# Fire Nation Attacked - Iteration Plan (v3)

## Start Menu Changes

1. **Remove START button** - Shooting Easy/Medium/Hard directly starts the game
2. **Remove "income signals" section** (top right corner) completely - declutter
3. **Font improvements** - Bigger size, more thematic/imaginative font for fire vs water theme
4. **Leaderboard alignment fix** - Both names AND scores should be aligned properly

## Core Gameplay Mechanics (MAJOR CHANGES)

### Water Container
- **NO auto-recharge** - Water is a carefully managed resource
- Display percentage (0-100) with large, visible font
- Capacity: 100 units (baseline)

### Sacred Well Mechanics
- **Player can VACUUM from the well** to refill their container
- **Player can SHOOT water INTO the well** to replenish it
- Display percentage (0-100) with large, visible font
- Capacity: 400 units (4x player container)
- **New design** - More interesting shape, remove confusing blue rectangle on right
- Labels should be in much bigger fonts

### Water Economy Flow
1. Player starts with full container (100%)
2. Player shoots enemies, depleting container
3. Player can vacuum from sacred well to refill container
4. Enemies that reach the well DRAIN it (more punishing than player vacuum)
5. At end of wave: **Rain animation (2 seconds)** refills both well and container
6. If everything already full during rain = bonus points

### Balance Rule
- Vacuuming from well to fight enemies must be BETTER than letting enemies touch well
- Enemy damage to well must be significantly MORE punishing than player vacuum cost

## Scoring System

- **Time bonus**: Faster wave clear = better score
- **Efficiency bonus**: Less water wasted = better score
- **Damage penalty**: Base takes damage (fire touching well) = score reduction
- **Vacuum penalty?**: Does vacuuming from well reduce score? (NEED CLARIFICATION)

## Wave Tuning

### Structure: 5 waves minimum

**Wave 1 (Very Chill)**
- Total: ~5 enemies
- Enemy 1 spawns at start
- Enemy 2 spawns when Enemy 1 reaches middle of screen
- Enemies 3, 4, 5 spawn with slight intensity increase at end

**Wave 2-4**
- Progressive increase in enemy count
- Gradual difficulty ramp

**Wave 5**
- High enemy count, intense finale

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## Questions Before Implementation

### 1. Vacuum from well mechanic
Player aims at well + pulls antenna to vacuum water into container. Is that correct?

**Answer:Yes. Ideally here there are 2 special sounds for these 2 interactions**

### 2. Shoot into well mechanic
Player aims at well and shoots to replenish it. What prevents accidental shooting when aiming at enemies near the well? Should there be a "well zone" that's clearly separate from the battlefield?

**Answer:Good question. Let's accept this risk, slightly more skill expression for the player.**

### 3. Rain at end of wave
Does the rain also collect leftover water puddles from the battlefield? Or just refills well + container?

**Answer: Just refills. The puddles are pure waste. Let's also make it so each rain provides exactly the amount of water needed to clear the next wave. With a big message like "The rains provide just enough to survive one more wave..."**

### 4. Sacred well shape
What style would you like? Options:
- Circular stone well with decorative border
- Glowing water basin
- Something more abstract/magical?

**Answer: It still needs to occupy the entire vertical line. Maybe let's kep a straight line as the limit where ennemies collide with the base, and anything behind it is the well (for the purposes of the player vaccuming into it/repleneshing). So behind the well you can go crazy with the design. Make it look cool and sacred!**

### 5. Blue rectangle on right
Is this the old HP bar / sacred well indicator? I'll remove it and replace with the new well design.

**Answer:yes**

### 6. Vacuum from well scoring
Is vacuuming from the well neutral (no penalty), or does it count as a minor penalty since you're depleting the base resource?

**Answer: the sacred well resource is our base HP. It should have an impact on the final score (end of game). Let's make it a bonus only. So the bonus is 0 when the player lost, and then scales up as the base HP is higher. 100% would grant the maximum bonus. These bonuses should also be impacted by the x1 x2, x3 scores depending on difficulty.**

### 7. Wave 1 spawn triggers
Should I use position-based triggers (enemy reaches middle of screen) or time-based delays? Position-based seems more interesting but needs different spawn logic.

**Answer:Simpler is better.**

### 8. Difficulty modifiers (Easy/Medium/Hard)
Now that auto-regen is removed, what should difficulty affect?
- Enemy HP multiplier?
- Enemy count multiplier?
- Well drain per enemy (how punishing enemies are)?
- Enemy speed?
- Starting resources?

**Answer:Good point. Let's simplify what difficulty means. All will have the path indicators. Difficulty impacts speed and damage of the ennemies and that's all for now**

### 9. Water waste definition
What counts as "wasted" water for scoring purposes?
- Water that evaporates without hitting enemies?
- Water left on battlefield at end of wave?
- Both?

**Answer: water left on battlefield at end of wave.**


Another request: in the initial page, there should be glowing arrows that explain what is what. Like "Fire ennemies will arrive from here", "Ennemies must not reach the sacred well", "This is your water tank. You wouldn't dare vaccuming from the sacred well would you?" + other ideas maybe?


Also at the end of a game it's impossible to replay. Imo the player should go back to the initial screen by default (only diff is the light overlay with the score of the last run).