Action RPG Layer

Status: design-lineage specification. This note defines the embodied-play fantasy and its smallest useful proof. Older planning documents and surviving code may supply evidence, but they do not establish current implementation or release commitments.

The action RPG layer is Aetheria at human speed: the ship on screen, the route ahead, the damaged component, the hostile contact, the suspicious contract, and the faction whose logo makes the dockmaster change tone.

Smallest Cockpit Proof

The smallest proof is one ship, one port, and a short route containing at least one consequential encounter. The player must be able to:

• choose work and inspect its route, payment, claimant, and known risks;
• prepare a loadout and limited cargo capacity;
• travel, detect danger, and choose combat, avoidance, negotiation, or retreat;
• manage damage, heat, power, and ammunition;
• reach a port where repair, sale, surrender, concealment, and payment have different consequences.

The proof succeeds when preparation changes survival, damage changes later decisions, and returning to port resolves more than a score. It does not require a persistent galaxy, corporation simulation, procedural campaign, or complete technology catalogue.

Core Loop

The player accepts or discovers a reason to move through space, prepares a ship, travels through a dangerous route, resolves or avoids contact, manages damage and cargo, and returns with money, parts, information, obligations, or a worse problem wearing nicer clothes.

The essential decisions are route, loadout, commitment, expenditure, and aftermath. A profitable contract may consume scarce parts, contaminate a salvage claim, expose a passenger, damage relations with a port, or leave the ship unable to accept the next opportunity. Failure should change the available problem rather than merely demand repetition.

Ship State And Combat

The ship is both instrument and condition of play. Hull, equipment, cargo, propulsion, sensors, weapons, heat rejection, power supply, and accumulated damage should remain legible enough that the player can form a plan and understand its collapse.

Combat is engineering under stress. Position, visibility, velocity, weapon arcs, heat debt, power draw, ammunition, component condition, and escape geometry compete for attention. Avoidance belongs to the same system: detection, masking, route knowledge, acceleration, negotiation, and the willingness to abandon cargo can win an encounter without destroying anything.

Damage persists through the immediate loop. A failed radiator, compromised sensor, empty magazine, or breached hold changes travel and port choices. Repair consumes time, money, parts, access, or favors. The ship should feel like a working object whose history narrows and opens possibilities.

Missions, Ports, And Claims

Missions should arise from people and institutions with a reason to place them. Rescue, courier work, smuggling, recovery, escort, investigation, and sabotage become distinct through route conditions, faction reach, cargo, witnesses, custody, and the terms under which a port will recognize the result.

Ports provide consequence rather than neutral menus. Docking access, repair capacity, markets, insurers, registries, employers, salvagers, and local authorities may disagree about what the player owns, owes, or is permitted to carry. A recovered object can be useful equipment, evidence, stolen property, hazardous material, or a disputed person depending on who receives it.

Optional Strategic Pressure

A session may use the bounded exchange defined in Playable Layers; its scenario owns the local projection, while named durable owners decide which returned consequences persist. The cockpit loop remains coherent when no strategic exchange is present.