Hearth boards

Hearth boards are the turn-based home disturbances at Hearth. On 2 November the user said home defence should use the same engine as run rooms, and that "every disturbance shouldn't be the same either, so I think you need to make quite a lot of boards".

How it works#

The lifecycle:

1. While you are away, at most one disturbance queues. It never happens off-screen.
2. On your return, the return summary shows it. It starts only when you press Ready.
3. You play the board. It costs no Endurance.
4. Afterwards the host reports the struck line. A failed defence means free recovery, and nothing is deleted.

The board:

• Each board is a crop of the permanent H15 Hearth map at the run grid size. Paths and lines lie on the ground; neuron bodies, the hearth basin, Stella and buildings are solid.
• The Ranger starts at the plaza and holds the north line, with Stella's footprint already supported. Your class, flex skill and Imprint apply.
• Residents (Pip, Mote, Fen) are room entities, not units you move. Each stands at its duty spot and does one job within 2 tiles each tick: clearing a clump, or +10% Care on a connection "under strain". A stretched resident alternates spots; a gap leaves its spot empty.
• Buildings change the board: the Arbor halves the strain on its nearest connection, the Relay Node gives residents reach 3, and the Recovery Nook speeds recovery afterwards.
• A neuron that falls silent fails the board at once, as in every room.

Disturbance types#

From Act IV, some boards combine two types.

Numbers#

Claude B's bots (SIMULATION, 2 November, with the score fix): tier 1 base, novice fails 50%, expert 0%; tier 2 base, novice fails 75%, expert 0%. At strain 4 a board overreacts with one extra front and leaves scorch marks; surge-west cannot overreact fairly, so the host picks another board.

In the brain#

The anchors are labelled inspiration, not claims. Highly connected hubs are costly and hit hardest in human brain networks (Crossley 2014), which inspires the Rosette surge. Microglial surveillance shifts with sleep and wake in mice (Gu 2023), which inspires Busy evening.

Development#

• The 20 boards are on claude/expeditions-hearth (d662d8577). They are not in the default game.
• The lead's audit reported a new tier-2 expert failure (quiet-post) on the newer painted floor, with verdicts being regenerated.
• The lead's 2 November integration did not host Ready → disturbance → struck line → save yet. It is the lead's next bounded task.
• This replaced doc 30's real-time defence (30 s forecast, 40 s impact).

See also#

Home duties · Hearth strain · Companion stress · Hearth · Turn-based encounters

Sources#

1. 215bfbf88:docs/game-balance/31-turn-based-encounters.mdcopy
2. d662d8577:docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-02-claude-a-expeditions-hearth-boards.mdcopy
3. 215bfbf88:docs/game-balance/30-home-base-plan.mdcopy
4. b89f778c2:docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-02-lead-reconciled-game-integration.mdcopy