Quintine
91dcca46fb
Players can select a non-allied recipient and explicitly pay a whole-spice bribe outside Mentat and open decision/response windows. The server derives private payment limits from uncommitted spice and existing joint Truthtrance completion checks on isolated copies. Target-specific Bureaucrat guards preserve supported redirect/allow continuations. Reserved bids, sealed spending and incoming escrow cannot be spent twice. No strategic AI negotiation or mode/publication changes. The panel separates deferred incoming bribes from spendable supply, disables stale/invalid selections and uses existing request/version fencing. The chronicle now describes actual payment and next-Mentat spendability rather than a promise. Internal guidance and the implementation checklist record this boundary. The separate Emperor gift/Bureaucrat source ambiguity remains explicitly pending. Independent review found no material issue. Focused tests cover out-of-turn payment, JSON escrow/collection, private budgets, invalid targets/amounts, phase/response gates, reserved bids, joint promises, supported redirection and rendered controls. Existing Bureaucrat SQLite/all-four legal response tests pass. The new HTTP test races duplicate submissions and verifies one debit, refreshed private balances and stale/over-budget rejection. Types, lint, all 4968 offline tests, production build and 49 HTTP tests pass on stable source. Preliminary checks caught a typed fixture opener and semantic-status/internal-link/template lint requirements and the new SSR test needed the existing Vinext Link alias. All were corrected before the final4 run. Browser QA used genuine fresh Basic setup with a human payer and Easy AI recipient: 11 rejected by controls, 4 paid from10 leaving6, one public payment entry and unchanged recipient spendable10 with4 in escrow after refresh. Keyboard selection and amount access passed. At390px the panel fits with16px text and44px-or-larger controls; linked rules and back navigation work. Screenshot capture timed out; full visual/assistive and all-configuration acceptance remain open. Browser transport loss was not injected; HTTP concurrency is separately covered. This is playability evidence, not difficulty calibration. All 1418 original rooms, 2991 seats and auxiliary rows are unchanged. SQLite integrity and foreign keys pass. The healthy server was reused without restart, migration, reset or recurring maintenance. Private evidence: 20260921-bribe-controls. Verified source tree: b9a8594c5dcd85f78974c9647f24f5f6eba60a38c9dcd2badcf4529d1e825ae1
7.1 KiB
Bureaucrat payment redirection
14 September 2026. This connected development prototype extends the existing Bureaucrat battle penalty with optional payment redirection. Leader Skills, expansion combinations and public starts remain partially implemented. This is not complete economic-rule acceptance.
Source and payment identity
The physical card permits one use per phase when another player pays at least five spice to a player other than the skill owner. Exactly two spice from that payment go to the Bank if the owner elects to use the skill. The payer's cost stays the same; the recipient receives two less. Declining leaves the opportunity available for a later qualifying payment in the same phase. Physical card
The designer names Emperor, Guild and Tleilaxu receipts as intended targets. Jack Reda, 15:01–15:28 A payment made by the owner, made to the owner, or made to the Bank fails the printed third-party condition. Evaluate the actual amount paid rather than a nominal price or free acquisition. Use the native living face-up assignment; a captured card supplies only its battle band. GF9 CHOAM & Richese, pp. 9 and 12
Actual bribe transfers qualify: the official FAQs describe spice paid as bribes being placed before the recipient's shield. Spendability waits until the next Mentat Pause, but the payment occurs when those counters transfer. Bureaucrat therefore diverts two from the transfer and leaves the remainder in bribe escrow. Collecting that escrow later is not another payment and must not trigger again. A verbal promise alone transfers no spice. April FAQ, p. 1, November FAQ, p. 9
Connected boundary and explicit interpretations
The target paths are ordinary paid auctions, Guild shipment income, direct Richese auction proceeds and actual bribe transfers in the existing base or CHOAM-only skill profile. Other optional modules retain their existing gates. Tleilaxu revival, other expansion payment sources and direct gifts remain outside this connected batch. Their absence does not establish a rule prohibition.
21 September gift classification review
A bounded primary-source review did not resolve whether Emperor gifts count as the card's "payment." The November FAQ, p. 5 describes Emperor giving/sharing spice with allies separately from the ally's later auction payment. The designer's examples name income recipients, not outgoing gifts. The base secrecy rule, p. 12 does not settle gift-amount disclosure for this combination. Current gift amounts are projected only to Emperor and recipient. Even a threshold-only Bureaucrat prompt would reveal that the gift qualifies; the existing exact-amount payment projection must not be applied blindly.
The user has been asked whether to retain this boundary or apply Bureaucrat with only the qualifying threshold public. No answer is assumed. Gifts remain outside the connected Bureaucrat payment paths while independent ordinary bribe controls proceed.
For native income, the prototype resolves the existing Karama income window first, then offers Bureaucrat before crediting the eligible recipient and continuing the original auction or shipment. A canceled income payment goes to the Bank, so creates no player-directed trigger. This is an outcome-based composition inference. The rulebook's skill-before-faction sentence occurs in its battle paragraph and does not expressly order this economic reaction. The implementation does not settle Bureaucrat-before-Karama consumption.
Qualifying single-payer payments have a public amount. Qualifying allied funding, including an aggregate such as three plus three and a payment funded entirely by the ally, is guarded before costs or commitment. It needs separate payment-unit and privacy work, as does split-recipient Homeworld income. Independent Karama shipments paid entirely to the Bank bypass this player-income guard. Do not infer eligibility from an aggregate that silently combines payers or reveals concealed funding. A successful use is retained for the physical card's turn and phase, including a same-phase ownership change. That physical card accounting is an explicit implementation inference.
Saved choices and verification
Only the skill owner may redirect or allow the current payment. The saved event binds the payer, payee, amount, skill, phase and original continuation. It must retain any prior decision and response without showing their private contents. The payer is charged once; the original purchase, shipment or bribe remains intact. Decline restores the full recipient share without consuming the skill.
Controls explain both possible recipient amounts and the deferred nature of bribes. AI uses public payment and alliance information. Focused checks cover ownership, successful-use limits, custody, private projection, stale requests, JSON/SQLite restoration and competing writes. Final evidence and limitations are recorded with the verified checkpoint; narrow prototype paths do not open mode or publication gates.
Four source-stable genuine-setup samples completed with all four AI profiles, full physical Treachery/force/skill custody checks and periodic JSON/private-view restoration. The initial skill shuffle deliberately offered Bureaucrat, which the Atreides AI selected. No hands, forces or phases were staged in these samples.
| Profile | Seed | Actions | JSON restores | Finish turn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base Basic | 20260940 | 718 | 20 | 9 |
| Base Advanced | 20260941 | 551 | 15 | 6 |
| CHOAM/Richese Basic | 20260942 | 681 | 19 | 8 |
| CHOAM/Richese Advanced | 20260943 | 174 | 5 | 2 |
All four had zero rejected candidates, but none reached a Bureaucrat payment decision. They establish regression continuation for these paths, not natural full-game redirection coverage. Focused tests and the targeted browser exercise cover the payment choices directly; broader integrated acceptance remains open.
The separate browser QA uses a conserved staged shipment-phase position after genuine skill setup. It allows one actual five-spice bribe, then redirects two from a second actual five-spice bribe in the same phase. The second choice and its resolved movement controls survive refresh. The payer spends ten total, the recipient retains eight in deferred bribe escrow, physical custody stays unchanged, and only the redirection consumes the skill. This is explicitly staged UI evidence. After the reported outage, all 699 opening rooms and their original seat/recovery records matched the private backup; database integrity and foreign keys passed. The healthy server was reused.