The user's request: "when our bot is low OR enemy is low, it is useless to use high
power instead low fast bullets have more chances to finish the enemy. Let's do a
math slope: starting from some health down, the power goes down with it."
1. ENERGY SLOPE (`TR_POWER_ENERGY_*`), replacing the old hard step at 50 energy:
cap = ENERGY_MAX at/above ENERGY_HI, ENERGY_MIN at/below ENERGY_LO, LINEAR in
power between, clamped. Defaults HI=80 LO=20 MIN=0.5 MAX=3.0, so no cap >=80,
0.5 at <=20, and e.g. E=65 -> 2.375, E=50 -> 1.75, E=35 -> 1.125.
Rationale: bullet speed is 20-3p, so lower power = FASTER bullet (less lead
error, higher hit chance), fires more often (10+2p) and drains slower (p/shot).
E[dE] = p(3P-1) => break-even hit probability is 1/3 INDEPENDENT of power, and
our measured rates are 5-27%, far below it.
2. FINISHING CAP (`TR_POWER_FINISH_KILL`, default ON): cap power at the SMALLEST
bullet that still removes the enemy's remaining energy -
`E<=4 -> p=E/4` (min 0.1), `4<E<=16 -> p=(E+2)/6`, `E>16 -> no cap`.
Rationale, and it makes the user's instinct stronger than a heuristic: server
1.3.1 caps the damage SCORE at the energy ACTUALLY REMOVED, so overkill is
WASTED damage AND ~6x the energy for ZERO extra score. Damage is 4p (p<=1) /
6p-2 (p>1).
Both are min-composed with the existing far/below-average caps, may only LOWER
power (exhaustively tested), and are exempt while ramming.
`TR_POWER_POLICY=0` still returns the uncapped control exactly.
MEASURED ENERGY SAVING (offline replay of the DrussGT fixtures, 28,797 ticks):
arm shots energy meanP E/1k ticks vs cliff
control(uncapped) 1913 4646 2.43 161.4 -90.2%
cliff (today) 2363 2443 1.03 84.8 0.0%
slope 2404 2178 0.91 75.6 ** 10.9% LESS **
slope+finish 2404 2167 0.90 75.3 ** 11.3% LESS **
So the slope spends ~11% less energy than the cliff AND fires slightly MORE shots
(2404 vs 2363) - both directions at once.
HONEST NOTE on the finishing rule's reach here: ticks where the enemy is low
(0 < E <= 16) are only 2252/28797 = 7.8% of these fixtures, so finishing adds just
~11 energy of saving against DrussGT. It matters in CLOSER fights, not this one.
Verification: test_power_policy 58 (was 26) in BOTH the default and TR_POWER_POLICY=0
control arms - slope at E=100/80/65/50/35/20/5, powerToKill across E=0.1..100, the
inverse-cover property for E<=16, monotonicity, ram exemption, and an exhaustive
sweep proving power <= preference. Guards: test_gun_harness 39, test_vbullet_metric
11, test_power_selection 3, test_adaptive_radar 41, test_tfil_ring_weights 24,
test_ram_decision 40, test_rack_membership 48, test_selector_tiebreak 19,
test_tm_pattern_registration 20, test_vbullet_admit_gate 12. acceptance
12/12 PASS. ModularBot compiles release.
Adds `common_libs/tests/measure_power_policy.nim` (the energy/histogram tool) and
updates docs/env_reference.md for the new `energySlope|finishKill` log reasons.
NOT MEASURED: the battle/hit-rate effect. The offline figures use the fixture
shooter's energy as a proxy, open-loop; the RELATIVE saving is the meaningful part.
The user's requirement: "every battle i means from round 1 to round end-battle, so
retain all learning until the enemy change." What was built wiped the Tsetlin
machines EVERY ROUND, in two places (`onRoundStarted` and the gun's own
tick-regression self-reset), so in a 7-round battle each round started cold,
trained ~360 samples and threw them away - discarding most of its one chance to
do what was asked: overfit the current enemy over the whole battle.
THE FIX - two kinds of state, two triggers:
- **`resetRoundState` (per ROUND)**: the observation ring, pending/deferred
labels, the bullet proxy, motion history, per-tick caches, `roundStartTrained`.
These MUST clear every round, because bots teleport back to the starting corners
between rounds - an old position would build a garbage label. (That exact class
of bug shipped 36-58% wrong labels in the old gun.)
- **`resetLearning` (per BATTLE / per ENEMY)**: both Tsetlin machines, `trained`,
`sideCorrect/sideTotal`, all histograms, the magnitude median, `pendingDropped`,
`observedTargetId`. These now SURVIVE round boundaries.
Triggers for the machine wipe: `onGameStarted` (primary) plus a redundant
`roundNumber <= 1` fallback in `onRoundStarted`; and a TARGET CHANGE
(`targetChanged`, knob `TR_TMHORIZON_RESET_ON_TARGET` default on - a no-op in 1v1,
fires on melee target switches; first acquisition never wipes). The
tick-regression self-reset now clears ONLY per-round state.
Still NO cross-battle persistence: grep for file I/O in the gun finds none.
PROOF IT WORKS (live 2-round battle, `TR_RACK_PATTERN=off TR_RACK_TMHORIZON=both`):
[tmh-reset] reason=game_start trained_was=0
[tmh-reset] reason=round1 trained_was=0
...exactly TWO reset lines in the whole battle, both at battle start, and NONE
at the round-2 boundary. And the per-round summaries:
[tmh-round] trained=1249 thisRound=1249 ... sideAcc=711/1177 (60.4%)
[tmh-round] trained=2226 thisRound=977 ... sideAcc=1361/2154 (63.2%)
`trained` CLIMBED 1249 -> 2226 across the boundary, and side accuracy rose
60.4% -> 63.2% in round 2 (one battle - suggestive, not proof).
Unit tests: `test_tm_horizon` 79 (was 54), including "trained SURVIVES the
boundary", "clause states SURVIVE", "trained climbs round1->round2", "game-start
wipes and all clauses end Exclude", "different enemy wipes / same enemy does not /
knob-off does not", and crucially "a label CANNOT be built across a round
boundary" (ringValidCount==0, ringHas(oldTick)==false, pendingCount==0) - the
single most dangerous interaction of this change.
Guards: test_tm_horizon 79, test_rack_membership 48, test_gun_harness 39,
test_vbullet_metric 11, test_power_selection 3, test_adaptive_radar 41,
test_tfil_ring_weights 24, test_power_policy 26, test_ram_decision 40,
test_selector_tiebreak 19, test_tm_pattern_registration 20,
test_vbullet_admit_gate 12, test_tm_diag 48, test_tm_automata_diag 55,
test_tm_clause_shape 66. acceptance_offline_vs_online 12/12 VERDICT PASS.
Shipped rack unchanged: DefaultRackMembership is still Pattern-only, TMHORIZON off.
Residual (pre-existing, out of scope, stated): the internal base
`PatternMatcherGun` has a rolling move-history buffer that is NOT cleared at round
boundaries - it never was, and the SHIPPED Pattern gun carries history across
rounds too. It cannot affect label correctness (labels come from `g.ring`), only
base-prediction quality in a round's first ticks.
Follows the diagnosis that proactive straight-line ramming CANNOT work: both bots
have MAX_SPEED=8, so a pursuit cannot catch an evading equal-speed opponent.
Measured over 49 rounds per arm, opportunity -> contact was **0/6** (base), 0/40
(ring), 0/12 (ringhot). The only proactive conversion in the whole corpus came
from a FINISHER, and only because a <20-energy DrussGT stops fleeing (that episode
closed at 6-8 px/tick). Opportunity episodes never got below ~80px; one ran the
full 60-tick duration cap and closed only 198->171px; a perfectly aligned
full-speed one closed 195->114px then plateaued.
CHANGES
- **Finisher-only default.** `finisher` (<20 energy, dist<300, we are healthier)
and the rare `desperation` (both <5, dist<150) are kept; `opportunity` and the
speculative `plan` are OFF. Both are env-reenableable with no rebuild:
`TR_RAM_OPPORTUNITY=1` (tune via TR_RAM_OPP_DIST/MARGIN) and `TR_RAM_PLAN=1`.
Justification: it removes 100+ non-converting episodes per fixture at zero
measured loss (oldram vs base was p=0.69, damage 279 vs 284, survival 17/49 vs
16/49) - and each of those episodes spent up to 60 ticks driving STRAIGHT at
the enemy, abandoning the mover's dodging and disrupting aim.
- **`desperation` KEPT** deliberately: it is cheap and rare, fires only when both
bots are nearly dead at short range (a coin-flip where 0.6 contact can decide
it), and it is not the refuted straight-line pursuit.
- **THE BULLET-RAIN ABORT WAS DEAD CODE AND IS NOW FIXED.** `onHitByBullet`
accumulated raw bullet FIREPOWER while `TR_RAM_ABORT_DMG = 0.5` was documented
as a DAMAGE rate - so the bar was implicitly "sum of power > 7.5 over 15 turns"
and the maximum rate ever observed was 0.27. It now accumulates REAL ENERGY via
a `bulletDamage(power)` helper matching the server's `4p` / `6p-2` formula, and
`TR_RAM_ABORT_DMG` defaults to **2.0 energy/turn** (~30 HP over 15 turns):
"abort an in-progress ram if we take > 2.0 energy per turn". Same effective bar
for normal firepower, and it can now actually fire - the live run reports
`dmgRate=1.07/turn` where the old units said 0.27.
- **`ramStuckTicks` REMOVED.** It required `dist < 5px`; contact occurs at ~36px
(two 18px radii) and position rewind prevents getting closer, so it could never
increment. Only the 60-tick duration cap can now self-end a ram.
LIVENESS (measured, default config, vs a charging Java RamFire, 3 rounds):
default -> `[ram] ON reason=finisher` x3, `reason=opportunity` x0
TR_RAM_OPPORTUNITY=1 -> `reason=opportunity` x4, `reason=finisher` x2
So the opportunity states DID occur and are suppressed by the new default - the
removal is real, not an arm that never fires. A line also read
`[ram] OFF reason=duration dmgRate=1.07/turn`, confirming the new energy units.
Adds docs/ramming_negative_result.md (70 lines) recording the question, the five
diagnostic answers, the geometric reason, the finisher exception, the two dead
code paths, and an explicit "do not re-attempt a proactive straight-line ram; if
point-blank forcing is ever wanted it is an INTERCEPTION/cornering movement
problem" note - the same pattern that stopped the corpse bug recurring.
Guards: test_ram_decision 40 (was 28), test_gun_harness 39, test_vbullet_metric 11,
test_power_selection 3, test_adaptive_radar 41, test_tfil_ring_weights 24,
test_power_policy 26, test_rack_membership 48, test_selector_tiebreak 19,
test_tm_pattern_registration 20, test_vbullet_admit_gate 12,
acceptance_offline_vs_online 12/12. ModularBot compiles.
Honest note: the abort-threshold fix is a real (tiny) behaviour change, NOT
measured-neutral - it only bites while a finisher ram is under sustained fire,
which is exactly the user's stated wish. The finisher-only removal itself is
measured-neutral per the given A/B.
The default rack is now Pattern-only (31c7c01), but membership filters SELECTION,
not SPAWNING - so all 13 unselected guns still ran `predict` + `spawnBullets`
every tick to feed fitness tables nobody reads. Measured waste: Tsetlin alone
0.98 ms/tick, KNN 0.30, plus 10 more. This generalises the gate TMPATTERN already
had to every gun, behind `TR_VBULLET_ADMIT_ONLY` (default 1 = gate, 0 = old).
OFFLINE COST (release build, 400 ticks, min of 2 reps, 13-gun rack):
OFF 2.14 ms/tick (implied 467 ticks/s)
ON 0.04 ms/tick (implied 27667 ticks/s)
-> reclaimed 2.10 ms/tick, ~98% of the virtual-bullet cost. Tsetlin's 0.98
disappears, KNN's 0.30 disappears, only Pattern (0.017) survives.
Note the absolute scale is lower than an earlier unoptimised measurement (~6.1
ms/t) because this is a -d:release build; the ON-vs-OFF DELTA is the robust result.
LIVE TICK RATE (ONE frozen binary, 4 runs/arm x 4 rounds, all 8 concurrent, gate
varied by env only):
ON 146.2 ticks/s (142.3, 145.2, 147.9, 149.4)
OFF 86.9 ticks/s ( 95.0, 41.4, 99.1, 112.1)
NO OVERLAP: ON min 142.3 > OFF max 112.1. Excluding a game-outcome outlier in
the OFF arm, OFF max is still 112.1. Outside the noise.
**+68% tick rate**, which also makes every future A/B faster. Both arms still pay
the fixed 8192-slot ring scan in tickBullets.
SAFETY, verified not assumed: Pattern is admitted under the shipped rack, so its
own fitness keeps accumulating and the SELECTED gun is unchanged - Pattern 100% in
all 4 runs both arms, and Pattern was the ONLY gun with vShots>0 in the ON arm
while all 13 had vShots>0 in the OFF arm. So admission is the correct predicate.
Mid-round transitions are safe by construction: only predict/spawn are gated, while
tickBullets still resolves every active bullet and the feedback case still calls
the owning gun's onResult.
A TOOLING BUG THIS CAUGHT, and a correction to the task's assumption:
`acceptance_offline_vs_online.nim` IS affected (I had assumed it was not). It
compares the live per-gun vShots against an offline replay that always spawns all
guns, so under the default gate the online non-Pattern vShots are 0 while offline
is ~400 - a guaranteed mismatch. Fixed by pinning `TR_VBULLET_ADMIT_ONLY=0` inside
that test (same putEnv/defer pattern as TR_RECORD_WORLDSTATE), keeping 12/12. The
test is about offline/online METRIC parity, so it needs every gun spawning.
Unaffected (verified from source): audit_virtual_guns.nim,
measure_cornering_guns.nim, sweep_tm_pattern.nim - all offline, none read
GUN_STATS_PATH.
Guards: test_vbullet_admit_gate 12 (new, pure), test_gun_harness 39,
test_vbullet_metric 11, test_power_selection 3, test_adaptive_radar 41,
test_tfil_ring_weights 24, test_power_policy 26, test_ram_decision 28,
test_rack_membership 48, test_selector_tiebreak 19, test_tm_pattern_registration 20,
test_tm_pattern_learning 3, acceptance_offline_vs_online 12/12. ModularBot compiles.
retracts its own earlier learning claim
=== TASK 1: REGISTERED AS GUN 14, DEFAULT `off` ===
The radial TM gun is now a first-class rack member (`TMPATTERN`, id 14), forceable
alone with `TR_RACK_TMPATTERN=both` plus every other `TR_RACK_*=off`.
DEFAULT IS `off`, and the justification matters: `both` would let it compete for
selection AND (because the shared VirtualTracker ring is order-sensitive) shift
every other gun's learning order, so it CANNOT leave the default path unchanged.
With `off` its predict and spawnBullets are additionally GATED on rack admission
(the only gun wired that way), so the shipped default never spawns it at all:
zero cost, zero ring perturbation.
Live proof: 1-round battle with only TMPATTERN racked ->
`gun 14 (TMPattern): vShots=400 selected=104 other-gun selections=0`.
Default-path-unchanged proof: parity checks that the 15-gun default bestGun/
selectGun equals the old 14-gun rack RNG-draw-for-RNG-draw, that gun 14 is never
selected by default, and acceptance 12/12.
Cost: 0.36 ms/tick (predict 0.30 + onResult 0.05) ~= 3% of the 13.16 ms budget.
Tsetlin in the same harness is 1.62 ms/tick, so the new gun is ~4.5x cheaper.
=== TASK 2: THE LABEL-BIAS FIX - AND A RETRACTION ===
Root cause confirmed: under bmPoint a SHORT radial correction resolves the virtual
bullet BEFORE the base arrival tick, so the label was dropped (labelMisses).
Fix: defer the label in a pending queue and flush it once the arrival tick is
recorded; labels still come from the BASE arrival tick.
labelMisses 4,281,695 -> 0
training samples 1,071,824 -> 5,345,847 (x5)
radial head acc 48.8% -> 57.0% (shuffled control 20.0%)
bmPoint hit rate 9.4/5.8% -> 9.1/5.7% (unchanged, within noise)
So the fix IMPROVES LEARNING but NOT the metric.
**RETRACTION OF THE PREVIOUS JOB'S CLAIM.** It reported the radial head's 48.8%
against a 36.7% majority baseline and concluded "conditional learning, not a
constant bias". With the bias removed, the correctly-measured majority baseline is
**58.2%** - so the head at 57.0% is AT/BELOW majority. The earlier apparent
conditional learning was PARTLY AN ARTEFACT OF THE BIASED SAMPLE. The bmPoint
metric win is real (TMRadial > Linear early 16/2 p=0.0013, overall 18/0 p<0.0001;
> shuffled 18/0 p<0.0001) but it comes from a NET-POSITIVE AVERAGE RADIAL SHIFT,
not from beating a majority classifier. Recorded plainly rather than left standing.
Guards: test_tm_pattern_registration 20 (new), test_tm_pattern_rack_live 4 (new),
test_gun_harness 39, test_vbullet_metric 11, test_power_selection 3 (the SIGSEGV is
gone - the knn_gun rewrite is now committed), test_adaptive_radar 41,
test_tfil_ring_weights 24, test_power_policy 26, test_ram_decision 28,
test_rack_membership 38, test_selector_tiebreak 19, test_tm_pattern_learning 3,
acceptance_offline_vs_online 12/12. ModularBot compiles (release).
Note: `common_libs/tests/range_guns.nim` still builds 14 offline drivers (the
offline sweep constructs TmPatternGun directly and acceptance only inspects ids
0..13), so nothing breaks - but a future job wanting it in the offline rack must
add a 15th driver and mirror the live admission gating. gun_stats.jsonl now emits
15 rows; downstream tooling should ignore id 14.
The user's plan: "separate racks for melee and 1v1, so the bot switches from
those based on the situation, and we can put the guns we want in one or both
racks."
MECHANISM
- `RackMode` (rm1v1/rmMelee) derived from SERVER TRUTH: `rackMode(enemyCount)`
= 1v1 when the count is 1, melee otherwise. This is the SAME `getEnemyCount()`
value the radar already uses, so there is now ONE definition of the mode.
(Using the tracker's known-enemy count was a previous bug in the radar: it
read 1 before the second enemy was scanned.)
- `RackMembership` per gun: both (default) | 1v1 | melee | off.
- The selector ranks only admitted guns - including the floor path and the
incumbent-hysteresis path.
- Empty filtered set FALLS BACK to the full rack, so the bot can never end up
with no gun.
- Env-overridable at process start, no rebuild: `TR_RACK_<GUN>` for all 14 guns
(TR_RACK_HEADON, TR_RACK_LINEAR, ... TR_RACK_TMSELECT), values
both|1v1|melee|off. Empty/unknown -> both + a stderr warning, never fatal.
- `[rack] mode=<1v1|melee> active=<guns> overrides=<...>` logged once per mode
change, never per tick.
DEFAULT IS UNCHANGED: every gun ships `rmBoth`, so behaviour is byte-identical
until the user re-racks anything. Verified by the unit test's default-config
selection parity (RNG draw for RNG draw) and by `test_gun_harness` 39 and
acceptance 12/12. `chooseFromFit` iterates the admitted list in ascending id
order, so the random tie-break draws are unchanged.
NO TUNING DONE, deliberately: we had no per-gun melee hit-rate data, and an
earlier 15-paired-run experiment found pruning neutral-to-negative on hit rate
(p=0.57/0.21). So all guns stay `both` and the membership pass waits for data.
PER-MODE DATA PLUMBING (this is what unblocks that pass): per-gun real shot
accounting is now split by the rack in force at fire time, adding to
gun_stats.jsonl: realShots1v1, realHits1v1, realHitRate1v1, realShotsMelee,
realHitsMelee, realHitRateMelee.
Verification: test_rack_membership 38/38 (new, pure, no battle); test_gun_harness
39, test_vbullet_metric 11, test_power_selection 3, test_adaptive_radar 41,
test_tfil_ring_weights 24, test_power_policy 26, test_ram_decision 28;
acceptance_offline_vs_online 12/12 VERDICT PASS; ModularBot compiles. The live
`[rack]` line was observed switching 1v1 -> melee when the enemy died.
The offline range never calls the selector (only spawnBullets/tickBullets/
reportFor), so mode filtering cannot change the offline result and no offline
mode parameter was needed - confirmed by reasoning over the source and by 12/12.
The user watched 1v1 and melee runs and saw ram opportunities arise that the bot
declined: "there were moments where the bot could jump over the enemy and shred
it but shot it down instead."
DIAGNOSIS - a chicken-and-egg loop. `ramOpportunity` required dist < 50px, but
an offline measurement over 15 rounds vs DrussGT found the closest approach was
118.7px and the <50px trigger had NEVER fired: the mover has no reason to close,
so the trigger waited for a proximity nothing created. The MECHANISM to close
already existed (the ring mover expresses a ram as band=(0,50)); what was
missing was a decision that fires at a range the bot can actually close from.
Changes:
- opportunity gate relaxed: dist 50 -> TR_RAM_OPP_DIST (200), energy margin
+30 -> TR_RAM_OPP_MARGIN (15). Both env-tunable, no rebuild needed.
- New pure module `common_libs/movements/ram_decision.nim` holding the trigger
and abort logic (no battle/API deps), so it is unit-testable.
- BULLET-RAIN ABORT (the user asked for this earlier): `onHitByBullet` now
accumulates `e.bullet.power` into a 15-turn ring; damageRatePerTurn = sum/15;
an in-progress ram aborts when rate > TR_RAM_ABORT_DMG (0.5/turn). On abort:
isRamming=false, cooldown 30, TARGET KEPT, and the mover returns to the normal
range band. It never stops the bot.
- Opt-in, DEFAULT-OFF `plan` trigger for "change of plan when the gun duel is
failing" (dist<250, margin+20, selected gun's pooled virtual rate < 0.05).
Left off because a cold gun reads 0.0 and would qualify - speculative.
- `TR_RAM_LOG=1` change-gated line: `[ram] ON reason=opportunity dist=143
selfE=78 enemyE=41 cap=3.0 band=[0,50]` / `[ram] OFF reason=bulletRain`.
- Existing cooldown/duration/stuck machinery untouched (stuck>10 or duration>60
-> abort + cooldown 30). A refactor bug that briefly DROPPED the
`ramCooldownTicks == 0` gate was caught and fixed.
Trigger set (first match wins): finisher (dist<300, enemy<20, we are healthier);
opportunity (dist<200, we lead by 15+); desperation (both <5, dist<150); plan
(off). All require enemy>0, a valid target, and no cooldown.
Proof the intent now fires at a closable distance (28/28 unit checks):
PASS: opportunity fires at dist 143 with a 37-energy lead <- the exact case
PASS: old gate (dist<50, margin+30) does NOT fire at 143 <- the old bug
PASS: fires at 199px / does NOT fire at 201px
+ margin, finisher priority, desperation, plan on/off, window mean, abort
threshold checks.
HONEST FRAMING: ram damage is 0.6 per CONTACT EVENT, one-shot (collision
resolution rewinds positions so contacts do not stream) - small next to a p=3.0
bullet hit (16). The payoff is that point-blank forces hit probability toward 1,
so heavy bullets stop missing and E[dE]=p(3P-1) turns positive above P=1/3; ram
damage also scores 2.0/point (highest in the game) and a ram kill carries a 0.30
bonus vs 0.20. So this is "force the fight to point-blank", not "the ram shreds
them". Base rate is rare (2 collisions in the whole fixture corpus).
Guards: test_ram_decision 28 (new), test_power_policy 26, test_gun_harness 39,
test_vbullet_metric 11, test_power_selection 3, test_adaptive_radar 41,
test_tfil_ring_weights 24. Compiles (release).
UNVERIFIED: the live effect. No A/B has run, and whether the mover actually
reaches contact is unproven.
Implements the user's energy management request: "firing from more than 200px
should be a 'not good chances zone' so faster bullets and more chances to hit
matters more than single hit damage with low chances. When we are lower than 50
health, same thing. I would like to use 3.0 power only when the chances of
hitting are higher than average."
Design: a CAP on top of the existing `bestPower`, not a rewrite. `bestPower`
still answers "which bin does this gun's own data prefer"; the policy caps it:
ramming -> 3.0 (reason ram, exempt)
dist > TR_POWER_FAR_DIST (200) -> 1.0 (far)
elif selfEnergy < TR_POWER_LOW_ENERGY (50) -> 1.0 (lowEnergy)
elif pEst <= pRef -> 2.0 (belowAvg)
else -> 3.0 (full)
power = min(gunPreferredBinPower, cap) # can only LOWER power
p=1.0 is the right "low" tier on the measured mechanics: bullet speed 20-3p so
p=1.0 gives speed 17 vs 11 at p=3.0 (55% faster = less lead error), fire
interval 10+2p so 12 ticks vs 16 (33% more shots), and drain 0.083/turn vs
0.1875 (2.25x slower). All three things the user asked for at long range.
pEst = the chosen bin's virtual rate (gun aggregate when the bin is empty);
pRef = the gun's aggregate mean unless TR_POWER_REF > 0. No-data guns are
vacuously below-average -> cap 2.0 (conservative, documented).
Control arm: TR_POWER_POLICY=0 = uncapped = today's behaviour exactly.
Knobs: TR_POWER_POLICY, TR_POWER_FAR_DIST, TR_POWER_LOW_ENERGY,
TR_POWER_FAR_CAP, TR_POWER_MID_CAP, TR_POWER_REF, TR_POWER_LOG.
TR_POWER_MID_CAP exists because the user did not specify the middle case
(close + healthy + not-above-average); 2.0 is the default, flippable to 1.0.
Seam: the cap lives in a pure `applyPowerPolicy` and is applied only in
`selectShot` (the single place real shots are chosen), so the logic is testable
without a battle. Ram is wired from `shouldRam` - the same value the movement
dispatch uses for the (0,50) band.
CORRECTION TO AN ASSUMPTION IN THE TASK: `offline_range.nim` does NOT call
`bestPower`/`selectShot` - it only replays virtual-bullet spawn/resolve across
all power bins, independent of the real shot's power. So there is no offline
power-selection path that could diverge from the live one, and the acceptance
test guards the metric, not the policy. Policy coverage therefore comes from the
new unit test.
Verification: test_power_policy 26/26 in BOTH modes (default and TR_POWER_POLICY=0
control arm); test_gun_harness 39, test_vbullet_metric 11, test_power_selection 3,
test_adaptive_radar 41, test_tfil_ring_weights 24; acceptance_offline_vs_online
12/12 VERDICT PASS (live battle). ModularBot compiles.
UNVERIFIED: the live effect on damage/survival/score. No A/B has run.
New mover `the_floor_is_lava_ring.nim`, a COPY of `the_floor_is_lava.nim` (which
stays byte-identical - the user explicitly wants the current TFIL preserved).
Selected only via `TR_MOVEMENT=tfil_ring`; the default stays `tfil`.
WHY: our measured real hit rate vs DrussGT is strongly range-dependent - 21.6%
at 0-100px, 27.1% at 100-200px, 19.3% at 200-300, 10.9% at 300-400, 6.8% at
400-600, 5.4% at 600-800 - but we shoot from ~450px on average. Plain TFIL has
no range preference at all.
THE ONE CHANGE: the final tile draw is re-weighted toward a target band.
rangeW(d) = 1.0 if lo<=d<=hi; exp(-((lo-d)/K)^2) if d<lo; exp(-((d-hi)/K)^2) if d>hi
w_i = rangeW(d_i)^(1/T); chosen ~ Categorical(w)
FLAT TOP on purpose: a Gaussian centred on the band midpoint would collapse the
band to a point and destroy the within-band hedge. `T` is the only knob;
`TR_TFIL_RANGE_TEMP=0` gives plain `rand(candidates.high)` - the exact control
arm. Safety stays a HARD constraint: the weighting only reorders the draw among
the pool the old code already accepted, so it can never pick a tile the old code
rejected (monotone refinement). Small pools (<4) stay uniform.
Randomness is deliberately KEPT: a measured A/B showed committing to the "best"
tile made real hit rate WORSE (7.02% -> 5.10%), so the distribution is tilted,
never removed.
HEAT TAMING (ring copy only; env-overridable):
TR_TFIL_CORRIDOR_HEAT 20.0 -> 5.0
TR_TFIL_WALL_HOTNESS 30.0 -> 10.0
Rationale, measured: `CorridorHeat=20` is TWICE `PathDangerThreshold=10`, so a
single corridor could poison a path by itself; `WallHotness=30` with
`WallRadiance=10` put the outer two tile rings over threshold on their own.
Per-source shares of total lava: wall 60.6%, corridor 25.4%, pillar 7.4%,
everything else <3%.
MEASURED EFFECT (primary fixture, 20,026 ticks / 15 rounds, field identity
verified max diff 0.000e+00):
metric original(20/30) ring(5/10)
band-weightable ticks 10.79% 26.45%
mean safeTiles/tick 15.19 85.04
ticks with 0 safe (pre-fallback) 58.5% 7.5%
safePool >= 4 39.05% 92.47%
>=1 safe tile in 100-200px 11.84% 26.64%
MEAN CLOSEST-SAFE-TILE DISTANCE 397.78px 284.84px
tiles > 10 threshold 0.61 0.15
The 397.78px figure is why the bot stayed far away: the safety filter left
nothing safe near the target, and 397px is our WORST range. Control: setting
corridor=20 wall=30 reproduces the original baseline exactly.
CEILING, honestly: even at corridor 0 / wall 0 only ~40% of ticks are
band-weightable, so no constant tweak fully unlocks the range weighting.
Ram unification: the ring mover takes a `band` field; ramming becomes just
`band=(0,50)`, so there is one movement engine. The `tfil` path is unchanged.
Observability: magenta annulus at the band edges, candidates tinted by weight,
chosen tile marked; one `[tfil_ring]` log line on change (now including
corridorHeat/wallHotness).
Guards: test_tfil_ring_weights 24/24 (new, pure, no battle), test_gun_harness 39,
test_vbullet_metric 11, test_power_selection 3, test_adaptive_radar 41.
UNVERIFIED: the mover's live effect. It has not been run in a battle yet.
The belief "BotDeathEvent never reaches ModularBot, so enemyTracker keeps dead
enemies alive forever" was written into a code comment and then believed twice.
It is FALSE. Measured in a 7-bot melee with a per-tick probe comparing
enemyTracker's alive count against the server's getEnemyCount():
metric 1.3.1 (20 rd) 0.35.5 (15 rd)
observed enemy deaths 83 68
...non-round-ending 83 (100%) 66 (97%)
ekBotDeath events DROPPED 0 0
max dispatch lag (turns behind) 1 1
phantom ticks 1 / 16,820 1 / 12,596
MAX CORPSE LIFETIME 0 ticks 0 ticks
victims still alive at round end 0 0
onBotDeath fires for every death, including non-round-ending ones. The
API-level event-drop mechanism IS real (test_event_drop_mechanism.nim proves
it: ekBotDeath is not in isCritical and MAX_EVENTS_AGE=2) - the bot simply
never falls far enough behind for it to trigger (max lag 1 turn).
Removed:
- reconcileWithServer + ReconcilePersistTicks/mismatchTicks/sawServerAlive
(uncommitted, and ON BY DEFAULT despite the premise being false). Its own
comment admitted a shorter window once KILLED A LIVE ENEMY ("it fired three
more times after the tracker marked it dead") - a latent mis-prune path
defending against a bug that does not exist.
- The radar's CorpseTicks=40 filter and the same-class age>60 filter in
recordRadarStats, both carrying the false comment. Removal changes no real
behaviour: buildState feeds the radar enemyTracker.allAlive(), so a dead
enemy never reaches computeScan.
Kept:
- The TR_TRACKER_PROBE instrument (default OFF), which produced the table above.
- test_event_drop_mechanism.nim - the drop mechanism is a genuine library
behaviour worth guarding.
- isAlive/aliveCount on the tracker.
Added: docs/tracker_death_events.md (the durable negative, so this is not
re-invented a third time) and test_enemy_tracker_death.nim (13 checks) in place
of the test for the deleted feature.
Guards: test_gun_harness 39/39, test_vbullet_metric 11, test_power_selection 3,
test_adaptive_radar 41/41, test_event_drop_mechanism 6, test_enemy_tracker_death
13, acceptance 12/12, ModularBot compiles.
All prior measurements ran on server 0.35.5. The default is now the current
1.3.1 jar, with the legacy jar kept and switchable via TR_SERVER_JAR (no code
edit). test_gauntlet_5bots.nim no longer clobbers a caller's TR_SERVER_JAR -
it used to putEnv() unconditionally, so an override was silently ignored.
RE-BASELINE (controlled RulesProbe battle, stationary bot, powers 0.1/0.5/1/2/3):
dimension 1.3.1 0.35.5 verdict
bullet damage per hit 0.4/2/4/10/16 identical SAME
bullet speed (20-3p) within noise within noise SAME
post-fire gun heat (1+p/5) identical identical SAME
cooling 0.1/tick 0.1/tick SAME
bulletDamage SCORE exactly 100/round 104..113/round DIFFERENT
bulletKillBonus (20%) 20/round 20..23/round DIFFERENT
LOUD FINDING - a SCORING rule changed, physics did not: 0.35.5 credits
OVERKILL to bulletDamage (the killing bullet's full damage even past 0 energy);
1.3.1 caps it at the energy actually removed. Every 0.35.5 score is therefore
inflated ~5-6%, and bulletKillBonus inherits the inflation. Gauntlet totals
shift accordingly (SittingDuck 1936 -> 1800, WaveSurfer 1886 -> 1669).
Consequence: score-based numbers recorded on 0.35.5 are NOT comparable to 1.3.1.
Our gun A/Bs used real HIT RATE, not score, so those conclusions stand.
Runner 1.0.2 (unchanged, no newer one on the box) is measured compatible with
the 1.3.1 server. Note TrBattleCapture uses the runner's EMBEDDED server, which
is 1.0.2 - so the capture path still runs an older engine than the gauntlet.
Also re-ran acceptance_offline_vs_online on the new default: 12/12.
Replaces melee_scan in the rack. melee_scan spun the radar at the 45 deg/tick
cap unconditionally, so a full 360 deg revolution took 8 ticks and every enemy
was scanned roughly every 8 ticks. The new module starts with the same full
spin, and once it is SURE it has covered every enemy it sweeps back and forth
over only the minimal covering arc of all enemy bearings.
MEASURED, real melees via the bridge, per-enemy onScannedBot counts:
3-bot melee (2 enemies): 29.6 -> 61.1 scans/100 melee-ticks (2.06x)
4-bot melee (3 enemies): 36.0 -> 75.7 scans/100 melee-ticks (2.10x)
Covering-arc widths observed: mostly <90 deg in the 2-enemy case, up to 240 deg
in the 3-enemy case, so the gain shrinks as the arc widens - and at the
ExitTrackWidthDeg=300 fallback it degenerates to exactly the old full spin, so
there is no loss when narrowing would not help.
TRADEOFF, recorded rather than hidden: a wider arc legitimately takes longer to
traverse, so the freshness window costs 5-7 points (fresh<=16: 93-95% vs
98-100%) and more at fresh<=8 (75-76% vs 97-100%). More scans per enemy, at
slightly staler individual fixes.
DESIGN: acquisition spins 360 until every live known enemy was seen within
FreshnessTicks=16 (two revolutions of slack), no new id appeared, and the live
count matches getEnemyCount(); that must hold FreshStreakTicks=3 consecutive
ticks. Tracking then bang-bang sweeps the wraparound-aware covering arc
(350+10 -> 20 through 0) widened by MarginDeg=20 each end, at up to 45 deg/tick.
Fallbacks return to acquisition: any stale enemy, any new id, or an arc >= 300
deg. Enter 270 / Exit 300 gives 30 deg of hysteresis so it cannot flap.
Adds EnemyInfo.lastSeenTick (additive) so coverage is judged on staleness, not
mere knowledge - without it an enemy that slipped behind the sweep would keep
contributing its own stale bearing, which is self-confirming. The offline range
now round-trips that field from the fixture 'lst'.
COMPANION FIX, and it matters: the radar-mode switch used the TRACKER's known
enemy count, so in melee the bot saw one enemy before scanning the second, locked
to 1v1, and the melee radar never ran at all. Now uses getEnemyCount() (server
truth), so melee mode persists until one enemy is genuinely left.
41 new unit checks (wraparound arcs, straddle at 0/360, single/empty enemies,
the 45 deg/tick cap, every phase transition and fallback). melee_scan is kept
but marked DEPRECATED; nothing in the rack imports it.
Non-regression: 33 gun-harness checks, vbullet metric, power selection, and
12/12 offline==online acceptance all pass.
The user spotted this from the game itself: the [config] line always said
gun=HeadOn while the in-game turret and bullet COLOURS varied. The colours are
set at the selection site, so they were truthful and the log was not.
MEASURED, one 2-round battle, same process:
[config] output : 6 lines, ALL gun=HeadOn
tracker selection : Displace 25.1%, HeadOn 20.8%, Pattern 15.5%,
KNN 14.1%, Tsetlin 6.3%, WallBounce 6.1%, ...
Root cause: printConfig did GunNames[bot.currentGun] but EVERY call site ran
before the tick's gun selection - onRoundStarted right after currentGun = 0
(so HeadOn by construction), and the target/radar-change prints. The selection
that sets currentGun is ~490 lines later in the same tick. radarMode and
currentTargetId ARE updated before those sites, which is exactly why the radar
and target columns looked plausible while the gun column did not.
WHERE IT CAME FROM: git history shows commit 2cc2a3b ('cleaner logging')
removed the original printConfig call at the selection site while leaving the
prevGun highlight logic in place. That removal is when the regression appeared -
before it, the bot logged on round start AND on gun switch.
FIX: one emission at the end of the tick, after selectShot has run, gated by a
cfgDirty flag set on gun switch / target change / radar change. The index is
guarded (currentGun may be -1), the round-start line omits the gun field rather
than inventing one, and the existing output contract is preserved (all white,
only changed fields green, enemies= and target= kept).
VERIFIED: before 6 lines all HeadOn; after 782 lines over 2118 ticks with 13
distinct guns and ZERO violations - no printed gun was one that had not been
selected. Counts differ from the selection totals because the log prints only
on change, which is the behaviour the user asked for.
Also removes the 'currentGun = 0' initialisation in onRoundStarted, keeping the
existing -1 sentinel so 'no gun chosen yet' is representable.
P0. Three of the five launchers ran ./<Bot> (a tracked binary at the bot root)
while config.nims sets outdir=out and both the test framework's compileBots and
a manual 'nim c src/<Bot>.nim' write to out/. SittingDuck and OscillatorBot
correctly ran ./out/<Bot>; RandomMover, PatternMover and WaveSurfer did not.
cmp confirms the root and out binaries differed for all three.
Consequence: the previous session's adversary fixes were compiled into out/ and
never executed. Every gauntlet and every capture ran the OLD code. This is
almost certainly why the user's instinct that these bots were still bugged was
correct while the code claimed otherwise.
Fixed by pointing all five launchers at ./out/<Bot>, and by deleting the three
stale root binaries so the trap cannot recur. Verified end to end through the
booter: WaveSurfer went from standing still 96.2% of ticks with a 1398-tick
longest standstill, to rest 12.3% / mean speed 6.69 / longest zero run 18 /
perpendicular 0.845.
Also honours GUN_STATS_PATH in test_gauntlet_5bots.nim (same knob ModularBot
reads) so pooled gauntlet runs append to one file instead of clobbering the
default.
NOTE for a follow-up: the out/ binaries are still TRACKED build artifacts, which
is the same class of hazard that caused this. Untracking them (as was done for
ModularBot_garage/ModularBot) would remove the failure mode entirely.
TASK 2 - THE FLAKY ACCEPTANCE TEST, root-caused. It was NOT a live/offline
boundary race as suspected. The replay spawned gun 13 (TMSelect) while live has
EnableTmSelector = false and never does. The shared VirtualTracker ring is
ORDER-SENSITIVE, so gun 13's extra 4 bullets/tick shift the ring head and
permute the per-tick RESOLUTION ORDER of every other gun. The learning guns
append observations in resolution order, so their predictions shifted and
produced small hit deltas that moved between runs.
Evidence: the first KNN divergence was at rtick=174 with the SAME resolution
set merely reordered (live ft133,138,139,142,148,150,151 vs offline
ft150,151,133,138,139,142,148); after closing gun 13's ready gate offline the
live and offline KNN traces became BYTE-IDENTICAL (diff empty, 904/904 lines).
Fix: mirror the live rack in the replay. No tick exclusion, no tolerance
loosening. Stability: 5/5 consecutive runs now report 12/12 exact, each with
enemyDied=true - the death boundary is included, not excluded. The proof is
now real rather than a lucky run.
TASK 1 - the tie-break was not random. randomize() was only reached
incidentally through initTsetlinGun(), so a rack without Tsetlin had a fixed
rand() stream and ties always resolved the same way across process restarts.
Added seedSelectorRng() after gun construction, honouring GUN_SELECTOR_SEED.
Evidence: unseeded, 6 separate processes gave different pick sequences; with
GUN_SELECTOR_SEED=42, 3 processes gave identical sequences.
TASK 3 - PRUNING DOES NOT HELP; keep the full rack. 15 PAIRED runs per variant
vs DrussGT, 8 rounds, identical seeds:
baseline 3238 shots 6.18% (events 6.16%) 200 dmg/run
Tsetlin disabled 3522 shots 5.76% (events 5.71%) 197 dmg/run
Tsetlin+Displace 3478 shots 5.46% (events 5.37%) 183 dmg/run
Paired permutation tests: -0.34pp p=0.57 and -0.70pp p=0.21. Per-run
distributions completely overlap (baseline range [2.68, 10.00]; 15/15 and 14/15
runs inside it). A Crazy control showed no separation either. So removing the
measured-worst real performers is neutral-to-slightly-negative, and with
sd ~1.8pp a definitive claim either way would need far more runs.
CORRECTION TO A CLAIM I MADE: the 'virtual metric is INVERTED' finding does NOT
reproduce. Job-24 measured Spearman -0.374; this job measures +0.335 over the
same 13 guns with a different but equally defensible aggregation. Two opposite
signs means the correlation is NOT robustly negative - it is WEAK AND
SIGN-UNSTABLE. The honest statement is that virtual hit rate is a poor ranker,
not an inverted one. The docs assert the inversion and need correcting.
Also adds per-process GUN_STATS_PATH/GUN_SHOTLOG_PATH so concurrent A/B runs do
not clobber each other, and an env-gated GUN_RACK_DISABLE for rack A/Bs. All
default behaviour is unchanged when the env vars are unset.
TASK 2 - power selection, a clear win. bestPower used an ABSOLUTE
MinHitRate = 0.40 bar. Measured per-bin virtual rates (rolling-100 fraction)
show no bin ever clears 40%, so 11 of 14 guns were stuck at bin 0 (power 1.0)
even where higher bins were comparable:
Linear p1.0 44% p1.5 39% p2.0 30% p3.0 29% old bin 0 -> new bin 3
Accel p1.0 44% p1.5 40% p2.0 26% p3.0 29% old bin 1 -> new bin 3
Pattern p1.0 50% p1.5 40% p2.0 27% p3.0 12% old bin 1 -> new bin 2
Replaced with a scale-aware PowerBarFrac = 0.50 (a dimensionless FRACTION of
the gun's own best bin rate). 13 of 14 selections now pick heavier bullets.
Real effect vs DrussGT (8 rounds x 3 runs): hit rate unchanged (7.56% ->
7.47%) but damage dealt +52% (157 -> 239 per run) and rounds end faster.
Same accuracy, half the shots, half again more damage.
TASK 1 - the TM pattern-classifier gun does NOT earn its slot. It was built as
a mixture of experts with a corrected-Granmo TM as a multi-class gate over
HeadOn/Linear/Circular/WallBounce/Accel, labelled by which expert's prediction
was closest to the actual enemy position (an exact, supervised, per-shot
label - no delayed credit). Offline it loses to the best of its OWN experts on
essentially every fixture, and against DrussGT it cost real performance:
baseline (path+relative) 7.56% real hit rate, damage 157
+ power fix 7.47%, damage 239
+ power fix + TM gun 5.59%, damage 133
The gun was selected on 806 ticks and fired 24 real shots at 4.2%.
So the tree ships with EnableTmSelector = false: code and wiring kept intact
for re-enabling, but it is not in the active rack.
Worth recording from the clause dump: the gate DOES latch onto meaningful
structure. On energy-threshold-turner, HeadOn's clauses key on the energy bits
(the rule's own driving variable) while Circular keys on distance/velocity. So
the TM is learning something real and interpretable - it simply cannot beat
'always pick the best expert'. Root cause (INFERRED): the closest-expert label
is noisy because several experts are near-tied, and under the path metric the
winner varies by power bin while the gate sees one shared per-tick input, so a
one-vs-rest gate over a saturated 870-bit clause space has no margin to exploit.
(Zero-padding the 2-frame window was tried first and saturated every clause at
256-755 included literals; alternating the two real frames fixed that.)
Also factors the corrected feedback into an exported tmLearnDir and exports the
encoding/TM primitives; the Tsetlin tests still reproduce the documented
mean=13.8 included literals, so the refactor is behaviour-preserving.
Verified: 33/33 guard checks, tsetlin tests green, metric checks green, new
power-selection guard green (13/14 selections change; relative bar still picks
bin 1 and not bin 3 for a [30,25,12,5]% profile), 12/12 offline==online
acceptance under the shipped default.
Task 1 - the acceptance proof was unrunnable because RecordWorldState was a
compile-time const set to false. It is now a RUNTIME switch
(let RecordWorldState* = existsEnv("TR_RECORD_WORLDSTATE")), default OFF, so
ordinary runs write no fixture, and acceptance_offline_vs_online.nim enables
it for the battle it spawns and clears it afterwards. Restored and run twice:
12/12 deterministic guns match exactly (128-tick and 546-tick battles), with
Tsetlin reported separately as stochastic. Both nimble build variants clean.
Task 2 - does a compact encoding turn the TM's 99.35% into a READABLE rule?
Measured across window sizes (fixed seed, no tuning):
frames TEST acc eff.lits/clause firing clauses counterfactual low/high/mean
10 99.35% 152.8 37 100/24/62.4%
3 95.94% 54.9 35 96/20/58.6%
2 99.48% 39.6 38 95/25/60.7%
1 98.30% 19.2 45 100/24/62.3%
So 2 frames is strictly better than 10 on BOTH axes: +0.13 accuracy for 4x
smaller clauses. The 3-frame dip is non-monotonic and left unexplained rather
than smoothed over.
A readable rule WAS partially recovered. Five clauses carry the exact Gray
form !g10 ^ !g9 ^ !g8; g10 is inert in this data, so the effective rule is the
2-literal proposition !g9 ^ !g8, i.e. energy < 25.6. That is a genuine
threshold in readable propositional form - but at 25.6, NOT the labelled 30,
because 256 is a power-of-two Gray boundary expressible in two literals while
300 needs a longer conjunction. The TM found the nearest SIMPLE threshold.
The honest caveat: that threshold is not the ensemble's decision mechanism.
The counterfactual follow rate (high 24%, mean 62.3%) is statistically
identical at 1, 2 and 10 frames, so compactness did not make the model read
energy - its vote is carried by co-occurring bearing/velocity/heading/wall
literals. Also identified: clauses containing all 11 Gray energy bits are
satisfied at exactly one raw value (50, the dataset floor), so they are
'energy has hit the floor' detectors, not thresholds.
Methodological fix worth keeping: the earlier single-frame counterfactual
wrote energy into all 10 frame slots including the zeroed ones, reviving dead
clauses and producing a spurious 2% high-follow rate. setEnergyFrames now
rewrites only the exposed frames; the corrected figure is 24%.
Gun evaluation previously required a full end-to-end battle (Java server +
battle runner + websocket IPC to 2 bot processes, 50 rounds, ~3.4 min) and
yielded only ~300-900 REAL shots across 13 guns -- far too few to rank
guns, which is why tuning needed many repetitions.
VirtualTracker is already a pure function of (WorldState stream, gun list);
the only reason it needed Java was where WorldState came from. So the range
replays a seq[WorldState] through the SAME tracker: offline and online
scores are the same metric by construction, not an approximation.
ACCEPTANCE TEST (the point of the whole thing): record one live round, replay
it offline, compare per-gun virtual hit rates. 12/12 deterministic guns match
EXACTLY, reproduced twice. Tsetlin is compared separately because tmLearnOne
calls rand(). Getting to 12/12 exposed two real ordering quirks in the live
loop: run() calls go() before the aim/fire block, so tickBullets resolves
against the NEXT tick's scan while the prediction used the previous one; and
if the target dies during that go() the final tick's spawn+resolution is
skipped entirely. The recorder emits an end marker for the second case.
The 5th (selected-gun) predict call was verified to be a no-op.
Measured cost: 8 fixtures (1770 ticks, ~92k virtual bullets, 13 guns) replay
in 2.9 s, ~32k virtual bullets/s -- roughly 70x faster and 100x more samples
than a live gauntlet.
Also adds a per-tick WorldState recorder behind const RecordWorldState
(default off, mirrors the ShotLog idiom) which records the state the bot
ACTUALLY builds, staleness included, rather than true positions -- recording
the latter would hand the guns perfect information and produce flattering
scores.
9 new guard checks (33 total, all passing), including fixture round-trip,
replay determinism, stationary->HeadOn 100%, constant-velocity->Linear>HeadOn,
and the energy-threshold turner crossing at t=41.
Measured, not assumed. With the gate temporarily opened to 20 deg, every
real shot was logged (tick, angle error at fire time, distance, power,
hit) across 3 gauntlets: 2611 shots, 57.3% aggregate. Findings:
- The geometric cone atan(BotRadius/d) is directionally confirmed but a
WEAK lever: even at 0.0-0.1 deg error the hit rate at 400-600px is only
~53-57%, because PREDICTION error dominates alignment error.
- Real effect of tightening the gate: 57.9% -> 68.0% aggregate hit rate
(fixed 0.1 deg), not the 76.9% previously reported -- that was a
high-variance draw (per-rep 62.8/66.4/77.2%).
- The shipped range-aware gate (SafetyFactor 0.6) does NOT beat the fixed
2.0 deg gate on hit rate (55.8% vs 57.9%, ~1.5 sigma, inside noise). It
fires 22-28% more shots and therefore lands more total hits (~509 vs
~434 per rep). No per-adversary score delta exceeded the 300-point
run-to-run noise band, so no config is demonstrably better on score.
Shipped anyway because it is strictly more expressive (a fixed threshold is
the special case), tunable from one const, and physically motivated, but
the honest verdict is recorded in-code: the gate is not the bottleneck.
AimThresholdDeg is removed; shouldFire now takes distPx. Degenerate or NaN
distance falls back to the ceiling rather than dividing by zero.
Also adds a per-shot logger to ModularBot behind 'const ShotLog' so the
measurement above is reproducible, and 10 new guard checks (24 total, all
passing) covering monotonicity, clamping, formula, perfect alignment,
gross misalignment and degenerate distance.
Cross-checked against the server source: the gun fires BEFORE the turn is
applied, so the logged angle error is the true departure error, and
fireAssist auto-aim is off (unset by the Nim API and forced false by
setAdjustRadarForGunTurn).
Wave queues (guess_factor, decay_gf, knn_gun): predict() stored ONE wave
per tick while onResult() popped one per resolved bullet (~4/tick), so the
queue drained to empty within a few dozen ticks, ~3 of every 4 resolutions
returned without learning, and the survivor paired with a same-tick wave
(bearingDelta ~= 0) pinning the histogram at centre. PROOF: GF.vHits ==
HeadOn.vHits and DecayGF.vHits == HeadOn.vHits byte-for-byte in every one
of 50 rounds — the guns had degenerated to HeadOn.
Now each gun keeps a per-bin FIFO with an O(1) head cursor. At most one
push per (tick, bin) so the fire site's 5th predict() call is a no-op, and
onResult pops the oldest wave of its OWN bin via e.bulletPower. Aiming
math untouched (it was already correct: 0 deg = East, CCW+).
maxBullets 2048 -> 8192: the rack spawns 52 bullets/tick so the ring wrapped
every ~39 ticks while a long power-3 shot needs ~90, silently discarding
unresolved bullets and biasing every measured hit rate by range. Added a
droppedBullets counter so a future overflow is measurable, and wavePushes/
waveStarved counters on the three guns. After the fix: vDropped = 0 and
vStarved = 0 across all 48 recorded rounds.
fitnessFor is now exported, deterministic (enemies iterated in ascending id
order) and shared by the selector and the stats dump, replacing a hand-rolled
merge in ModularBot that never advanced its window head.
Round lines gain additive keys: vDropped, vStarved.
nimble bin output lands at the garage root, so the existing
'*_garage/out/' ignore rule never covered it and every build dirtied
the tree with a 1.1 MB binary. File stays on disk; build regenerates it.
Attribution is proven, not guessed: the server assigns a per-round-unique
bulletId (GunEngine.nextBulletId) and stamps the same id on BulletFired,
BulletHitBot, BulletHitWall and BulletHitBullet. Keep a FIFO of fired gun
ids, stamp bulletId -> gunId on onBulletFired, resolve through that map.
Hits are deferred when onBulletHit precedes onBulletFired in the same
turn (client dispatches priority 70 > 60), which recovered 14
unattributed hits. 99.9% of shots and 99.8% of hits attributed.
Stats lines now carry per-gun realShots/realHits/realHitRate; the old
keys and round-level totals are unchanged.
bestPower: a gun with zero observations in every bin previously returned
the HIGHEST bin (power 3.0) because an empty bin satisfied the
'count == 0' clause on the first countdown iteration. Cold guns now
return the lowest bin as the docstring always claimed. Warm-gun path
untouched.
- bestGun: replace first-index-wins argmax with random pick among guns
within TieMargin (2%) of best rate. HeadOn at index 0 was silently
winning every tie, starving Tsetlin/Linear/etc.
- MinObsBeforeCompete 15 -> 50 (Pattern entered competition on noise)
- add MinHitRateFloor 0.10: if no gun clears it, fall back to HeadOn
instead of selecting the best of a bad field
- ModularBot: remove AntiSurfer gun (0% virtual hit rate everywhere),
14 -> 13 guns, renumber ids and selection counters
- 30-tick cooldown after ghost-stuck/timeout ram exit prevents re-entry loop
- enemy_tracker.update() skips dead bots to prevent same-tick scan resurrection
- TFIL graphics cleared when ramming is active movement
- [config] logs: white base with green-highlighted changes only
- [ram:enter] logs trigger reason and key values on false→true transition
- [death] and [target-invalid] logs retained for diagnostics
PhantomMeteor:
- Ram finisher: charge at enemy when <200px and their energy <10
- Ram opportunity: charge when <60px and we have >20 energy advantage
- Integrated gunheat tracker for 1-2 tick earlier wave detection
- Distance control: smooth linear ramp toward preferred engagement distance
- Phantom range expanded 150→250px to catch closer threats
WaveSurfer:
- Wall-aware dodge bin selection: penalize bins leading off-arena
- Dodge timing: predict future position 15 ticks ahead for safety
- Distance control: radial blend when outside deadband (350±50px)
- Wall escape: invert strafe if pushing further into wall, blend toward center
ModularBot:
- Wired KNN gun (purple/magenta)
- Shadows tracked for movement (safer GF prediction)
- Bullet lifecycle management (onBulletFired/onBulletHitBot/onBulletHitWall)
- Unified phantom_meteor movement (wave_surfer unplugged)
- Config logging on round start + gun switch
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Implements VirtualBodyTracker (wave-based hit/miss scoring) instead of EMA damage accumulation. Movement switching now happens every tick, not every 3 rounds. Also refactors radar colors to dark teal (#004444/#0D4D4D) for faint visibility.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Adds WaveSurferModule as second movement option
- Tracks damage per round via onHitByBullet, EMA decay α=0.5
- Every round after round 2: switches to lower-damage movement
- Body color signals active mover (orange=phantom, blue=wave)
- vs SpinBot 10r: ModularBot 1412 vs SpinBot 650
- vs WaveSurfer 10r: ModularBot 1858 vs WaveSurfer 10
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- GF gun: triangular head-on prior replaces flat bins (was always aiming at GF=-1)
- GF gun: recompute MEA per bullet power in onResult (was using stale first-bin value)
- Scores improved: SpinBot 1805-48, Crazy 1557-46, WaveSurfer 1868-10, PatternMover 1846-4
- All 6 guns active in selection across gauntlet
SirStone