Project-M/Docs/Vault/06_Roadmap/Lantern_Phase5_Death_Recovery_Design.md

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LANTERN — Phase 5 Death, Recovery & the Solo Valve (design pass, pre-review)	2026-07-13	roadmap lantern death recovery phase-5 design	design-pre-review	gamevault/06-roadmap/lantern-phase5-death-recovery-design

LANTERN — Phase 5: Death, Recovery & the Solo Valve

Phase 5 of Roadmap_Lantern_Slice — a design pass (deepens + gets its ★review when reached; this is netcode-heavy — stranded-suit persistence, body-carry, the Tender companion). It owns the second half of the slice's falsifiable test: does a stranded suit feel worth a second descent? The world-model review already locked the load-bearing constraint (NR-2/C4 in World_Model_Build_Spec): in-pocket death, warp- to-station gated behind party-wipe, revive is new code. This phase builds the rest on that.

The one rule, applied to the body

What the light holds, stays; what the dark holds, changes — applied to death: your flame (the person) returns to the light; your cargo (what the dark held) strands with the suit in the dark.

The split (the core design — Identity_Lantern)

• Flame returns cheap. Snuffed, the flame goes home; re-kindle in a rack-spare. Base grafts regrow cheaply/immediately from the culture library (Phase 4) → kit functional within minutes. Non-negotiable in a skillshot game — recovery is an optional value-run with a WORKING build, never mandatory kit-repair.
• What strands with the suit (dark in the deep): cargo (unbanked Lumen + organs), fixed mutations, and any raw-socketed wild organ. This is exactly the Phase-4 return-strip set — death = a localized, recoverable version of homecoming-evaporation, dropped at the death site instead of evaporated.
• Salvage: PlayerDeathStateSystem (derives Dead from Health<=0, gates move/aim/fire) + RespawnState/ PlayerRespawnSystem are the base — but per C4 the respawn is rewritten to in-pocket (the guttering suit stays put; full-wipe warps everyone home together).

Stranded suits (recovery — deterministic, never RNG)

• A death spawns a stranded-suit entity at the death site (a server ghost carrying the stranded cargo/ mutation manifest). Persists across descents — deterministic server relocation, never RNG theft (the doppelganger that "wears your build" is the marquee deferred post-slice encounter; until then the dark just relocates the container by a server rule).
• Ally body-carry: a teammate hauls the suit home. Carried suits stay LOUD (count fully toward party Loudness — no dead-mule stealth logistics). A carried suit = an attachment/parent on the carrier + a Loudness contribution.
• One-suit debt cap: die on the recovery run → the older suit is dark-claimed (resurfaces later as a partial salvage lot at the Selkie's counter). Cap = 1 outstanding stranded suit; this bounds the state + prevents a soft-lock spiral.
• Party wipe: all stranded suits drift one pocket shallower (the dark spits out what it plays with) — a deep wipe never soft-locks the save. This composes with the world-model loss-floor invariant (DP-5/C2 — muster keyed on graph-reachability-from-station; drifting-shallower keeps recovery reachable).

Guttering & flame-share revive (co-op — NEW code per C4)

• A downed Wick's flame gutters (a telegraphed countdown; the lamp-morse revive-plea, per the Lantern_Tone_Bible). An ally re-lights it from their own flame — it costs the giver (a Flame/ Health price). Reachable because the downed suit stays in-pocket (C4).
• Mechanically: a Guttering state (server-only timer) on the downed player; a revive RPC/proximity-interact that transfers a Flame cost from giver → downed and clears Dead/Guttering in place (at the pocket origin, PocketTag = active, never the station). Full gutter (no revive in time) = the flame goes home, suit strands.

The solo valve (the Tender dive-companion)

Converts the co-op-only verbs (revive, carry, hold-the-line) into degraded-but-present solo verbs, diegetically — a solo Wick may take one Tender down:

• No combat power. It drags your guttering suit toward light, hauls cargo, and can hold a lantern's feed during a tide.
• Mechanically: a server-only companion entity with simple follow/drag AI (reuse the EnemyAISystem seek/ move-util chassis, no attack; the collide-and-slide mover). Not a ghost the party competes over — a solo-only support. Its "drag guttering suit toward light" = a body-carry variant driven by AI.

The Selkie tariff (menu-level for the slice)

• The Selkie retrieves a lost suit for a steep tariff — for the slice, a menu-level transaction (spend banked Lumen at the station to recover a dark-claimed suit), not a full questline (that's v1.0). Reuse the storage/deposit RPC + a station vendor panel.

Salvage map

Piece	Verdict
PlayerDeathStateSystem (Dead-derive, gate move/aim/fire)	KEEP
PlayerRespawnSystem	REWRITE to in-pocket (C4; warp-to-station only on party-wipe)
RespawnState / respawn timer	REWORK → guttering timer + in-place resolve
Stranded-suit ghost + manifest	NEW (server ghost; persists via the Phase-2/3 save schema — additive)
Body-carry (parent + Loudness)	NEW (attachment + the Loudness meter from currency re-mean)
Flame-share revive RPC	NEW (co-op verb; the receiver-sets-command / proximity-interact idiom)
Tender companion AI	NEW (reuse the EnemyAISystem seek/move-util chassis, no combat)
Selkie vendor	NEW-lite (reuse storage/deposit RPC + a station panel)

The gate (Roadmap_Lantern_Slice)

★ a stranded suit feels worth a second descent — solo death is a story, not a rage-quit. Feel knobs: gutter window, flame-share cost, carried-suit Loudness weight, party-wipe drift distance, Selkie tariff.

Dependencies & sequencing

Depends on: the world-model (in-pocket death, loss-floor, muster — World_Model_Build_Spec), the currency re-mean (Flame = Health, Loudness meter, cargo-vs-banked — Lantern_Currency_ReMean), and the Phase-4 culture library (cheap regrow is what makes the split fair). Netcode-heavy → its own ★ design review before code (stranded-suit persistence + relevancy, body-carry replication, the companion).

Related

• World_Model_Build_Spec C4 — the in-pocket death constraint this builds on
• Identity_Lantern — the split, recovery, the Tender, the Selkie · Lantern_Phase4_Mutations_Design — the culture floor
• Lantern_Tone_Bible — the revive-plea lamp-morse · Roadmap_Lantern_Slice Phase 5