Extracted concrete numbers from 13 papers in docs/papers/neuroevolution/.
Key findings: use CMA-ES or mutation-only truncation GA, mutate ALL weights
(not 5%), sigma=0.005-0.01, pop=64-200, no crossover, single elite.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
$(cat f) inside a command redirected to f saw the already-truncated file,
so every eval cycle wiped ma_history_*.txt back to one leading-space value
and degraded the composite best-gate to last-cycle mean. Read is hoisted
into its own statement; unquoted expansion + tail -n keeps exactly the last
MA_WINDOW values. Verified: fresh/5+/6+ cycle edges reproduce sliding window.
SACLSTM_EVAL_MODE=1 in SacTwin.sh suppresses all sendTrainingMsg traffic
(lever-4 gate), so the twin never trains — not even in-RAM within a battle.
Required now that the main bot's SACLSTM_SAVE_INTERVAL drops to 1 (v2 relaunch
after checkpoint-cadence diagnosis): without the gate the twin would persist
per-battle drift and stop being the frozen reproducible opponent #54 specifies.
Lever 2 (#59): x1.25 aggression mult on damage dealt, flat +0.5 hit bonus,
-3.0 per bot-bot collision (server deals RAM_DAMAGE=0.6 to both parties but
only notifies the hitter), escalating proximity deterrent below 12% arena
diagonal suppressed while dealing damage. Win/loss terminals unchanged and
dominant. All weights TUNABLE consts marked ponytail. SACLSTM_REWARD_DEBUG=1
env-gated reward_debug.log for calibration greps.
Lever 5 (#59): no code needed — SACLSTM_LR_ACTOR/LR_CRITIC/LR_ALPHA (3e-4)
and SACLSTM_TARGET_ENTROPY (-4.0) were already env-overridable in training.nim.
Smoke vs RamFire+Crazy (hidden=32, random init, isolated weights): 75 ram
penalties, 381 charge events, hit bonuses firing, 0 crashes, metrics JSONL
flowing. Tests: 8/8 suites green incl. new assert-level term math.
Levers 3, 4, 1 of the #57 sign-off (execution order 3->4->1), tracked in #59.
- Lever 3 (#59): one JSONL line per trainPass in training_metrics.jsonl with
exactly the scalars sacUpdate already exposes (SACMetrics: critic/actor/alpha
losses + alpha, averaged per pass) plus epoch, buffer size (replay_buffer.len),
cumulative steps and drained count. No trainer change needed.
- Lever 4 (#59): sendTrainingMsg drops all training input while SACLSTM_EVAL_MODE=1
(existing #49 harness mechanism) — eval battles can neither pollute the replay
buffer nor trigger gradient updates; one-time stderr notice at bot init.
- Lever 1 (#59): sac_train.sh evaluates every SAC_EVAL_OPPONENTS entry per cycle
(results carry opponent name in eval_log.jsonl); best-gating now uses a
composite = mean over opponents of the last-5-evals moving average per
opponent. best_score.txt format change: float composite replaces the
single-opponent integer win rate semantics (retired).
- Tests: metricsLine JSONL scalars + eval-mode suppression asserts.
Refs: #59, #57
Launch finding during campaign-v1 verification: at production sizes
(hidden 256, ~1s/step, ~13s trainer CPU per ~40s chunk process) the
save check ran only between drain-burst passes, so stepCount never
crossed nextSave before the process died — zero checkpoints persisted
across entire runs (masked at #49/#54 smoke sizes where steps were
sub-millisecond). Check now fires mid-loop; with SAVE_INTERVAL<=5
(within the per-process step budget) every chunk persists its chain.
- make_twin.sh: generates self-contained SacTwin dir in the sample-bots
archive (own json/sh identity, own weights dir seeded from a frozen
sac_best.zip copy, own round_counter) so RunTraining.java resolves it
like any sample bot; re-running resets the twin to the frozen baseline.
- src/SAC_LSTM_Bot.nim: SACLSTM_BOT_JSON env overrides the baked-in bot
json (loadBotInfo gives json total precedence, #49) so the same binary
boots under the twin's name.
- sac_train.sh: chunk loop is a while, not for-over-seq — a crash on the
FINAL chunk previously fell through ((chunk--);continue on an exhausted
seq list) and exited 0 with budget incomplete; observed live vs SacTwin.
Readiness dry-run (#54): weighted pool Corners:1,SacTwin:3 picked the twin
in 3/4 chunks; all battles counter-checked; deterministic eval parsed;
main sac_best.zip/counter untouched by twin (twin counter advanced
independently); crash-restart proven end-to-end incl. final-chunk retry.
SirStone