyor is hurt; nothing is chained or killed. |
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| 82 | - **This page and the [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) page:** the two-second hazard threatens the surveyor and does nothing to organisms. |
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| 83 | ||||||||
| 84 | **My recommendation is the power-only death, and [Equipment independently recommends the same](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment)** — which is corroboration, not the argument. The argument is dominance: |
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| 86 | > **A Spark that stuns and sheds is a free coil.** The coil is a two-cell module plus a full ten-unit bank, and what it buys is exactly this: stop a wet crowd, make it shed, collect. If killing one Spark does the same for nothing, then in any channel where Campaign places Sparks the coil is strictly dominated — and it is dominated by an event **the player does not choose**, because the cutter cannot be withheld ([R6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)). The design's signature paid action would be outperformed by an accident. |
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| 88 | It also spends the once-per-organism yield without a decision, which is the rule the whole charge economy rests on. |
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| 90 | **A middle row, if the Lead wants a Spark to matter to the crowd and not only to the surveyor: it stuns but does not shed.** That gives the role disruption without giving it harvest, and it keeps the coil's monopoly on turning a crowd into charge. It costs one more sentence and no new concept. I would take power-only first and this second; either is better than the crowd-shedding version. |
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| 92 | **Until the Lead rules, the contract is the working baseline**, as Equipment says — so the [Spark page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) now carries the contract's row as current, with this objection beside it, rather than silently contradicting the contract. |
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| 94 | ### 0.6 Presentation categories — the list PMR006 asks Lead and Combat for |
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| 96 | PMR006: *"Campaign says eight enemy silhouettes; Combat/Enemies alternates between six and eight; External Critique says three. A production decision cannot be based on all three."* The count is **eight roles**, and r5 fixes the six/eight drift on this page and on [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies). But a role is not a silhouette, and the useful number is the number of **new drawn assets**, which is smaller. |
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| 98 | **Nothing below is located, inspected, licensed, downloaded, purchased or created, and no availability is claimed.** This is the category list [REF109's](/Reference/Electroreception) researcher was asked to audit against, not an asset request. |
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| 99 | ||||||||
| 100 | | Role | Presentation category | What it actually needs | |
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| 101 | | --- | --- | --- | |
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| 102 | | **Walker** | **Base body** | The one enemy asset. GDD §14 already records it as the project's first likely approval request | |
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| 103 | | **Anchor** | **Pose** | The base body, half-submerged and still, low in the water | |
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| 104 | | **Grounder** | **Pose + position** | The base body up a cable, off the ground. Nothing else is ever there, so position carries the identification | |
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| 105 | | **Carrier** | **Pose + existing UI** | The base body leaning toward its target, which the forecast overlay already draws | |
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| 106 | | **Floater** | **Pose + engine-drawn cue** | The base body riding low, with a wake. Wake is engine-drawn | |
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| 107 | | **Crust** | **Licensed edit of the base body** | Same outline broken by encrustation. Whether a given asset may be edited depends on that asset's own licence, not its host's general statement | |
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| 108 | | **Spark** | **Licensed edit + engine-drawn cue** | Same outline with a flicker. Flicker is motion, not a second sprite | |
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| 109 | | **Heavy** | **Scaled base body** | Bulk. The one role whose cue is size, and the reason Campaign gives for it is economic rather than visual | |
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| 110 | | — | **Engine-drawn, no asset** | Cutter target line; press ring per crowd on the existing forecast overlay; Grounder's irregular flicker plus a cable spark; a flat mote-less feedback when a discharge sheds nothing | |
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| 111 | | — | **Audio, undesigned** | The Spark's rising whine as it enters cutter reach. **This is the gap that cannot be closed in writing**; the visual fallback is the target line plus the flicker | |
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| 112 | ||||||||
| 113 | **So the honest production number is one base body, five poses, two licensed edits and one scale** — not eight new creatures, and not three. **Cut candidates, in the order I would cut them:** the Crust first (its job is the least load-bearing of the new roles, and the once-per-organism rule already bounds the coil without it); then merging the Heavy into the Anchor, since both are a body that will not move out of your way, sited dry and wet. That is a judgement, not a costing. |
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114 | |||||||
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115 | ### 0.4 What is still open, stated as questions with my position |
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116 | |||||||
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117 | | # | Question | Owner | Position I proceed on | |
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| 118 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
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119 | | C1 | Does Equipment countersign the effect contract in 0.2? | Equipment | **Partly, and the parts are named.** Equipment accepts the bounded Arc, the separation of water power from weapon damage, the complete-ten rounding, and R6–R8 as carried; it withdrew its own eight-second power proposal for the Lead's two. **It is not fully countersigned while the Spark rows disagree (0.5)** | |
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| 120 | | C2 | Does fixed panel power energise a branch's open channel water? | Lead | **Recommendation reversed in r5: no.** If it does, a lit branch cannot be waded without insulation, the electrician's invitation play is deleted, and the Lead's own stated reason for the two-second ruling stops working. PMR004 asserted yes and Equipment countersigns yes; the contract says neither. Encounter A now prices both readings | |
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| 121 | | C3 | ~~Is press bounded by crowd size (R2)?~~ | — | **Closed. Adopted** in contract r3 §3, ring and all, with the pumping district's tuning bound restated as checkable | |
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| 122 | | C4 | R9 — a Grounder darkens a beacon. **Which connected consumers lose power? What alternate supply exists? What is the recovery?** | Lead + World | **R9 itself is allowed** by contract r3 §2, with the flicker, the cable spark and the failing-branch marker as its signals. The three sub-questions are still open and Equipment records the alternate-source scope as open too. My position: a grounded run loses **everything on that run**, beacon and hatch alike; there is **no alternate supply**; recovery is killing the body or re-switching the branch | |
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| 123 | | C5 | ~~R10 — arc through energised water?~~ | — | **Closed. Declined** by the contract, as this page had already withdrawn it. Recorded there as the alternative | |
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| 124 | | C11 | The Spark row (0.5) | Lead | **Power-only death.** A stunning-and-shedding Spark is a free coil, delivered by an event the player cannot choose. Equipment recommends the same. Middle option if the Lead wants crowd effect: stuns but does not shed | |
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| 125 | | C12 | Presentation categories (0.6) | Lead + Reference | One base body, five poses, two licensed edits, one scale, plus engine-drawn cues. Offered as the list REF109's audit can work against | |
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126 | | C6 | Are the role names final? | World | No. They are functional placeholders with the mechanic in the name; World owns the fiction and should rename freely | |
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| 127 | | C7 | Do damage numbers exist (R8)? | Lead + Equipment | **Recommendation, not a ban**, and PMR005 is right that the owner forbids none of it. Different *hit counts* are fine and always were. What R8 argues against is a published ladder for weapons to be priced against | |
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| 128 | | C8 | Is the status list closed at three (R7)? | Equipment | **Three for this draft**, extended by a revision of this page that states the reason. The [prod](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Alternative%20Tools)'s push is *movement*, not a status | |
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| 129 | | C9 | Cue overlap: role, spent charge, conductivity, imminent discharge | Lead | **Narrowed after PMR005.** The contract's "size and tint" and Campaign's "not by tint alone" are not a contradiction, and r2 of this page overstated it as one. The real concern stands and is smaller: **four facts want cues and brightness cannot carry more than one.** My proposal is glow = remaining yield, encrustation = non-conduction, flicker = imminent discharge, silhouette and position = role. Lead states the redundant set | |
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| 130 | | C10 | The [Glossary](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Glossary) says the arc drains a bank in "about twenty seconds"; GDD §6, GDD §13 and [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc) all say ten | Lead / Editor | Ten. Reported, not edited | |
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131 | |||||||
| 132 | --- |
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| 133 | ||||||||
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134 | ## 1. The central risk, answered first |
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| 135 | ||||||||
| 136 | The strongest thing about this design is that one rule answers four questions, and every reviewer on this wiki has said so. **A roster of enemies is the most likely way to wreck it.** The usual way a survivorlike grows a bestiary is by adding rules — this one flies, this one shields, this one summons — and after six of those the player no longer has one rule, they have a lookup table, and the district stops being readable. |
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| 137 | ||||||||
| 138 | So the roster is built on a constraint rather than a licence: |
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| 139 | ||||||||
| 140 | > **A role may only subtract from the spine rule, or restate an existing clause about itself. It may not add a new clause.** |
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| 141 | ||||||||
| 142 | Concretely, the six roles in [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) introduce exactly **two** new facts about bodies, and both are already in the player's vocabulary: |
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| 143 | ||||||||
| 144 | | New fact | Already in the vocabulary as | |
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| 145 | | --- | --- | |
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| 146 | | Some bodies do not conduct | **Insulation** — the module that stops current, in the rack and on the surveyor (GDD §5) | |
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| 147 | | Some bodies discharge | **The coil** — a stored discharge that flows into whatever conductive thing it touches (GDD §5) | |
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| 148 | ||||||||
| 149 | Everything else a role does is *not answering the light*: it targets something else, or it stops something else being lit. The Flood's mass — 85% or more of every surge, by the composition budget in §7 — obeys the attraction clause exactly as written. **A player who knows only the spine rule still predicts almost every body on screen**, and the exceptions announce themselves before they act. |
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| 150 | ||||||||
| 151 | The credible alternative is the one the genre normally takes: give enemies stats, and give the player numbers to beat them with. I am against it for a reason specific to this game rather than for taste. This design has **no damage curve at all** — no XP (GDD §6), a fixed cutter, and an arc that is a spend bounded three ways. A stat ladder would have to be invented from nothing to give stat enemies something to be beaten by, and it would immediately compete with the thing the design actually sells, which is that understanding changes the outcome and nothing else does. See **R8**. |
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| 152 | ||||||||
| 153 | --- |
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| 154 | ||||||||
| 155 | ## 2. The precedence stack [Proposal R1 — a clarification, not a change] |
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| 156 | ||||||||
| 157 | GDD §4 states pursuit range and attraction in one paragraph and does not order them: *"Two things move organisms besides beacons: pursuit range… and press."* With one enemy type that is enough. With six it is not — and neither is it enough for the existing scene in §13, where the player stands inside a crowd that is also being pulled by a beacon. |
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| 158 | ||||||||
| 159 | **Every body, every frame, resolves the first line that applies to it:** |
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| 160 | ||||||||
| 161 | | # | Clause | Applies when | Source | |
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| 162 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
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| 163 | | 0 | **Stunned** | It is inside the 8 s stun of a coil discharge, and it conducts | Adopted; GDD §13 states 8 s | |
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| 164 | | 1 | **Pursuit** | The surveyor is within its pursuit range: break off and chase; drift back when out of range | Adopted; GDD §4 | |
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| 165 | | 2 | **Role target** | Its role names a target other than a beacon — Anchor: nearest wet ground. Carrier: nearest reachable loose charge. Grounder: nearest reachable powered cable run | **[Proposal]** — the only new line | |
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| 166 | | 3 | **Attraction** | A lit beacon is reachable: walk to the nearest one, re-evaluated continuously; hold on arrival; never leave a held beacon for a farther light | Adopted; GDD §4, World W1 | |
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| 167 | | 4 | **Spread** | No lit beacon is reachable: press outward along the entry branch, both ways | Adopted; GDD §4 | |
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| 168 | ||||||||
| 169 | Two consequences worth stating, because they are the ones a designer will get wrong: |
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| 170 | ||||||||
| 171 | - **Pursuit outranks attraction.** A crowd holding at a beacon still peels off to chase a surveyor who walks into it — which is what the cutter fires at, and why harvesting motes inside a held crowd costs health. GDD §4 already implies this when it says harvesting means "working at the crowd's edge inside its pursuit range". R1 only writes the order down. |
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| 172 | - **Line 2 sits below pursuit and above attraction.** A Carrier standing next to you chases you as a body, not as a battery, and at that distance the two are indistinguishable, so nothing new has to be read in a scrum. The role only shows at range, which is where the player has time to read it. |
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| 173 | ||||||||
| 174 | **Cost of R1:** none to the player; it removes an ambiguity. **Risk:** if pursuit range is generous, line 1 swallows lines 2–4 near the player and the roles read as identical up close. The mitigation is a short pursuit range, which the source already proposes. That is a tuning bound, and it is unverified. |
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| 175 | ||||||||
|
176 | **Merged crowds, added in r3 at [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004)'s request.** Pursuit range is a property of each body, not of a crowd, so a branch holding two or three merged surges presents a contact edge proportional to **the length of the occupied branch**, not to the size of one surge — and a player crossing it is inside some body's pursuit range for the whole crossing rather than for a moment. Two consequences: [R2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat)'s ring is what makes that legible before the player commits, and GDD §15's tuning bound should be checked against the **third dispatch's merged crowd**, not the first surge, because that is where the crossing is actually unsurvivable. Neither is verified; both are checkable on paper once press has a bound. |
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| 177 | ||||||||
|
178 | --- |
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| 179 | ||||||||
| 180 | ## 3. Crowd pressure: press gets a bound and a drawing [Proposal R2] |
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| 181 | ||||||||
| 182 | **Adopted:** a gathered crowd's edge creeps outward along its branch during the quiet interval; each surge is larger, so the held crowd's radius grows; "quiet" means a moving line you can read. **Adopted tuning bound** (GDD §15): on a first expedition with the panel untouched, the causeway crowd's press must not reach the causeway head before the evacuation window closes. |
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| 183 | ||||||||
| 184 | **The problem.** Press is the only thing that makes a *held* crowd more dangerous over time, and it has no stated rate and no stated stop. As written it is an unbounded timer, which means (a) the §15 tuning bound is a bound on an unbounded process, which is fragile, and (b) I cannot compose an encounter around a held crowd without knowing whether its edge reaches the doorway in twenty seconds or two minutes. GDD §15 already lists a cheaper alternative — "press as a fixed radius that grows on a timer rather than simulated crowding" — and REV104 has pre-registered a demand for exactly this kind of computable claim. |
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| 185 | ||||||||
| 186 | **[Proposal R2].** Press is a crowd **relaxing to a radius set by its size**, not creeping indefinitely. |
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| 187 | ||||||||
| 188 | - A crowd holding at a beacon occupies a radius proportional to the number of bodies in it. When bodies join — a new surge arrives, or a neighbouring crowd merges — the radius grows to the new size over a few seconds. When bodies leave or die, it shrinks. |
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| 189 | - Press is that relaxation seen from outside: after the second dispatch the crowd's edge moves outward because the crowd is bigger, not because time passed. |
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| 190 | - A crowd with **no** beacon (line 4) has no centre, so it spreads along its branch without that bound. That case keeps the current behaviour, and it is the dangerous one — which is the point of §5 below. |
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| 191 | ||||||||
| 192 | **Visible information.** The forecast overlay already draws each entered crowd's current target (GDD §3). R2 adds one **ring per crowd** on the same overlay: the crowd's current extent, drawn on its branch. Engine-drawn, no asset. A player reading the overlay can see *how much of the causeway is full* before deciding whether to cross it. |
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| 193 | ||||||||
| 194 | **Player action and cost.** Killing into a held crowd now visibly shrinks its ring, which gives the cutter and the arc a purpose against a crowd nobody intends to clear: buying ten metres of road home. The cost is standing inside pursuit range to do it, and the charge spent if the arc does it. |
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| 195 | ||||||||
| 196 | **Why this beats the alternative.** The alternative is to leave press as simulated crowding and tune it. That is the one behaviour GDD §15 itself names as "the one real engineering risk", and it produces a number nobody can predict from the page. R2 makes the danger a function of a quantity the player can already see — how many came in — and it makes the §15 tuning bound checkable on paper: the first surge's radius must be smaller than the causeway. It is strictly less simulation, and it is the version I would ship first. **This is a proposal to the Lead, who owns §4; I have not edited that page.** |
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| 197 | ||||||||
| 198 | --- |
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| 199 | ||||||||
| 200 | ## 4. Charge and the once-per-organism rule [Proposals R4, R5] |
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| 201 | ||||||||
| 202 | **Adopted:** a killed organism drops a small mote of 1 unit; a mass stunned in water sheds one large mote of 5 units per 10 stunned; **each organism sheds once per expedition and is visibly dimmer afterward**; motes fade in seconds; walking over one banks it; a full battery takes nothing; a battery the arc is drawing takes nothing. |
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| 203 | ||||||||
| 204 | The once-per-organism rule is the best economic rule in the document and I am not touching it. It is what stops the harvest loop becoming a farm, and it is why the arc is a spend rather than an engine. Two things around it need work. |
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| 205 | ||||||||
| 206 | ### R4 — glow carries one bit, and roles ride on silhouette |
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| 207 | ||||||||
| 208 | **The collision.** "Visibly dimmer after shedding" puts *spent-ness* on brightness. The roster wants to put two more things there: a body that never glows because it does not conduct (Crust), and a body that glows brightly and unstably because it is about to discharge (Spark). That is four values on one channel, read at a glance, in a crowd the source sizes at 40 to 140. I do not believe that is readable, and I cannot test it. |
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| 209 | ||||||||
| 210 | **[Proposal R4].** Collapse the cues where the consequences collapse. |
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| 211 | ||||||||
|
212 | - **Glow carries remaining yield, and only that: has charge to shed, or does not.** An unshed body glows; a shed body does not. A [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) glows until it is killed, like anything else — it is non-conducting, not spent. |
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|
213 | - **Role identity rides on silhouette and attitude, never on colour or brightness.** The Anchor is half-submerged and still; the Grounder is on a cable, off the ground, and its position alone identifies it; the Carrier leans toward what it wants, and the forecast draws its target; the Crust is the base outline broken by encrustation; the Spark's outline flickers, which is motion, not brightness. |
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|
214 | - **Conductivity is a second, independent channel: encrustation.** r1 of this page put both facts on brightness and then argued the resulting confusion was harmless; [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) is right that it is not — a Crust *resists a stun that a spent Walker still receives*, so a player who confuses them commits to a collection window that four bodies are walking through. **Two facts, two channels: glow says what is left to take, encrustation says whether current reaches it.** They are independent because the answers are independent. |
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|
215 | |||||||
| 216 | **Cost:** six readable silhouettes, which is the real asset consequence of this submission (§9). **Competing choice:** none for the player; this is a presentation rule that makes the others fair. |
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| 217 | ||||||||
| 218 | ### R5 — a Carrier takes an uncollected mote |
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| 219 | ||||||||
| 220 | **[Proposal R5].** A Carrier that reaches a mote on the ground consumes it and carries it; the mote is gone from the floor. Killing that Carrier drops it again as a mote. Nothing else can take a mote but the surveyor and a Carrier. |
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| 221 | ||||||||
| 222 | Today a dropped mote is bounded only by a fade timer, so "collect during a stun" is a stopwatch problem. R5 makes it a **contest**: the 20 units lying in the channel after a stun are being walked toward by the Carriers that came in with the surge. **Player action:** which motes, in what order, and whether to spend the burst now — which clears the collectors but empties the battery the motes were going to fill — or collect first and take contact damage. **Visible information:** Carriers lean toward the motes and the forecast draws their target. **Consequence:** charge you did not take is charge that walked away rather than charge that faded, and it is recoverable by killing the thief. **Cost:** you fight for a harvest you already paid a battery for. |
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| 223 | ||||||||
| 224 | This is also the honest answer to a fair criticism of the coil loop: at present the only things between the player and 20 units are a fade timer and the size of their battery. R5 puts an opponent there. |
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| 225 | ||||||||
| 226 | --- |
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| 227 | ||||||||
| 228 | ## 5. Beacon routing: what a role may and may not do to a light [Proposal R9] |
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| 229 | ||||||||
| 230 | **Adopted and load-bearing, restated here as a limit on my own roster:** *the panel alone decides the intake.* Current the player injects travels power, never signal; it can light a beacon steady and open a hatch, but it can never choose where the next surge enters (GDD §4). [World r20](/Hold%20the%20Flood/World%20And%20Mystery?revision=7699de) states the same as a contract on Campaign and Combat: a district *may not* change what power, signal or a beacon means, or make an ordinary lamp draw the Flood. |
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| 231 | ||||||||
|
232 | **[Proposal R9], and the argument that it is inside that contract — necessary, and not sufficient.** [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) is right that clearing the contract's prohibition list does not settle which connected consumers lose power, what alternate supply exists, or how recovery works; those are C4 in [§0.4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) and belong in the shared topology contract with Lead and World. What follows is the containment argument only. One role, the **[Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder)**, can darken a beacon: it climbs a live cable run and grounds it, and the beacon on that run flickers and then goes dark until the Grounder is killed or the branch is switched. |
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|
233 | |||||||
| 234 | - It does **not** change what a beacon means. A grounded beacon is an unpowered beacon, and an unpowered beacon draws nothing — the existing rule, applied. Dark still means dark. |
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| 235 | - It **cannot** cause a dispatch, touch the signal cable, or select an intake. It removes a light; it never makes one. The panel's monopoly is untouched. |
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| 236 | - It is **announced before it acts**: an irregular flicker that is visibly not the dispatch pulse — the dispatch pulse is a *travelling* flicker along the thin cable, panel to beacon, which GDD §4 makes the observable the whole rule's fairness rests on — plus a spark at the body's position on the thick cable, plus the forecast marking that branch failing. |
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| 237 | ||||||||
| 238 | **Why the roster needs it.** Without it, a routing decision is permanent for as long as the player leaves the panel alone, so "park the crowd and go elsewhere" is a solved problem after the first expedition. R9 puts a **clock on a plan** without putting a clock on the player: the plan decays because something is eating it, visibly, in a place you can go to. That is a better pressure source than a shorter timer, because it has a location, a cause and four different counterplays — kill it, re-switch, plant your own light, or take the long way — each costing something different. |
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| 239 | ||||||||
| 240 | --- |
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| 241 | ||||||||
|
242 | ## 6. The shared grammar — the interface with Equipment |
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|
243 | |||||||
| 244 | This section exists so that [EQP101](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) and CMB101 cannot invent two systems. **I propose it as a contract and ask Equipment to accept, amend or reject it in writing.** Where it constrains Equipment it constrains this page equally. |
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| 245 | ||||||||
| 246 | ### Targeting [R6] |
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| 247 | ||||||||
| 248 | | Rule | Status | |
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| 249 | | --- | --- | |
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| 250 | | The cutter fires by itself at the **nearest** organism in reach while you move; you aim by where you stand | Adopted, GDD §3 | |
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| 251 | | One target at a time; reach is a radius, not a cone | **[Proposal]** — implied but unstated | |
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| 252 | | **The cutter cannot be withheld.** There is no hold-fire | **[Proposal R6]** | |
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| 253 | | The cutter draws a **thin visible line to its current target** | **[Proposal R6]** | |
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| 254 | ||||||||
| 255 | **R6 answers the question the [Cutter page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter) asks — "what must remain automatic, and what meaningful action does the player control?"** If the weapon fires by itself and cannot be stopped, then **what enters its reach is a decision the player is making continuously**, and the target line is what turns that from an accident into a choice. It costs one engine-drawn line, and it is what makes the [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) fair: walking within reach of a Spark standing in the water you are standing in *is* the mistake, and the line shows you making it half a second before it lands. |
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| 256 | ||||||||
| 257 | A hold-fire button would defuse this entirely and I recommend against it. The contrary view is that taking control away feels bad. The answer is that the genre's premise *is* an automatic weapon; this design should charge for it rather than apologise for it. |
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| 258 | ||||||||
| 259 | **Any Equipment weapon must state its targeting rule against this list**: what it selects (nearest, densest, ahead of you), whether it can be withheld, and what its line looks like. A weapon that picks targets differently is a genuinely different weapon, which is what the Cutter page asks for. A weapon that does more damage is not. |
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| 260 | ||||||||
| 261 | ### Damage [R8] |
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| 262 | ||||||||
| 263 | **[Proposal R8]: there are no damage numbers in this game.** |
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| 264 | ||||||||
| 265 | - An enemy has a **hit count** — the number of cutter hits that kill it — not a health pool. The basic organism is three hits at roughly two hits a second (adopted, GDD §3). |
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| 266 | - There are **no resistances, no multipliers, no elements, no armour values**. A body either conducts or does not; a body either can be reached or cannot. |
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| 267 | - The player has five hits of health. Contact costs one, with a moment of immunity after. Unprotected energised water costs one per second. (Adopted, GDD §3.) |
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| 268 | ||||||||
|
269 | **Why.** With no XP and no weapon-damage ladder, damage numbers would be a system with one number in it and nowhere to go — and the first thing anyone would do with it is build the stat progression the [Expansion Brief](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Expansion%20Brief) warns against ("a catalogue of damage bonuses alone does not solve this"). Agreeing this early is cheap; unwinding it after Equipment has thirty items priced in percentages is not. |
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| 270 | ||||||||
| 271 | **Corrected in r3, after [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004): this is a recommendation with a cost, not a ban, and the owner's brief forbids none of it.** Different **hit counts** are inside R8 and always were — [Campaign](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Campaign)'s Heavy takes ten, and its economic job is a good one ([Enemies §0.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies)). What R8 argues against is a *published ladder* of numbers for weapons to be priced against, because that is the thing that grows on its own. |
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|
272 | |||||||
| 273 | **The cost of R8 is real and I will state it:** it removes the easiest lever for making a late district harder, and puts the whole difficulty burden on composition, topology and the clock. §7 and the campaign arc in [Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies) are my argument that this is enough. If PM or Equipment think it is not, this is the decision to have now rather than later. |
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| 274 | ||||||||
| 275 | ### Status [R7] |
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| 276 | ||||||||
|
277 | **[Proposal R7]: three statuses for this draft, extended only by a revision of this page that states the reason.** |
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| 278 | ||||||||
| 279 | *Reworded in r3.* [PMR004](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004) is right that nothing in the owner's brief bans further statuses, and that a compact grammar is a scoped proposal rather than proof the alternatives are bad. **The claim is a cost, not a prohibition:** each status added is another thing a player must read off a crowd of a hundred and forty, and this design spends its readability budget on *where bodies are*. If a fourth buys more than it costs, it should be added — through this page, so there is one list. |
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|
280 | |||||||
| 281 | | Status | Caused by | Duration | Effect | |
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| 282 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | |
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|
283 | | **Stunned** | **A paid or role event, not "current reaching a body"** — narrowed in r5 at Equipment's request. The events are: a coil discharge sampling the body in its wet footprint at the instant it fires, and (if the Lead keeps the contract's row, §0.5) a Spark's death in water. Ordinary fixed power never stuns | 8 s. A fresh pulse resets an eligible survivor to 8 s from that pulse; durations never add | Does not move or act; sheds its large-mote share once | |
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|
284 | | **Spent** | Having shed, by any means | Rest of the expedition | Yields no further charge; does not glow (R4) | |
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| 285 | | **Chained** | Being hit while an arc burst is running | The burst | The hit conducts onward to another body | |
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| 286 | ||||||||
|
287 | **Chain geometry, supplied at Equipment's request (proposals).** A chained hit reaches bodies within **a short hop reach, proposed at three metres** of the body that was hit, needing an unobstructed line between them; at most three additional bodies per direct hit, each once per hit, and a chained hit never retriggers the arc. **Ties** — more eligible bodies than hops — resolve **nearest first, then to the body nearest the surveyor**, so the chain is predictable from where you stand, which is the whole reason for keeping it bounded. **[Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) eligibility: a Crust is never a chain target and never a hop.** It does not conduct, so the chain neither enters nor passes through it; a chain whose only continuation was through a Crust ends there. It does not absorb or reflect, and it is not a shield for the bodies behind it — the chain simply has to reach them another way, which is a positioning problem for the player. |
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| 288 | ||||||||
| 289 | **The Heavy's yield exception, defined here because Equipment asked for one Combat definition.** Generic rows in the effect contract describe *ordinary* bodies. A **Heavy counts as ten bodies for a stun's yield** and **drops one five-unit large mote when killed** rather than a one-unit kill mote. It sheds once, like everything else, and by either route: a Heavy stunned in water has shed and its later kill yields nothing, and a Heavy killed by the cutter has shed and a later stun yields nothing from it. That is the whole exception; nothing else about it differs from a Walker except its provisional ten-hit durability, which stays an explicit number ([PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005)). |
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| 290 | ||||||||
|
291 | No slows, burns, poisons or fears **in this draft**. One ruling made here rather than routed: the [prod](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Alternative%20Tools)'s push is **movement, not a status** — it has no duration and nothing reads it off a body — so the prod does not make a fourth. |
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|
292 | |||||||
| 293 | ### Charge — the interface, restated as a copy |
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| 294 | ||||||||
| 295 | Canonical on the Design Document; copied here so an Equipment reader has the contract in one place. Kill mote 1 unit; a stun sheds one 5-unit large mote per 10 stunned; each organism sheds once, then is spent; motes fade in seconds; a battery holds 10; a coil discharge spends a whole battery; an arc burst empties one battery in about 10 s; a battery being drawn accepts nothing; a collected mote goes to the battery with the most room. **Plus [R5]:** a Carrier may take an uncollected mote. |
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| 296 | ||||||||
|
297 | **R3 — closed by the Lead's ruling.** r1 of this page asked how long a coil discharge keeps the water energised, because the source stated the stun and not the water, so the uninsulated cost of one's own discharge could not be computed. r1 proposed one second, r2 one to two, r3 adopted Equipment's eight. **[The contract r3 rules two seconds of powered water and an eight-second stun](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Power%20And%20Attraction), and this page and Equipment both countersign it** — Equipment withdrawing its eight, this page withdrawing the eight it had adopted from Equipment. An uninsulated discharge therefore costs **two health of five**, and the collection window inside the stun is not gated on insulation. The row is in the effect contract at [§0.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat); what remains open is not the pulse but the *branch* — whether fixed panel power holds that same water hot anyway (C2). |
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|
298 | |||||||
|
299 | ### Conduction and the arc — R10, withdrawn |
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|
300 | |||||||
|
301 | r1 proposed that an arc chain travel through energised water. **It is withdrawn**; the adopted rule is [Arc A1](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment/Arc)'s bounded body-to-body chain, in the effect contract at [§0.2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat). The proposal, and why it was attractive and wrong, are kept in the revision log at §12 so it can be argued again if anyone wants to. |
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|
302 | |||||||
| 303 | --- |
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| 304 | ||||||||
| 305 | ## 7. Composition — the interface with Campaign |
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| 306 | ||||||||
| 307 | Campaign owns placement ([Expansion Prompts](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Team/Expansion%20Prompts)). This page owns what a legal composition is. **Proposed budget, per surge:** |
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| 308 | ||||||||
| 309 | | Constraint | Value | Reason | |
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| 310 | | --- | --- | --- | |
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|
311 | | Walkers | **at least 85%** of every surge | The mass must obey the spine rule, or the player's knowledge stops paying | |
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| 312 | | Distinct non-Walker roles live at once | **at most 2** in a surge, **at most 3** in a district | Above three the player is reading a table, not a place | |
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| 313 | | Sparks entering **dry** ground | **0** | A Spark that cannot energise water is a Walker with a worse silhouette; place it where water is | |
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|
314 | | Grounders | placed on **cable runs**, not counted in a surge | Its threat is a location and a timer, not a body count | |
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| 315 | | Anchors | **standing before the expedition begins**, not arriving in a surge | It is a feature of the terrain; the player must be able to see it and plan around it on arrival | |
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| 316 | ||||||||
| 317 | **Difficulty is composition and topology, never numbers.** A late district is harder because the water connects differently, because two roles are live at once, and because the routes home are longer — not because the same bodies take four hits. That is R8 stated as a rule Campaign can build against. |
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| 318 | ||||||||
| 319 | **A district's shared-rule diff** — the check [REV103 r5](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Design%20Review) pre-registered for REV104 — should, for combat, name: which roles are present, which precedence line each exercises, what announces it, and what the player can do about it with the equipment available at that point in the campaign. A district that cannot fill that in has decoration, not encounters. |
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| 320 | ||||||||
| 321 | --- |
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| 322 | ||||||||
| 323 | ## 8. What the player actively decides while the attack is automatic |
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| 324 | ||||||||
| 325 | The [Cutter page](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Weapons/Cutter) asks this directly, and it is the fair question to ask a game whose weapon fires itself. Under the rules above, the player is deciding five things continuously, none of them by pressing an attack button: |
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| 326 | ||||||||
| 327 | 1. **What is inside the cutter's reach** — because it cannot be withheld (R6). Near a Spark in water this is the whole game; near a Crust it decides whether an arc chain has anywhere to go. |
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| 328 | 2. **Which precedence line they are standing in.** Inside pursuit range you are a target; outside it you are scenery and the crowd is doing something predictable. Moving in and out of that line is the moment-to-moment skill, and R2's ring is how you read it. |
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| 329 | 3. **When to spend.** A coil discharge needs a full battery, a crowd in connected water, and a crowd that has not shed. An arc burst needs density and a battery you are willing to empty. Both are irreversible for the expedition. |
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| 330 | 4. **Where the water is, relative to both of you.** Water is the weapon and the hazard on one clause. Standing in it makes the coil possible and the Spark lethal. |
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| 331 | 5. **What to walk away from.** Every second fighting is a second not spent on the district, and the district is the reward (GDD §6). Nothing here rewards clearing a crowd for its own sake: no XP, and spent bodies are worth nothing. |
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| 332 | ||||||||
| 333 | **And one thing decided before the expedition:** what the rack can answer. Insulation answers water. A second battery answers a big harvest. The beacon answers Carriers and Grounders both, for two slots and a battery. A rack cannot answer everything, which is the point. |
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| 334 | ||||||||
| 335 | --- |
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| 336 | ||||||||
| 337 | ## 9. Presentation and asset consequences — stated as a cost, not a request |
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| 338 | ||||||||
| 339 | **No asset has been located, inspected, downloaded, purchased or created by this role, and none is authorized.** GDD §14 already records the enemy sprite as the project's first likely approval request, and the [Asset Licences reference](/Reference/Asset%20Licences) records that "free" is not one thing and that tinting or resizing is an adaptation some licences forbid. |
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| 340 | ||||||||
| 341 | **What this submission adds to that cost, honestly:** the roster's readability depends on **six distinguishable silhouettes**, five more than the current one-enemy proposal. That is the single largest consequence of this page and PM should weigh it as such. Three mitigations, in the order I would apply them: |
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| 342 | ||||||||
| 343 | 1. **Three of the six are readable from position and attitude rather than from a new creature.** A Grounder is *on a cable, off the ground*. An Anchor is *half-submerged and not moving*. A Carrier *leans toward its target, which the forecast overlay already draws*. If the base body can be posed, these three cost poses, not creatures. |
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| 344 | 2. **Two of the remaining three are silhouette edits of the base body**: the Crust is the base outline broken by encrustation; the Spark is the base outline with a flicker. Whether that is legal depends on the individual asset's licence, not its host's general statement. **I claim no availability and have inspected nothing.** |
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| 345 | 3. **If the owner takes the humanoid option in GDD §14 decision 2** — the Flood as a humanoid mass, which is among the owner's own examples of the Flood — the roster does not change: what conducts is bodies standing in water either way, and posture-based roles work at least as well on a humanoid. This roster is **neutral** on decision 2 and does not push it either way. |
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| 346 | ||||||||
| 347 | **New non-creature cues this page needs, all engine-drawn, no asset:** the cutter's target line (R6); the press ring per crowd on the forecast overlay (R2); the Grounder's irregular beacon flicker, which must be distinguishable from the dispatch pulse's travelling flicker, plus a spark at the cable (R9); and a flat, mote-less feedback on a discharge into an already-spent crowd, so a wasted battery reads as wasted. |
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| 348 | ||||||||
| 349 | **The gap I cannot close.** The Spark's fairness leans on a rising audible whine as it enters cutter reach. GDD §14 says sound is not designed. Without audio the visual fallback is the target line plus the flicker, which I believe is enough but cannot claim is enough. **Recorded as a gap, not as a request.** |
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| 350 | ||||||||
| 351 | --- |
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| 352 | ||||||||
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353 | ## 10. Open questions |
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354 | |||||||
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355 | Consolidated into [§0.4](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat) in r4, so there is one list rather than two that drift apart. Every question there is stated with the position this page proceeds on, as Wiki Conventions §11a asks. |
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356 | |||||||
| 357 | --- |
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| 358 | ||||||||
| 359 | ## 11. Where the rest of this submission is |
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| 360 | ||||||||
| 361 | - **[Enemies](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies)** — the six roles, why each exists, the two mixed encounters checked against the rules above, the elites-and-bosses assessment, and the early/middle/late campaign arc. |
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362 | - The six role pages: [Walker](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Walker) · [Anchor](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Anchor) · [Carrier](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Carrier) · [Crust](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Crust) · [Spark](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) · [Grounder](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Grounder) |
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363 | |||||||
| 364 | --- |
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| 365 | ||||||||
| 366 | ## 12. Revision log — what changed, and what was withdrawn |
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| 367 | ||||||||
| 368 | Kept short and at the foot, so §0 is the current contract and this is the history. Full text of every revision is in [page history](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Mechanics/Combat/history). |
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| 369 | ||||||||
| 370 | | Rev | What it did | |
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| 371 | | --- | --- | |
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372 | | **r5** | Countersigned the Lead's rulings on the shared contract r3, which **adopted R1, R2, R4, R5 and R9, declined R10, and ruled R3 at two powered seconds with an eight-second stun**. Amended the effect table to two seconds and removed every eight-second copy. Recorded Equipment's partial countersignature row by row. Added the presentation-category table PMR006 assigns (§0.6), the arc's hop reach, tie rule and Crust eligibility, the Heavy's yield exception, and Equipment's pulse-overlap boundary. Narrowed the stun trigger from "current reaching a body" to explicit paid and role events. **Reversed the C2 recommendation**: fixed power should not energise open channel water, because if it does the Lead's own reason for the two-second ruling stops working. Took the Floater onto Combat's roster, as the contract transfers it, and stopped this page saying "six". | |
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373 | | **r4** | Consolidated the two stacked reconciliation appendices into §0, as [PMR005](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR005) asked. Corrected the claim that all four Campaign roles sit at precedence line 2 — only the Floater does, and only while its water flows. **Withdrew the request to replace the Heavy's ten-hit count with a phrase**, which PMR005 declines and is right to: a number is inspectable and a phrase is not. **Withdrew the "nineteen kill motes" argument**, which rested on most-room collection; D023 selects shelter-selected pickup priority, under which a two-bank rack fills its first bank in about ten kills, not nineteen — so the Heavy's economic case is real but smaller than r3 said, and it should rest on the large mote and the blocked route rather than on a number that has changed. **Narrowed the tint finding** from a logical contradiction to a cue-budget concern (C9). **Corrected the cable reel claim**: [Equipment U6](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Equipment) revises it to a one-cell, six-metre reel limited to **exposed power terminals** on an already traversable path — not the arbitrary wet-point connector r2 and r3 cited, so it neither justifies R10 nor rewrites which water is one body. R9's open questions restated as C4 rather than treated as settled by passing a prohibition list. | |
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| 374 | | **r3** | Answered [PMR004 §2](/Hold%20the%20Flood/PM%20Reviews/PMR004). Added the intensity rule and the effect contract. **Withdrew R10** in favour of Equipment's bounded body-to-body chain, on PM's reasoning that a bounded chain preserves the spatial limits that make a burst a positioning decision rather than a screen-clear. **Withdrew R3's short window** for Equipment's eight seconds, accepting that insulation is then required to collect inside a channel you discharged into. **Corrected R4** so conductivity and remaining yield are separate cues — r1 put both on brightness and then argued the resulting confusion was harmless, which was wrong. Restated R7 and R8 as scoped proposals with costs rather than prohibitions. Extended R1 to merged crowds. | |
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| 375 | | **r2** | Re-checked every proposal against the Lead's shared-rule contract and Campaign page, which landed while r1 was being written. Renamed the base role Drifter → Walker. | |
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| 376 | | **r1** | First submission: the precedence stack, the closed grammar, the composition budget, and ten numbered proposals. | |
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| 377 | ||||||||
| 378 | **The withdrawn R10, retained because it may be argued again.** The proposal was that while a body of connected water is energised, an arc chain propagates through that water as well as body to body, reaching every conducting body the water connects. It was attractive because it made the late payoff cost five separate preparations — the arc, a full bank, [Sparks](/Hold%20the%20Flood/Enemies/Spark) deliberately left alive, a crowd routed into connected water, and insulation or dry footing. **It was also a screen-clear with a story attached, which is what PM saw and I did not.** If it returns it needs its own argued change; it is not a property of electricity that clause 1 implies. |
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