62 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
62 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
# Adrasteian Negent Weapons: Item Concept
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Date: 2026-09-18
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Status: concept, for the content pass to author against. No cut, no schedule.
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The mechanism it rests on is ruled in `docs/stats-and-power-target.md`
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("Negentropy items"); the fiction is `AetheriaLore` →
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`Worldbuilding/Post-Elysium/Technology/Running Cold` and
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`Concepts/Negative Entropy`.
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## The inversion
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Negent converts heat into high-energy photons. So an Adrasteian weapon is not a
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gun that tolerates cold: **its ammunition is the ship's thermal load**. A crew
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works up a fever and spends it as light.
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Every other weapon in the game is limited by how hot firing makes you. This one
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is limited by how cold firing makes you. Operator, 2026-09-18: "You're
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desperately pumping heat into it just to get it warm enough to fire again. Fun
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inversion."
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## What falls out of it
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- **Firing makes a ship quieter.** The universal tell — the heat a weapon dumps,
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which is what a sensor operator is watching for — reverses. An Adrasteian
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gunner becomes harder to see by shooting.
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- **Reloading is deliberate overheating**, and that is the loud, fragile,
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visible part of the cycle. The ship is most detectable when the gun is empty
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and safest while it is firing. No other weapon has that rhythm.
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- **The crew is the leak.** Heat leaves the ship somewhere, and sustained fire
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walks a ship toward the cold end of the band, where hypothermia is waiting.
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- **A long fight starves it.** Everything already spent downrange, no star
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nearby, and the best weapon aboard is inert until the crew makes heat again —
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which means running drives, which means being seen.
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- **Wear punishes the swing**, and this weapon is nothing but swings:
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`Entity.cs:1386` derives wear from distance off optimum *and* from `deltaTemp`.
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A negent gun eats itself faster than a conventional one, which is Adrasteia's
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commercial relationship with its customers in miniature.
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## What it needs from the Body
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Almost nothing new, which is the point.
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- `ItemData.MinimumTemperature` / `MaximumTemperature` and `HeatPerformanceCurve`
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(`ItemData.cs:371-435`) already express a weapon whose optimum sits well above
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ambient and whose performance collapses when it cools.
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- The firing behaviour must **remove** heat rather than add it. That is the one
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behaviour-level piece, and it is a sign, not a mechanism.
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- The Adrasteian charge (the consumable that gates negent generally, per the
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ruling) is what stops this being free cooling. **Without the charge cost this
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item solves heat management**, which would flatten the system the whole design
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rests on. It is the balance, not a flavour item.
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- Roles for the content pass (`docs/item-provenance-target.md`): the charge
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assembly, the conversion array, the emitter. Quality per role is what makes
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two Adrasteian guns different guns rather than two numbers.
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## Why it is worth authoring early
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The heat system reads as three systems until a player meets something that
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inverts it. A weapon that wants you hot, goes quiet when it fires, and freezes
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its own crew teaches the whole system in one encounter, without a tutorial
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saying any of it.
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