Document GP-DOC-09: Field Operations

Wild Spawns

Standard spawns are shared and provably fair. Wild specimens are world entities: every Handler in the sector sees the same creatures roaming, idling, and grazing, from the moment they materialize. Each slot's genome derives from the on-chain hourly seed (Switchboard):

genome = biasedGenome(species ⊗ biome, mulberry32(deriveSeed(hourSeed, "spawn:<zone>:<slot>")))

Four locked properties:

• Publicly derivable genome. The hourly seed is on-chain, so anyone can verify that a spawn was the one the seed announced: no hidden reroll, no operator thumb on the scale. See Provably Fair.
• Server-salted future (anti-bot). The genome is public, but the anchor position and the exact materialization time of upcoming slots are salted by a server secret, so nobody can precompute the hour's spawn map and camp it. Once a specimen materializes, its position and its wander pattern are public and identical on every client (deterministic AI).
• Attribution by engagement lock, no steal mid-attempt. The first Handler to engage (within 24 tiles) locks the specimen: an ENGAGED badge is visible to everyone, and nobody else can engage (or even spook) a locked specimen until the lock releases (120 s timeout, one active lock per Handler, anti-grief cooldowns). Scanning stays free for everyone at all times.
• One shared sector world (v0). Each biome runs a single zone instance: the world you see is the world everyone sees, and a captured specimen is gone for everyone.

Slots materialize for the whole zone the moment Handlers are on the map: the sector's hourly budget scales with its population as ceil(biome cap × √n), where n counts the Handlers present in the sector (server-validated position, no movement requirement). An empty sector spawns nothing; a crowded one spawns more, sublinearly: specimens stay something you look for, never wallpaper.

Quality ranks Q1-Q4

Rarity is scored as Q_stat = mean of the 8 normalized stats of the drawn genome:

Q1  common       percentile  0-70
Q2  notable                 70-92
Q3  exceptional             92-99
Q4  anomaly                 99+

Q is descriptive, not a market value and not a power rating. It only drives spawn rarity (frequency, scanner aura, despawn priority) and the market signal. There is no single power scalar: the specimen sheet shows aptitudes (the terrain radar, a function of the genome, un-boostable) and the record (times and placements) separately, never one "rating."

Per-biome zone budgets (v0)

The allelic biases apply only as allele-sampling weights at wild generation, never as a stat re-roll: rarity stays emergent and deterministic (see The Eight Species). These are v0 targets for the harness to converge. The table is the single-Handler floor (n = 1); the zone budget scales as ceil(cap × √n) with the sector's active population, and the number of specimens alive at once is capped at min(ceil(2 × √n), 12).

Composition rule: when a species bias and a biome bias touch the same locus, the vectors multiply weight-by-weight, then renormalize at draw time.

Placement and lifecycle

• 70% hotspots / 30% roamers. 70% of spawns land in 3-5 hotspot polygons (24×24 tiles) anchored to landmarks; 30% roam the paths. Exact anchor derives from the seed inside the polygon, server-salted until materialization.
• Living world. Specimens are visible to everyone and wander on a deterministic pattern (idle, walk, graze), identical on every client. At most min(ceil(2 × √n), 12) specimens are alive at once per sector: a measured encounter rate, never "100 animals per tile."
• Biome in calibration (the hour's circuit biome): cap +50%, interval -33% (applied before the √n scaling): the hourly race rotation physically pulls players toward a different biome each hour.
• Despawn: any uncaptured spawn expires at the hourly rotation (slots re-derive from the new seed). A specimen spooked into flight twice disappears from the world on the third alert, for everyone. While a specimen is locked, only the engaged Handler can spook it.

The Containment Lasso

The lasso (Mk.I field issue) is issued by the Recovery Division. It is never sold, in any currency; only cosmetic skins are purchasable. Paying for the lasso would be paying for the draw of a spawn whose genome is revealed only after the scan: the gambling triad. Charges are won by playing.

A charge is consumed only on a successful capture. A failed attempt costs the specimen's wariness and your time, not the charge: the quota is a demographic valve on captures/day, not a tax on clumsiness.

Next: Capture & Caging for the containment fight and the cage. Species biases are detailed in The Eight Species.