RELAY 7 — a station that dies when its crew stops caring
A relay station in orbit: a hull, a reactor, a dish, a dock, and a crew of forty. The engine is unchanged. The theme pack renames the nouns and adds one signature mechanic no other theme can have: life support is a ledger the engine keeps per station, per tick, and a station's population is a real number.
01The pitch
You are a berth on a station. A berth is a position: it has air, a shift, and a section of hull that is yours to keep. The station is not scenery — it is four meters running, a hull decaying, and a crew count that goes down when the meters run out.
The fantasy is a crew that keeps a place alive — a hull hand splicing a plate, a diver outside on a salvage line, a reactor tech holding the heat. The late game is an office: Hull Warden, Reactor Warden, Dock Master. The endgame is a station that stays alive through a whole season, with your name on its maintenance log.
Why this theme is the second one: it is the theme that makes upkeep a moral act. In every other theme, missing upkeep costs money. Here it costs the station, and the log says who was on shift.
02The theme pack — the engine's nouns, in theme words
Four bars, four stats, six jobs, twelve acts, six offices, twelve commodities. The numbers are the prototype's starting values, sized so a season in any theme is comparable to a season in another. This is the theme file, printed.
The bars (renamed, same shape)
| Engine bar | Theme name | Spent on | Recovery rule the theme supplies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vigour | Hands | splicing, hauling, the dock shift, the ring | rest, and a bunk — a facility raises the recovery rate |
| Nerve | Vac | spacewalks, salvage lines, the wreck field | rest, and a decompression rota the Quartermaster sets |
| Focus | Calibration | dish alignment, reactor tuning, repair quality | a tool locker: a facility raises the Calibration cap |
| Standing | Berth | contracts, office, teaching, station command | the crew list: an office can restore a berth, the crew can vote one down |
The jobs (6)
| Job | Wage / day | Stat gain | Requires | Daily points, spent on promotions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring hand | 200 | Body +1 | none | Ring points |
| Hydroponics hand | 240 | Body +1, Calibration +1 | a berth | Green points |
| Hull hand | 300 | Body +2 | Hands ≥ 40 | Hull points |
| Dock master's crew | 340 | Body +1, Vac +1 | a dock shift | Dock points |
| Reactor tech | 420 | Calibration +2 | Calibration ≥ 20 | Core points |
| Diver | 480 | Vac +2, Body +1 | Berth ≥ 30 | Vac points |
The acts (12) — a theme names the verbs, and only names them
| Theme name | Engine act | Cost | Ticks | Published risk | Published reward |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| splice a plate | upkeep | Hands 12 | 2 | 6 % warp | hull decay −4 |
| spacewalk | risk | Vac 16, Hands 10 | 3 | 14 % breach | 300–700 |
| drill ice | freight | Hands 14, Vac 6 | 4 | 8 % jam | water +60 |
| haul to the dock | freight | Hands 10 | 2 | 3 % loss | 120–260 |
| calibrate the dish | craft | Calibration 10 | 3 | 9 % drift | relay yield +6 % |
| dock a ship | trade | Vac 8, Berth 4 | 1 | 5 % delay | berth fee |
| salvage the wreck field | risk | Vac 22, Hands 14 | 5 | 26 % loss | 500–1,300 |
| run the reactor | office | Calibration 8 | 1 / tick | 0 % | power + |
| quarantine a section | defence | Berth 6, Hands 8 | 2 | 0 % | section sealed, crew count safe |
| teach an apprentice | teach | Calibration 6, Berth 4 | 2 | 0 % | apprentice gain +1 |
| garrison the ring | defence | Hands 8, Berth 5 | 1 / tick | 0 % | defence + garrison value |
| vent a section | risk | Berth 10, Vac 12 | 1 | 30 % loss of the section | ends a capture window |
The map — the prototype's six districts, tiered
| Tier | Position | Yield / day | Garrison required | Upkeep / day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | the berths | 20 | 2 | 5 |
| 2 | the hydroponics ring | 60 | 6 | 14 |
| 3 | the dock | 110 | 10 | 25 |
| 4 | the dish array | 180 | 12 | 35 |
| 5 | the reactor core | 320 | 18 | 60 |
| 6 | the relay itself | 600 | 26 | 120 |
Offices, commodities, currency
03The signature mechanic: The Life-Support Ledger
One mechanic per theme, and one only — the rule that keeps five themes on one engine. The formula below is what the engine computes every tick, printed in the rules page in the game.
Why it is a mechanic, not a flavour
A station is a population, not a place
The crew count is a number in the state. A station that runs short loses people, in the log, with the section named. No other theme in the genre has a shared object that dies.
Upkeep becomes a moral act
Splicing a plate is not a money move; it slows hull decay, and hull decay is what leaks the air. Neglect has a body count, and the body count is auditable.
The forecast makes the crew cooperate
Every crew member sees fourteen ticks ahead. A crew that reads the forecast together is a crew that can ration; a crew that does not is a crew that will be told, on the record, that it ran out.
Beat 1
Relay 7 is crewed (40 berths)
Beat 2
the first air audit
Beat 3
the wreck field opens (tier 5 salvage)
Beat 4
a hull breach in the ring — the first loss
Beat 5
the reactor is over-allocated, heat fails for 2 ticks
Beat 6
the diver guild charters
Beat 7
the second station arrives: two crews, one relay
Beat 8
the Quartermaster election
Beat 9
a crew-written duty contract, executed by the engine
Beat 10
the relay is contested (tier 6)
Beat 11
air reform: the floor is set by the crew, not by default
Beat 12
the season ledger publishes every shift and every loss
04Art direction, and the feel
Text-first: no images, no animation, no sound. The theme supplies words, a palette, and a shape, and every object carries its numbers in text.
05What breaks this theme
The risks, named before anyone builds it. Each one has a test attached, so the honest list is a plan, not a mood.
Collective punishment Undecided
A shared pool means a careless diver can cost a careful potter their air. The genre's players will call this unfair, and in the plain sense they are right. The engine must make the cost visible per section, and the rota must be a duty an office can audit.
Test: Count the number of players who log a grievance against a shared pool in season 1.
A single object, a single theme Undecided
There is one station in season 1, so the theme's drama belongs to one crew. A crew that leaves takes the theme with it. Two stations in season 2 is the mitigation, and the second station is the theme layer's test.
Death as a mechanic Undecided
A crew count that falls is a loss a player experiences as a person removed. Our conflict rule says a person is never a target, so death must be an outcome of neglect, never of an attack. If the rules ever allow a vent to be used as a weapon, this theme breaks the design thesis.
Cold on a phone Undecided
Meters, hull decay, and rota tables are legible to an engineer and dull to a casual player. The theme tests the engine's honesty and has the weakest first-screen appeal of the five.
Upkeep is invisible Undecided
Nobody celebrates a plate that did not warp. The theme needs the log to tell the story, because the state does not. A season report that names the keepers is the mechanic that makes this theme land.
It is the theme where the engine's fairness rules are the plot. A crew that cooperates survives, and the record proves it. Life support is the strongest argument for a shared-state game: the state is alive, and everyone can read why it is dying.