Yep, those first 3 are either exactly or almost exactly what I ended up with when I toyed around with making something similar, haha.

Honestly, I think what you are describing as 'janky workarounds'... are actually how you do this right, they are 'efficiently implemented game mechanics'.

Maybe the code could be cleaned up and de-spaghettified a bit, but I've seen many other systems like this in many games and mods.

If it seems stupid, but it works... it isn't stupid.

The word for that is actually 'clever'.

... you'd be amazed how much enterprise level business software, for instance, relies on some weird ancient library or function that literally has a comment in the code that says "I do not know why this works, but it does, DO NOT CHANGE".

.....

But also: oh god WATER.

Fuck video game water rofl.

I feel your pain.