Progression, Claims, and Consequence

Status: historical claims-and-consequence specification. This note preserves useful pressure from older designs. It does not define a current progression system, universal salvage law, or implementation status.

Progression Changes Available Action

Progression should expand what a player can understand and attempt rather than apply one universal ladder of licenses. Useful forms include:

• knowledge of routes, systems, institutions, and failure modes;
• tools, equipment, facilities, and compatible ships;
• practiced competence and trusted procedures;
• relationships, witnesses, reputation, and negotiated access;
• evidence sufficient to make a claim usable at a particular gate.

These forms have different owners. A character may learn a repair procedure while an account unlocks a convenience, a faction grants docking access, and a port recognizes one certificate. None silently becomes universal permission. A scenario must state which capability it tests, who recognizes it, and what can revoke or challenge it.

Material Failure And Escape

Failure should preserve the player while changing the material problem when the scenario permits it. A crew may escape a disabled ship, lose cargo, abandon equipment, incur treatment or rescue obligations, surrender command, or reach safety without recovering the vessel. Survival does not restore the previous inventory or settle the aftermath.

The useful question after loss is not simply whether the player respawns. It is what remains reachable, who holds physical custody, which records survived, what condition the subject is in, and which obligations now compete. Escape can be success for a person and failure for a mission, owner, insurer, creditor, or crew.

Claim Record

Every consequential claim should name:

Field	Meaning
Subject	The hull, cargo, component, record, payment, person, route, or other interest claimed.
Claimant	The person or institution asserting the claim.
Basis	Title, contract, labor, rescue, salvage, custody, insurance, lien, authorship, injury, jurisdiction, or another stated theory.
Scope	The action or interest sought: inspect, hold, operate, recover cost, restrict transfer, possess, receive payment, or obtain title.
Gate	The port, court, insurer, registry, market, faction, employer, or scenario authority asked to act.
Evidence	Provenance-bearing stable references to records, witnesses, telemetry, possession, condition, custody chains, or contracts, preserving source or author, time, authentication and confidence, gaps, and disputes.
Status	Proposed, recognized for a bounded purpose, contested, subordinated, expired, rejected, or unresolved.

A claim is not the outcome it requests. Two valid claims may coexist, and the same evidence may support different decisions at different gates.

Authority Handoff

The local scenario owns occurrence evidence: who arrived, what was observed, what condition changed, who recovered or moved the subject, what records were preserved, and which commands were accepted. It may propose claims and immediate safety restrictions within its authority.

Receiving owners commit later effects separately:

• physical possession or storage custody;
• legal title or registry change;
• personal or medical custody;
• reputation and faction response;
• payment, debt, lien, or insurance settlement;
• access, quarantine, inspection, or transfer restrictions.

One accepted effect does not imply the others. A rescue service may hold a hull safely without owning it. An insurer may authorize payment without settling title. A port may restrict transfer without taking custody. A market may refuse goods without proving theft.

Recovery, towing, cooling, docking, repair, valuation, or temporary safing never alone grants title or permission to sell, strip, copy, confine, or disassemble. Where a vessel embodies a person, Ship Mind Custody also constrains what any property claim may authorize.

Wreck Interaction

A wreck remains a physical scene and evidence surface. Approaching costs time and exposure. The player may rescue, stabilize, preserve records, tow, remove material, call a receiver, or leave. Each action changes condition and evidence; none invokes a countdown that manufactures ownership.

Possible outcomes include rescue without recovery, provisional custody, contested possession, a recognized salvage interest, return to a title holder, insurer-directed disposition, abandonment at one gate but not another, or a dispute that outlives the scenario. The player should know which authority requested an action and which questions remain open afterward.

Smallest Proof

Place one disabled vessel with a survivor or embodied mind, one valuable removable component, two adverse claimants, and a receiving port. The player has limited time to rescue, preserve evidence, tow, remove material, or escape an approaching threat.

At the port, separate decisions address custody, title, payment, reputation, and access. Branches should produce at least three legible outcomes: people saved while value is lost; material recovered under contested title; or evidence preserved at the cost of immediate payment. The proof succeeds when the player can explain what they physically did, what claim that supported, which owner made each later decision, and why no single interaction granted everything.

Economy and Production owns item provenance, inventory possession, trade, and maintenance records. Ship-shape and Up to Specs owns assembly and refit commits. This note owns the playable claim record and handoff to the receiving authorities that decide bounded consequences.