Belt (canon: charges are the cost, the belt is the ammo): cards are
CARD_TYPES indices consumed on play, next slides into the 2-slot hand;
belt cap 8; HUD shows hand glyphs + upcoming-card ticks. Card pool
grows to 4: SHOCKWAVE, HEATWAVE, DASH (impulse along held movement
direction — aimable while frozen, no aim input), IGNITE (nearest-enemy
heat spike past threshold). Rooms: spawn-budget waves (base 8 +4/room,
4 rooms/run); clear -> interstitial fork (CARD vs SCRAP +8) -> CARD
opens a 3-option draft + scrap decline (+4) -> next room; final clear
or mech destruction -> tally overlay (rooms/kills/scrap/chem) with
relaunch on 1. Interstitial owns the pause while active; the hand
yields input and time authority to it. Mech death now signals the run
manager instead of hard-reloading.
Chain semantics (same-tag surge / cross-tag chemistry trigger)
deliberately deferred to M3.
Smoke gate: belt consumption white-boxed in the card phase, _until
moved to process_frame (physics awaits deadlock under pause), run
phase covers clear->fork->draft->belt growth->room advance->tally.
3/3 green on nh3-dev headless 4.7.1.
Chemistry row *Spread* (canon CONCEPT.md § tag grammar): a heated
enemy slammed into another (knockback impact >= threshold, not a
walking bump) spreads its heat on contact and passes momentum, so
chains cascade with decaying force — chemistry feeding chemistry.
Authorship-loud feedback stack per canon: ~80ms hitstop (owned by the
hand, capped so chain procs can't lock the world; rides on top of
freeze/thaw states), the two tag hues meeting at the point of impact
(oriented fx, no proc text), and a per-pair audio sting (procedural
placeholder, _ph-marked per asset policy).
Burster: second enemy type, HEAT-tagged walking bomb (orange base,
literal tag mirror) — self-heats ~0.5/s toward threshold, big
detonation. Every 4th spawn. Detonations are now symmetric: they
damage enemies AND the mech in radius (one grammar on both sides;
heat play prices standing close). Grunt scene exports drive both
enemy types — no subclass.
Smoke gate extended: burster self-heat observed (retry-tolerant),
deterministic staged chemistry proc (heated striker slammed into cold
neighbor outside weapon range -> proc counter, heat spread). 3/3
green on nh3-dev headless 4.7.1. Known cosmetic: 2 ObjectDB instances
reported leaked at exit (constant, exit-order artifact — audio stream
alive at quit), not a runtime leak.
vh