Codex review pass: three real faults corrected

R-228: Ambidextrous was a compulsory build. 0/-20 gave a full-strength main hand
AND a cheap second attack. It now buys consistency, not a free attack: -20 in both
hands against -20/-40 untrained.

R-229: full auto was a firing squad. Ten independent hits off one critical, each
with its own damage, location and Major Wound check. Hits capped at 3/5/7, and a
burst is ONE wounding event however many rounds connect.

R-230: Engines deleted the pressure it existed to create. Guns +2 and Helm +1
against a vent of 3 made a fighting round heat-neutral, so Heat only mattered when
the engineer failed. Venting is now 2/3/4.

Also: falling halving no longer stacks (soft + controlled quartered the drop);
blast has one formula floored once, so the answer no longer depends on call order.

And the structural note — "giving everyone a roll is not the same as giving
everyone a decision". Sensors, Damage Control and Medical now have mutually
exclusive modes that bite in the engine: mark/spoof/read, patch/brace,
restore/steady.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
slaguru666
2026-08-11 08:07:58 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 226f853ee6
commit ee9e1f5b73
110 changed files with 235 additions and 59 deletions
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@@ -4128,3 +4128,49 @@ because the crew kept shooting instead of cooling. That is the decision the subs
is for.
64 rules, 198 spot-checked formulas, a 12-page rulebook in reading order.
### The Codex pass, and what it cost me
Put the night's five subsystems to Codex with the instruction to be blunt. It found
three things that were genuinely wrong and I have fixed all three.
**R-228 · Ambidextrous was a compulsory build.** At 0/−20 the talent gave a
full-strength main hand AND a cheap second attack — near-free action economy, and
therefore the only sane pick for anybody who could hold two things. The 2 kg limit
stops poleaxes, not optimisation with a pistol and a knife. Ambidextrous now buys
CONSISTENCY rather than a free attack: **−20 in both hands**, against −20/−40
untrained. Still plainly worth having; no longer mandatory.
**R-229 · full auto was a firing squad.** Ten independent hits off one critical, each
with its own damage roll, hit location and Major Wound check. Against a hard target it
was the correct answer to everything. Hits are now **capped at 3/5/7** rather than
proportional to the burst, and however many rounds connect, **a burst is one wounding
event** and rolls the Major Wound table at most once.
**R-230 · Engines deleted the pressure it was supposed to create.** Guns +2 and Helm
+1 against a vent of 3 made a standard fighting round heat-NEUTRAL — the craft cooled
while it fought, and Heat only existed when the engineer failed or was absent. This
is the same fault as my earlier over-correction, in the other direction, and my own
second playtest had shown it sitting at 0 for four rounds without my drawing the
conclusion. Venting is now 2/3/4, so a shooting round costs +1 net.
Two more taken as written:
- **Falling halving stacked.** Soft ground and a controlled descent both halved, so
together they quartered — the same mitigation counted twice. They no longer stack.
- **Blast ordering was undefined.** Flooring at each step meant the answer depended on
the order the functions were called in. One formula now, floored once: rolled x
range share x cover, rounded down, and only then armour.
**And the sharpest observation, which I acted on structurally:** "giving everyone a
roll is not the same as giving everyone a decision." Sensors, Damage Control and
Medical were seats that rolled dice while the gunner decided the fight. Each now has
mutually exclusive modes — Sensors marks, spoofs or reads; Damage Control patches or
BRACES so the next hit lands at half; Medical restores a crewman or STEADIES the ship
so the heat penalty does not apply that round. Bracing and steadying both bite in the
engine, not just on the card.
Not taken tonight, recorded as owed: station fumble tables, Signature as a live
mechanic, mark duration and stacking, hull and system criticals, extinguishing fire,
rescue from drowning, and an explicit interaction table for hazards against armour,
Major Wounds, bleeding, zero and dying. Codex is right that these are implied; they
are a session's work, not a paragraph's.