User story — modding the work/needs/atrophy loop

A scoring/test scenario for the Ostranaut Data Explorer site. The asker is a modder, not a player — but the symptom they're investigating is one any player can observe in-game, which is what makes this a useful onboarding scenario. Walks two end-to-end paths to the data entries that drive the work/exercise/free-time loop.

The story

A modder wants to rework the work/needs loop — slow the atrophy rate, change the mood drain from work, or add new free-time activities. They've watched the in-game behavior and noted the symptom that motivates the mod:

Modder (writing the design doc): Crew exercise, study, and watch TV even when the needs panel is fully green and there are queued orders. I want to mod this loop, but first I need to find every data entry that drives it — what's pushing the AI to "leisure" when needs look fine?

The data answer:

{ "strName" : "CONDTick1HourPhysio", "aCOs" : [ "StatAtrophy=1.0x0.1", ... ], "strType" : "condition" },
{ "strName" : "CONDTick1HourWorkPhysio", "aCOs" : [ "-StatAtrophy=1.0x0.05", ... ], "strType" : "condition" }

StatAtrophy rises by 0.1/hr unconditionally. Working cancels only 0.05/hr. The exercise interaction tooltip confirms: "Two hours of exercise per day are needed to counteract atrophy without meds."

The needs panel hides this stat by design — StatAtrophy has nDisplaySelf: 0, so the bar never shows while healthy. "All needs green" is technically accurate while atrophy climbs invisibly.

Study/TV exist to repay a separate drain: CONDTick1HourWorkMoods deducts StatAchievement (−8.33/hr), StatEsteem (−8.33/hr), and StatMeaning (−4.17/hr) while working. Free-time activities refill them. The work/leisure alternation is the design.

To mod this loop intelligently, the modder needs to find:

• StatAtrophy and the nDisplaySelf semantics that make it invisible while healthy.
• The two CONDTick1Hour* Loot entries that produce the +0.1/−0.05 rate asymmetry.
• The CONDTick1HourWorkMoods mood-drain entries.
• The matching CONDTick1HourFreeMoods refill entries.
• The drug entry (CONDOssifexStimPer) that demonstrates how StatAtrophyRate is multiplied — useful as a reference for any new anti-atrophy item.

None of those names are guessable from "exercise" — the modder needs the explorer to bridge the in-game observation to the data terms.

Follow-up story prompts

Use either of these as a system message when test-driving the site against a fresh scenario or when generating more user-story files in this format:

Test prompt: Roleplay an Ostranauts modder writing a design doc for a mod that touches the work/needs/atrophy loop. You've observed the in-game behavior (crew exercising despite full green needs) and want to find every data entry that drives it. Walk through the Ostranaut Data Explorer site as you'd actually use it — search "exercise", "atrophy", "needs", or similar — and report (a) whether you found StatAtrophy and its hidden display flag, (b) whether you found CONDTick1HourWork's mood drains, (c) how many wrong turns you took, and (d) which page or signal prevented a wrong turn from becoming a dead end.

Generation prompt: Given a modder's design-doc question and the loot.json / conditions.json answer, produce a notes/user-stories/<slug>.md file in the same shape as crew-exercise-invisible-need.md — story (modder framing — they want to mod the system, the in-game observation is just the symptom that motivates the mod), two solution paths (lucky + onboarded newcomer with thought blurbs), and a "what the site needs to support this" callout listing the specific features the path depends on.

Solution version 1 — the lucky modder

Uses the explorer alongside the in-game debug console. No thought blurbs — just the path. "Lucky" here means they already know about F3 / getcond / addcond from prior modding work or wiki reading.

1. Search bar: type exercise. Find ACTExcerciseSimpleAIReserve. Read the tooltip: "Two hours of exercise per day are needed to counteract atrophy without meds." Note the word "atrophy" — but the interaction page itself doesn't explain the stat.
2. Open the game. Select a crewmember. Open the character inspector (mega tooltip). Scan the condition pills. No atrophy-related pill is visible — the character looks fine. The need isn't there, or isn't shown.
3. Open F3 console. Type: `` getcond [crewmember] Stat ` Output lists every Stat* value on the character. StatAtrophy` appears with a non-zero value, slowly climbing.
4. Also run: `` getcond [crewmember] Dc ` Output includes DcAtrophy01` — active, but absent from the inspector pills. The condition exists; the UI just doesn't show it at this level.
5. Go back to the explorer. Search StatAtrophy. Click the condition detail page. Fields block: nDisplaySelf: 0. Confirmed — healthy atrophy is invisible by design.
6. Scan Referenced by. Find loot:CONDTick1HourPhysio (+0.1/hr) and loot:CONDTick1HourWorkPhysio (−0.05/hr). Net while working: +0.05/hr. Exercise is mandatory to close the gap.
7. Search CONDTick1HourWork. Find loot:CONDTick1HourWorkMoods. Scan aCOs: StatAchievement −8.33, StatEsteem −8.33, StatMeaning −4.17. Work drains these. Study and TV replenish them. The behavior is designed.

Why it worked: The explorer alone couldn't surface StatAtrophy from "exercise" — the interaction page mentions atrophy in prose but doesn't link to the stat. The F3 console handed the modder the exact strName. The explorer then made that strName immediately useful: nDisplaySelf: 0 explains the invisible need, the incoming refs locate every entry the mod will touch, and the CONDTick1HourWork page exposes the mood-drain side of the loop. The explorer is the answer-finisher, not the starting gun.

Where the lucky path breaks: If the modder doesn't already know getcond or F3 (e.g. first-time Ostranauts modder), step 3 doesn't happen. The explorer search "exercise" returns the interaction page; the nDisplaySelf: 0 insight is never reached. This is the gap the glossary card (UX 1.1) in version 2 fills — it bridges "exercise" to StatAtrophy without requiring console-command literacy.

Solution version 2 — the onboarded newcomer modder

Navigates with the help of the newcomer-onboarding features specified in notes/ux/newcomer-onboarding.md. The modder is new to Ostranauts modding (first-time user of the data tree, no prior exposure to Stat* / Thresh* / cond-string DSL conventions) but is an experienced modder of other games. Thought blurbs at each step.

Step 1 — Search plain English, hit a glossary card

Thought: "I don't know any strNames yet. I'll type what I observed: the in-game behavior I want to mod. Let me try 'exercise' and see what comes up."

Action: type exercise in the search bar. Results include the interaction ACTExcerciseSimpleAIReserve — and also a glossary card (UX 1.1) titled "Atrophy / Microgravity Muscle Loss." Card summary: "Muscles atrophy in microgravity unless exercised ~2 hrs/day. Tracked by StatAtrophy. Invisible in the needs panel when healthy (nDisplaySelf: 0)." The card links directly to conditions:StatAtrophy.

Thought: "'Invisible in the needs panel when healthy' — that would explain exactly what I'm seeing. I'll click the data-term link."

Step 2 — StatAtrophy detail page, banner explains hidden stats

Action: land on conditions:StatAtrophy.

The per-prefix explainer banner (UX 1.2) fires: "About Stat* conditions — Stat conditions are continuous numeric trackers. Their visibility in the needs panel is controlled by the nDisplaySelf field: 0 = hidden when healthy, 2 = always visible, 3 = pinned. StatAtrophy is hidden at level 0; the needs panel only surfaces it once it crosses into a discomfort band (DcAtrophy02, DcAtrophy03)."

The inline schema description (UX 1.3) on the nDisplaySelf: 0 field reads: "This condition will not appear in the character's needs panel while healthy. Players cannot see it climbing until it crosses into a visible discomfort band."

Thought: "So 'all needs green' is technically accurate — the panel hides this stat completely until it's already a problem. The crew are exercising to prevent it from ever becoming visible. Now I need to know the rate."

Step 3 — Confirm the rate math via filter pills

Action: scroll to Incoming refs on StatAtrophy. The ref list is long. Filter pills (UX 1.6) suggest "Only Loot · strType:condition (tick effects)." Apply pill. List narrows to CONDTickAtrophy, CONDTick1HourPhysio, and CONDTick1HourWorkPhysio.

Thought: "Three entries. One ticks atrophy up, one does it hourly, one reduces it while working. I'll check whether working covers the rise."

Action: scan the edge metadata on the filtered rows:

• CONDTickAtrophy → StatAtrophy=1.0x0.1
• CONDTick1HourPhysio → StatAtrophy=1.0x0.1
• CONDTick1HourWorkPhysio → −StatAtrophy=1.0x0.05

Net while working: +0.05/hr. The interaction tooltip on ACTExcerciseSimpleAIReserve confirmed: "Two hours of exercise per day are needed to counteract atrophy without meds."

Thought: "Working is not enough. The gap is exactly why exercise is mandatory. But why study and TV? Those don't fight atrophy."

Step 4 — Find the mood drain from work

Action: search CONDTick1HourWork. Land on the loot detail page.

The "Why is this in loot/?" inline note (UX 1.9) fires: "strName prefixes like COND… follow naming convention but do not determine folder. The strType: condition field does. This entry lives in loot/ because Loot is the engine's grant-dispatcher folder."

Inline schema descriptions (UX 1.3) on the aCOs of CONDTick1HourWorkMoods label each line:

• −StatAchievement=1.0x8.33 — "Decreases the character's sense of personal achievement by 8.33 per work-hour."
• −StatEsteem=1.0x8.33 — "Decreases self-esteem by 8.33 per work-hour."
• −StatMeaning=1.0x4.17 — "Decreases sense of purpose by 4.17 per work-hour."

Thought: "Work actively drains these psychological stats. The crew have no choice but to take breaks and do free-time activities to refill them. This isn't slacking — it's the design."

Step 5 — Verify that free time refills what work drains

Action: search CONDTick1HourFree. Find CONDTick1HourFreeMoods. Its aCOs show StatAchievement=1.0x4.33, StatEsteem=1.0x4.33 — free time restores these at roughly half the rate work drains them. Study and TV are the interactions that trigger the free-time tick for the crew.

Thought: "So the regime is: work 2 hrs, earn some stats, drain achievement/esteem/meaning. Exercise 2 hrs, hold off atrophy. Rest/study/TV 4+ hrs, restore psychological balance. The AI is cycling through all of this autonomously and correctly."

Step 6 — Optional: find the mod path (anti-atrophy meds)

Thought: "If I wanted to reduce how often this happens without removing the behavior entirely, I could reduce the atrophy rate with meds."

Action: on StatAtrophy's incoming refs, find loot:CONDOssifexStimPer (−StatAtrophyRate=1.0x0.95). The "Edit this" callout (UX 1.10) on that page: "To reduce the atrophy rate this drug provides, edit the value of aCOs[0] in data/loot/loot.json (line N). Higher magnitude = more atrophy suppression per dose. Note: StatAtrophyRate is a multiplier; the base rate is 1.0."

What the site needs to support this

• Search by strName (both versions) — already shipped.
• Object detail page with grouped refs (both versions) — already shipped.
• nDisplaySelf field visible in the Fields block (lucky v1, step 5; newcomer v2, step 2) — already shipped. The value 0 is visible; its meaning is opaque without a schema description. A Comment Mod entry for nDisplaySelf naming the 0/1/2/3 semantics — and explicitly noting "0 = invisible in the needs panel and in the character inspector's condition pills" — is the fix.
• Edge metadata on incoming refs (lucky v1, step 6) — already shipped (value on condition edges).
• Glossary card for "exercise / atrophy / microgravity muscle loss" (newcomer v2, step 1) — not yet shipped. This card is also the fix for the lucky path's break point (see "Where the lucky path breaks"): it bridges the plain-English query "exercise" to conditions:StatAtrophy for players who don't know about getcond. Without it, both paths dead-end at the interaction page.
• Per-prefix explainer banner for Stat* + nDisplaySelf semantics (newcomer v2, step 2) — not yet shipped. Must call out the 0/2/3 meanings explicitly; this is the "aha" moment the path depends on.
• Filter pills on incoming refs (newcomer v2, step 3) — not yet shipped. StatAtrophy has many non-tick incoming refs; the "Only tick effects" pill is essential to keep the list readable.
• Inline schema descriptions on aCOs items in CONDTick1HourWork* (newcomer v2, step 4) — not yet shipped. Without per-line descriptions naming which psychological stat is affected and in what direction, the page is an opaque list of cond-strings.
• "Why is this in loot/?" inline note on CONDTick1HourWork (newcomer v2, step 4) — not yet shipped. The COND… prefix + loot/ folder is a near-universal newcomer trap.
• "Edit this" callout on CONDOssifexStimPer (newcomer v2, step 6) — not yet shipped.

The lucky path is ~80% achievable on what's already shipped, provided the player guesses "atrophy" as the search term. The newcomer path requires the glossary card (step 1) to even begin — without it, "exercise" leads into the interaction graph and the hidden-stat insight is never surfaced.

Acceptance criterion

Two separate tests, both required. Each tester is a modder writing a design doc for a mod that touches the work/needs loop — not a player asking the explorer to explain NPC behavior.

Console-first tester (lucky modder): A modder who arrives at the explorer already holding the strName StatAtrophy (e.g. from getcond in the F3 console) should reach a complete map of the loop — hidden display flag, rate math, mood drain, drug reference — without any wrong clicks. The StatAtrophy detail page must be self-sufficient for this entry point.

Explorer-first tester (newcomer modder): A modder who has not yet used the game console and types "exercise" into the search bar should reach the nDisplaySelf: 0 finding on StatAtrophy within three clicks via the glossary card, and end the session with a list of the entries they'd edit to mod each part of the loop (atrophy rate, work mood drain, free-time refill, drug effects).

Test each with a fresh user. The console-first test can run as soon as nDisplaySelf has a schema description. The explorer-first test requires the glossary card to be seeded.