Co-op Roles and Desync Troubleshooting

The shelf looks tidy until one teammate sees a finished parcel, another sees that box in the scanner, and a third is carrying its invisible twin toward the boat. That is peak Cat Mail Co. cardboard chaos. Stop moving parcels as soon as your views disagree. A short reset is safer than letting one confused box turn the post office into a cloning experiment.

A parcel state means the crew label you give a box during the work loop. The labels below are handoff rules, not names shown by the game. Cat Mail Co. supports solo play and online co-op for up to four players, but no role split fits every crew.

Divide the Shift into Four Jobs

Job	Main responsibilities	Handoff point
Counter	Handle customer requests and find the matching pickup parcel.	Return an uncertain box to the completed zone. Do not guess from a crowded shelf.
Inspection	Take one unfinished parcel at a time through its label, weight, destination, stamps, and any scanner or handling check it needs.	Place it in the completed zone only after its visible requirements are checked.
Storage	Keep unfinished, night-hold, completed, pickup, and outbound parcels in separate zones with labels facing out.	Move completed outbound mail to route storage, but hold it away from the dock until the Captain names the boat's next destination.
Dock	Read the Captain's next destination, stage matching outbound parcels, load the boat, and make the final departure call.	Take only completed parcels assigned to the destination being served.

These are flexible jobs. If one cat loves wrestling odd boxes onto the boat while another enjoys the scanner, build around that.

Role Templates for Two to Four Players

Crew	Suggested split	Simple rotation
Two players	Player 1 handles counter and inspection. Player 2 handles storage and dock.	Swap halves after each shift.
Three players	Player 1 handles counter. Player 2 handles inspection. Player 3 handles storage and dock.	Rotate one place each shift, including the combined job.
Four players	Assign counter, inspection, storage, and dock to one player each.	Rotate after one shift, or keep jobs for two shifts before swapping.

Use Visible Parcel Handoffs

Choose four easy-to-see shelves or floor spots before the room fills. The exact layout is your crew's choice.

Parcel state	Visible home	Handoff call
Unfinished	A shelf beside the inspection tools, with the main label facing the aisle.	“Unfinished—needs inspection.”
Waiting for night	A separate night-hold shelf away from normal processing.	“Night hold—do not ship.”
Completed	A completed shelf separated from unfinished boxes.	“Complete—route not checked.”
Boat-ready	A dock-side area grouped by the Captain's next destination.	“Boat-ready for [destination].”

In this system, completed does not mean boat-ready. The dock player still checks the destination before staging the box. That small rule prevents a surprising amount of dock-side box soup.

One Player Owns Each Parcel

From the moment a parcel leaves a shelf until it reaches the next marked zone, one player owns it. Only that player should place it in the scanner, remove it from a machine, or change its shelf. Call the parcel before picking it up. If two players reach for the same box, both step back and let the named owner take it.

End each handoff with the parcel resting on a surface and the owner saying “clear.” Do not grab a box while another player is placing it. Simultaneous pickups and scanner actions have caused parcels or machines to disagree between co-op views.

Confirm a Suspicious Handoff

State: uncertain. Tool: an empty quarantine shelf or floor spot. Action: put the parcel down and stop touching it.
The receiving player says where the parcel appears and which marks are visible.
The host checks the same parcel and reads back its location and visible state.
If both views match, the receiving player takes ownership and continues.
If the views differ, leave the parcel in quarantine. Use the host view as a working reference, not proof that the host is always correct. Let the host handle that parcel alone until the crew agrees again.

Safe Desync Recovery

Problem	First safe move	Recovery steps
Invisible duplicate or ghost parcel	State: suspicious. Tool: quarantine space. Action: stop touching the stack.	Have the host move one clearly visible parcel to quarantine. Every client checks whether it moved and how many boxes remain. Do not process an extra copy visible to only one person. Confirm the autosave state before asking the affected player to leave and rejoin. A rejoin may clear the mismatch, but it is not guaranteed.
Scanner or another machine is stuck	State: in progress. Tool: the affected machine. Action: remove any parcel that still moves and clear nearby boxes.	Let one player operate the machine and test it once with a single parcel. If it remains stuck, quarantine that parcel and stop feeding the machine. Patch #1 added a Respawn button to the pause menu for a stuck character; it is not a promised machine reset.
Parcel positions do not match	State: uncertain. Tool: an empty shelf or floor spot. Action: freeze all shelf moves.	The host names one parcel and moves it alone to the empty spot. Each client confirms whether it moved. Resume only when everyone sees the same position. Otherwise, close that shelf and prepare a controlled rejoin after checking the autosave.
A teammate disconnects mid-shift	State: anything they touched last is uncertain. Tool: quarantine space. Action: pause boat and shift transitions.	Check the teammate's last work area, quarantine unclear parcels, and give those boxes to one remaining handler. If the session still responds, try bringing the same teammate back before advancing.
The shift is waiting on an absent teammate	State: transition blocked. Tool: the session invite. Action: try to return the same teammate.	If the teammate returns, let the crew clear the transition together. If the screen remains stuck on “Waiting for next player,” there may be no solo cleanup available inside that session. Stop triggering the transition, confirm the newest autosave you can see, and restart only as a last resort.

Autosave warning: Before anyone leaves, rejoins, or closes the session, stop parcel work and check the latest autosave state. Wait out any active save notice. If you cannot confirm that recent progress was saved, treat it as unsaved and do not assume a restart is safe.

Avoid planned dropouts during boat departure or the next-shift transition. In the launch version, a teammate leaving after the boat departs can strand the remaining player on a “Waiting for next player” screen. These containment steps reduce extra parcel movement, but they cannot guarantee a fix for every disconnect, invisible box, machine lock, or future patch behavior.

Finish a Disrupted Shift Solo

Use this fallback only if the remaining player still controls the post office. If the game is already locked on the waiting screen, try the teammate rejoin first and protect the save before restarting.

Wait until departed teammates are fully out of the active session. Do not send the boat or start a transition yet.
Stop taking new requests and clear the inspection counter.
Move uncertain parcels to quarantine. Sort the rest into unfinished, night-hold, completed pickup, completed outbound, and boat-ready zones.
Process one unfinished parcel at a time. Do not pick up the next box until the first reaches a clear zone.
Handle waiting pickups, then check the Captain's next destination.
Stage and load only matching completed outbound parcels.
Check for absent-player prompts or parcels that still appear in different places. If the view is stable, finish the transition, wait out any save notice, and confirm progress before inviting the crew back.

This fallback is slower, but there is no need to sprint through the cleanup. One careful cat can turn the cardboard avalanche back into a readable postal line.

← Prev