2 Commits

Author	SHA1	Message	Date
SirStone	a54ae6a162	SETTLED: no small rack beats Pattern alone; the selector is negative value on a GOOD rack ... Follow-up to e0666a5, which showed Pattern alone (10.78%) beats the full rack (6.93%). That left two open questions: is a SMALL rack of good guns better than Pattern alone, and does the selector add value on a good rack (rather than only on the bloated one)? Both are now answered: NO and NO. 6 arms x 7 runs x 7 rounds, one frozen binary from CLEAN HEAD e0666a5 (built via `git archive`, source verified byte-identical to the clean tree), rack knobs only, 8 concurrent battles, real server-side hit rate vs the real DrussGT, exact two-sided permutation test on per-run rates. arm guns (selector active?) real % dmg/run p vs onlyPattern onlyPattern Pattern, NO selection 10.36 264 -- lean8 HeadOn,Linear,Circular,Accel,Pattern,GF,KNN,WallBounce 6.31 146 0.0169 lean6 lean8 - HeadOn 8.83 212 0.0262 pairPC Pattern + Circular 8.23 185 0.0460 pairPK Pattern + KNN 9.80 264 0.3998 pairPL Pattern + Linear 8.23 200 0.0035 The control replicates the prior run (10.36% vs 10.78% before; same binary tree, different build path). THE MECHANISM, from the per-arm selected-gun mix - the virtual signal keeps ranking the WRONG guns first, even on a two-gun rack: lean8: HeadOn 46.2% of ticks at 2.0% REAL; Pattern only 14.4% (12.6% real) lean6: Pattern 29.2% (10.4% real) vs KNN 25.3% (8.1%) and Linear 15.2% (8.0%) pairPC: Circular 66.8% (6.9% real) vs Pattern 33.2% (11.2% real) - over-picks Circular pairPL: Linear 57.7% (6.0% real) vs Pattern 42.3% (11.1% real) - over-picks Linear pairPK: Pattern 86.4% - ties ONLY because the selector happens to pick Pattern most of the time; it is numerically lower with identical dmg/run So the failure is NOT rack size. Pruning does not fix it; the ranking is wrong. VERDICT: ship `onlyPattern` - Pattern alone with selection bypassed - at 10.36% real and 264 dmg/run, vs lean8 6.31%/146 and the prior full rack 6.93%/159. This DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS the standing user directive to keep virtual-fitness selection, so it is recorded here plainly rather than quietly acted on: disable the selector (`TR_RACK_<every gun but PATTERN>=off`) pending a better fitness signal. The mechanism itself is left intact and functional so it can be re-enabled with one env var, and so it can be fixed rather than discarded. REMAINING CAVEAT: ONE ADVERSARY. All of this is vs DrussGT. Pattern as the default must be re-checked against other bots first - that is the next job. Extends the reusable harness (tools/ab/which_gun_arm_env.sh now has lean8/lean6/ pairPC/pairPK/pairPL; which_gun_analyze.py is parameterised by WHICHGUN_OUT and compares against both `full` and `onlyPattern`).	2026-09-22 01:35:51 +02:00
SirStone	e0666a562d	The gun selector is NEGATIVE value: Pattern alone beats the full rack (p=0.0012) ... MEASURED against the real DrussGT, one frozen binary built from clean HEAD, rack knobs only (no source edits), 5 arms x 7 runs x 7 rounds, 8 concurrent battles, judged ONLY on server-side real hit rate from the events sidecar, exact two-sided permutation test on per-run rates. arm runs shots hits real % dmg/run p vs full full (shipped) 7 3898 270 6.93 159 -- onlyPattern 7 4582 494 10.78 287 0.0012 <- BETTER onlyKNN 7 4033 207 5.13 119 0.1340 onlyLinear 7 3215 105 3.27 65 0.0082 onlyGF 7 3193 72 2.25 45 0.0012 Firing Pattern ALONE gives +3.85pp pooled hit rate and +80% damage per run, and it fires MORE shots (4582 vs 3898) - it dominates on rate and volume. This is not "any single gun wins" (full beats Linear, GF and KNN); it is specifically "Pattern alone beats the rack". WHY - the virtual fitness signal mis-ranks guns against real outcomes: - HeadOn is massively over-selected: 31.4% of ticks, the most real shots (1070), but only 4.5% REAL. It alone drags the rack down. - Pattern has the best virtual rank and near-best real rate (11.9%, rank 2), yet is selected only 22.6% of the time. - Linear's apparent strength was SELECTION BIAS: conditional on being selected it looked like 15.2% (n=33), but its UNCONDITIONAL rate (onlyLinear) is 3.27%. Every earlier per-gun "real rate" in this repo is conditional on selection and is therefore confounded. This experiment is the clean measurement. NOT YET SETTLED (do not overclaim): - ONE ADVERSARY. All of this is vs DrussGT. Pattern must be re-checked against other bots before it becomes the default on this evidence alone. - Whether a SMALL rack of good guns beats Pattern alone. The selector is negative value on the CURRENT bloated rack; that does not prove it is negative value on a rack of only good guns. That is the next experiment and it decides whether the selection apparatus is fixed or disabled. - The user's standing directive is to KEEP virtual-fitness selection. This measurement conflicts with it, so the next step tests the selector on a small good rack rather than assuming either answer. Context - three prior selection-side attempts all failed: hysteresis (7.02% -> 5.10%, p=0.002), commitment (7.17% -> 4.44%, p=0.0012), arrival-accuracy tie-break (7.08%, p=0.88 null). The per-tick random draw is load-bearing on three independent measurements. This experiment locates the real problem one level up: which guns are in the rack, and that the virtual signal ranks them wrongly. Preserves the reusable harness (tools/ab/which_gun_run_one.sh, which_gun_arm_env.sh, which_gun_analyze.py) and the full writeup (docs/selector_negative_value.md).	2026-09-22 01:21:14 +02:00