Encounter timing

Current code keeps Patrol and Encounter category counts separate. The ordinary Patrol lane gate compares current Patrol population with its own scaled Patrol target; it does not use the Encounter-category count as an “Encounter active” pause switch.

Once a Patrol is due, a second gate adds the selected Patrol quantity, in-flight spawn occupancy, and current shared enemy-capacity usage. Encounter enemies contribute to that capacity. On the ordinary path, a result above 100 rejects the Patrol attempt and sends its lane to the five-second retry.

Retained instrumented captures isolate the relationship directly. One capture held 64 encounter, 8 patrol, and 2 guard-group enemies and used 74 capacity units. Another held 46 encounter, 1 guard-group, and 12 battle-group enemies and used 59. In both cases the categorized population total matched the capacity consumed by Patrol admission.

Encounter population can crowd out new Patrols when shared capacity is high enough. An encounter does not automatically disable Patrol timers merely by being active.

Each faction has a baseline for each difficulty, but that value is not a fixed wall-clock cooldown. The countdown uses the current reinforcement speed. If conditions remain constant, effective interval = baseline / final speed.

If mission progress, squad size, extraction state, position, or another live condition changes during the countdown, the speed changes with it. The wait is therefore recalculated continuously rather than chosen once when the timer starts.

Select the current mission conditions to calculate ordinary reinforcement drain speed and the resulting interval for the selected faction and difficulty.

Localization Confusion runs the ordinary reinforcement timer at 0.90× speed. With no later rule overriding it, the wait becomes about 11.11% longer.

Scripted Wave Encounter Triggers apply the same underlying value differently. After calculating the normal next-wave delay, the game divides that delay by 0.90. A 60-second interval therefore becomes about 66.67 seconds; a 90-second interval becomes 100 seconds.

The wave counter and the timing calculation are separate. Preparing the next wave advances the sequence counter, and that counter is compared with the configured wave count before the next delay is calculated. Localization Confusion does not participate in that count comparison.

A separate objective or mission script can still stop an Encounter before its Wave Trigger finishes. If a fixed external cutoff does that, the longer spacing could indirectly mean fewer waves occur before the cutoff, but the Wave Trigger's configured count is still unchanged. Which objectives impose such external cutoffs has not yet been mapped.

Current code evidence does not show Localization Confusion changing Patrol cooldowns, Objective Encounter Trigger thresholds, or Encounter Ramp Up threshold timers.

While a deployed SEAF contingent is active, ordinary enemy reinforcement countdown speed cannot fall below 1.60×. The game applies this minimum after mission progress, squad size, position, and Localization Confusion. It also applies to ordinary Patrol countdowns.

For example, a raw rate of 1.70 × 0.90 = 1.53 is raised to 1.60. A rate already at 2.00× remains 2.00×. This is a countdown-speed minimum, not an additional 60% multiplier on every active rate.

The SEAF deployment state can switch off during the mission. After the deployment quota is met, a counted surviving force below 34% of the configured target can trigger a reset, removing the minimum on subsequent countdown updates. The counted total is not always identical to the number of soldiers visibly alive. A member observed the effect end after SEAF soldiers died or despawned; the exact transition timing has not been isolated in a controlled test.

Evidence: Code confirmed for the SEAF active-state gate, reinforcement rate floor, and conditional reset. Live supported by a member field report. Scripted wave counts and objective encounter timers follow separate rules.

Objective encounter cycles use their own elapsed phase timer. Each current profile has separate active and inactive thresholds for D1–D10. When the threshold for the current phase is crossed, the game performs the corresponding Encounter activation or cleanup, flips the phase, and resets elapsed time.

Profile letters are OTL labels for anonymous timing profiles. No objective name is inferred from timing similarity alone.

The objective-progress ramp is driven by objective progress rather than the ordinary reinforcement cooldown. Progress moves the system through configured thresholds. Entering a threshold can request immediate Encounters, and a threshold can also define a repeating timer for additional requests while it remains active.

The current behavior is confirmed. Current configured threshold values have not yet been recovered, so older TCS values are not presented here as current settings.

Scripted wave sequences are finite. The system tracks its own wave state, prepares and activates each wave, cleans up the current Encounter as the sequence advances, and stops when the configured sequence is complete.

Current-build code confirms that wave count and wave spacing are separate. When another wave remains, the game activates it, calculates the next delay from the sequence settings, and then applies Localization Confusion's /0.90 adjustment.

The normal next-wave delay can vary across the sequence: the sequence interpolates between its configured timing endpoints according to wave progress. Localization Confusion is applied after that interpolation, so each calculated interval is stretched by the same factor rather than replacing the sequence's authored timing curve.

Current scripted-wave settings remain unresolved, so historical wave counts and timing endpoints are not presented as current values.