# j162 — the FIRING FLOOR: exhaustion measurement + a re-sized A/B proposal **No battle, server, GUI or A/B was started for this job.** Both knobs remain default-`0.0`; `out/ModularBot` was not rebuilt. Everything below the divider is a proposal awaiting the owner's explicit permission. --- ## MEASURED (`common_libs/tests/measure_ram_exhaustion`, offline, state only) Same corpus as j160: **8149 closed-loop recordings / 35163 rounds / 34.46M ticks**. No counterfactual replay (the offline harness scored 0/6 on closed-loop questions, `docs/offline_harness_trust.md`). ### 1. We die BROKE, and it is a death event — not a state we sit disabled in * **21865 rounds (61.2%) end with self energy crossing 0**; 99.0% of rounds end in *some* death. Energy on the last tick we were alive: **median 0.83, mean 2.50, p90 8.90, max 24.83**. 55.9% of self-deaths at <=1, 84.2% at <=5, 92.8% at <=10, **100% at <=20**. * Time at energy <= 0 before the round ends: **median 1 tick** (p90 18). The round ends on the crossing tick. The 1.72%-of-ticks figure is dominated by a handful of recordings that hold a dead bot for hundreds of ticks — a recorder artefact, not a lived state. **There is no recoverable disabled window to defend.** * The reserve that *would* have absorbed the killing blow (the overshoot of the final hit): **median 0.40, p75 2.00, p90 6.90, p99 15.0**. A free 5-energy reserve would have saved 85.1% of self-deaths. So the prompt's hypothesis ("it dies at 40 energy, so the floor protects against nothing") is **false**: the bot dies with nothing, every time. The floor's premise is real. ### 2. We cannot climb back out of a low-energy dip Energy rises on 0.598% of tick-pairs (~5.87 landed hits/round; **mean landed power 1.42**, mode 1.0 — not 0.1). Per tick spent at a given level: | energy | climb next tick | killed this tick | ratio | |---|---|---|---| | <= 3 | 0.130% | 0.830% | dying **6.4x** more likely | | <= 5 | 0.232% | 0.663% | dying **2.9x** more likely | | <= 10 | 0.365% | 0.437% | dying 1.2x more likely | | <= 20 | 0.500% | 0.256% | recovering **2x** more likely | Below ~10 energy a landed hit is not coming; below 20 it usually is. **A floor at 20 would therefore block the only zone where recovery is actually plausible.** ### 3. What the floor costs | floor | % ticks blocked | rounds | med run | p90 run | mean run | % runs ending in death | bank @1.0p | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | 3 | 7.64% | 23086 | 34 | 299 | 98 | 80.8% | 8.2 | | 5 | **9.58%** | 23739 | 53 | 330 | 118 | 78.0% | **9.9** | | 10 | 14.52% | 25211 | 89 | 433 | 162 | 70.3% | 13.5 | | 20 | 24.74% | 27799 | 139 | 621 | 236 | 60.0% | 19.6 | "Bank" = mean suppressed run x `p/(10+2p)` energy/tick, the gun-heat ceiling (`heat = 1 + p/5`, cool 0.1/tick). At 0.1 power it is 0.52 energy for floor 5; at 2.0 power, 16.9. **Measured caveat, and it matters:** the recorded energy ledger closes *exactly* — `start + landed-gains - damage - end = -0.00` over 35065 rounds. **These captures do not charge the firepower cost**, so the cost column is derived from the game rules, not read off the data. The landed-hit *power* distribution is read off the data (mode 1.0, mean 1.42) and is what sets the bracket. ### 4. Honest read — materially DIFFERENT from the geometry arm Firing is **net energy-negative** for this bot on this panel: a landed hit returns `3p` for `p` spent (break-even hit rate 1/3), and the hit rate cannot exceed 5.87 hits / 76 shots-per-round heat ceiling = **7.7%**. So not firing really does bank energy — about 9.9 at floor 5. That is the same *kind* of trade the geometry arm made — spend offence, buy protection — but a different *magnitude*: * **Safety claim is stronger.** The geometry arm's safety gain did not convert into wins. Here the hazard is measured directly: 0.66%/tick death at energy <= 5, against a p75 overshoot of 2.0 and a bank of 9.9. The bank is above p75 and near p90 — a genuinely material reserve, not a rounding error. * **Damage cost is ~an order of magnitude smaller.** Floor 5 suppresses ~4.4 shots per median run; at 4 damage/hit and a 7.7% hit rate that is ~1.4 damage per suppressed run, ~2 damage/run. The geometry arm lost **8.83 damage/run** for its unconverted gain. * **It is a light touch in time, not in behaviour**: 9.6% of ticks, median run 53 ticks. Not a blackout. **Verdict: the floor is worth an A/B. It is not the clean negative.** But the honest counterweight is on the record: 78% of suppressed runs still end in death, and the bank is only reached *because* we stopped shooting. **Chosen value: `TR_RAM_FLOOR_ENERGY=5`** — bank 9.9 (above p75 overshoot 2.0, near p90 6.9) at 7.6%-vs-9.6% less tick cost than 10. Floor 20 is dropped on the measurement: it costs 24.7% of ticks and sits on top of the <= 20 recovery window. --- ## PROPOSAL — PRE-REGISTERED, **NOT RUN** * Harness: `tools/ab/tournament_run.sh` + `tools/ab/tournament_analyze.py`, unmodified. Panel: `tools/ab/panel_movement.txt` (frozen 15-opponent movement panel). Unit of evidence is the opponent, not the battle. One frozen binary from `git archive` of `j160-ramfloor`. * **Contamination control — j159's three guarantees, unchanged**: (1) per-arm `TR_ENV_FILE` in this job's own outdir (`/tmp/j162_floor/env/.env`); (2) the per-run botdir holds only `.json`, `.sh` and a symlink to the frozen binary — no `.env`, and the loader does not walk up; (3) **every** run's `[env]` boot report is checked against its arm, and any disagreement voids the session. **A session-record check runs BEFORE analysis**, not as a rewrite afterwards (j159 had a mid-analysis `session.json` rewrite; not repeated here). | arm | env | role | |---|---|---| | `A_off` | both unset | REFERENCE | | `B_floor` | `TR_RAM_FLOOR_ENERGY=5` | the floor alone (value from the measurement) | | `C_exhaust` | `TR_RAM_ENEMY_ENERGY=20` | the exhaustion trigger alone | | `D_both` | `TR_RAM_FLOOR_ENERGY=5 TR_RAM_ENEMY_ENERGY=20` | the combined policy | No arm is inert, so none is dropped: `C_exhaust=20` acts on 7.1% of ticks (enemy <= 20 while we are > 20) and `D_both` is the only arm that answers the composition rule. A floor *sweep* arm is deliberately omitted — the measurement chose the value, and the budget is better spent on n. ### Size — corrected for the real throughput j159 measured **420 battles in 1110 s = 23 battles/min** (not the ~7/min the previous estimate assumed). MDE scales as `1/sqrt(n)`; the shipped default movement gate resolved **0.17 wins/run at 210 runs/arm**. For a target MDE of **0.10 wins/run**: `n = 210 * (0.17/0.10)^2 = 607` runs/arm, rounded up to **42 runs/opponent = 630 runs/arm**. * 15 opponents x 4 arms x 42 runs x 3 rounds = **3780 battles ≈ 2.7 h**. * Decision-only 2-arm version (`A_off` vs `B_floor`): 15 x 2 x 42 x 3 = **1890 battles ≈ 1.4 h**, still at MDE 0.10. ### Metrics (fixed now) **Primaries: damage/run, round-win rate.** Mechanism, never a verdict: self energy at death, ticks spent disabled, shots fired/run, ram-kill count. Paired per-opponent deltas, mean/SD/SE/95% CI, sign test, sign-flip permutation, Wilcoxon cross-check, reported MDE. Two-sided. ### Verdict rule (fixed now) Adopt only if BOTH primaries favour the arm with `p(sign-flip) < 0.05` **and** the effect is at or above the reported MDE. Otherwise do not ship; both knobs stay `0.0`. A clean null is a fully acceptable result. No subsetting, no dropping opponents, no re-running to chase a p-value. --- # j163 — PRE-REGISTRATION: the FIRING FLOOR A/B (2 arms), BEFORE ANY BATTLE **Written and committed before a single battle of this design was run.** Nothing below was chosen after seeing data. Worktree `j160-ramfloor` @ `64e23e2`, one frozen binary built by `tournament_run.sh` from `git archive HEAD`, both knobs default-`0.0`, no code changed by this job. ## Hypothesis The bot dies broke: **61.2% of rounds (21865/35753) end with self energy crossing 0**, and energy on the last alive tick is median 0.83. Below **5** energy the next tick brings death **2.9x** more often than a landed hit (0.663%/tick vs 0.232%/tick); the bank of a suppressed run at floor 5 is ~9.9 energy against a p75 overshoot of 2.0 / p90 6.9 — a free 5-energy reserve would have saved 85.1% of self-deaths. Firing is net energy-negative here (a landed hit returns `3p` for `p` spent; the hit rate is capped at 5.87/76 = 7.7%), so holding a reserve in the sub-5 zone should convert safety into **round wins**. ## Arms — two, differing in exactly one variable (`TR_MOVEMENT=tfil` pinned) | arm | per-arm env file | role | |---|---|---| | `A_baseline` | `TR_RAM_FLOOR_ENERGY=0` | REFERENCE (today's shipped behaviour) | | `B_floor5` | `TR_RAM_FLOOR_ENERGY=5` | treatment, the value chosen by the j162 measurement | **The `TR_RAM_ENEMY_ENERGY` (ram-exhaustion) arm is DELIBERATELY EXCLUDED.** Its own measurement found the trigger is rare at its literal threshold and that whether it fires is close to a coin flip in direction — it is not a well-founded mechanism. Excluding it here is a decision, **not an oversight**; this job tests only the one well-founded mechanism. If the floor is adopted, the exhaustion trigger needs its own design and its own A/B. ## Primaries (fixed now) 1. **round-win rate** (rounds won / rounds fought) — **the deciding primary** 2. **damage/run** ## THE DAMAGE MDE IS STATED UP FRONT, BECAUSE IT IS BIGGER THAN THE EFFECT Expected damage cost of floor 5: **~2 damage/run** (4.4 suppressed shots per median run x 4 damage/hit x 7.7% hit rate) — versus **8.83 damage/run** for the already-rejected geometry arm. The design's **damage MDE is 7.65**. The damage effect is therefore **~3.8x below what this design can resolve**. > **Recorded before any data: we EXPECT TO BE UNABLE TO MEASURE THE DAMAGE > COST DIRECTLY. A null on damage/run is the predicted outcome, not a surprise, > and must NOT be re-read after the fact as evidence either for or against the > floor.** The verdict is judged on **ROUND WINS**. The damage MDE is a > one-sided blind spot of this design, fixed in advance. ## Counterweight (also on the record before any data) **78.0% of suppressed runs still end in death.** The floor protects the tail of the energy ledger; it is not a shield. A mechanism-positive / outcome-null result is the fifth such in this campaign (j144, j145, j146, j147, j159). ## Mechanism metrics (reported, never a verdict) * self energy at death (per round); * share of rounds ending at self energy **<= 0** (baseline **61.2%**); * shots/run; * share of ticks with firing suppressed (**floor 5 predicts ~9.6% of ticks, median suppressed run ~53 ticks**). * Reported **per opponent as well as pooled**: j159's re-analysis showed a pooled test hid a real per-opponent effect (safety signal p=0.0008 per-opponent, null pooled). The unit of evidence is the opponent. ## Size, MDE and the time floor 15 frozen opponents x 2 arms x **42 runs** x 3 rounds = **1890 battles**. MDE ~**0.10 wins/run** (`210 x (0.17/0.10)^2`; 210 was the design that resolved 0.17 wins/run). At the measured 22.7-23.2 runs/min that is **~1.4 h — a floor on elapsed time, not an estimate**: opponent heterogeneity does not average down with added runs. If time runs short, the achieved n and the MDE actually reached are reported exactly; the panel and the arms are **not** silently shrunk. ## Contamination controls (all three, in order) 1. Each arm is launched with `TR_ENV_FILE` pointing at a **per-arm file this job generated** in its own directory (`/tmp/j163_env/.env`) — never a shell export, because the dotenv loader gives the FILE priority. The file dir is deliberately **outside** `--outdir` (`tournament_run.sh` `rm -rf`s the outdir). This matters: the owner has an 18 KB `.env` at `ModularBot_garage/out/.env` in the main tree. The per-run botdir holds only `.json`, `.sh` and a symlink to the frozen binary; the frozen binary's own directory holds no `.env`; the loader's fallbacks are `./.env` then exe-adjacent with **no parent walk**, so the owner's file is unreachable. 2. **Every run's `[env]` boot block is verified against its arm as runs complete** — `TR_RAM_FLOOR_ENERGY` and `TR_MOVEMENT=tfil` — and `mis-set` is counted and reported. A previous session was invalidated-risk because this was checked too late. 3. The session record is **read before analysis, never rewritten**. j159 had a mid-analysis `session.json` rewrite; declaring `TR_MOVEMENT` explicitly disables the analyzer's leaked-`TR_MOVEMENT` fatal check, so the built-in leak guard is **not trustworthy here** — the explicit per-run `[env]` verification above is the primary control. If the guard misbehaves it is **reported as a finding, not worked around**. ## Verdict rule (fixed now, two-sided) **Adopt** only if round-win rate favours `B_floor5` with a per-opponent **sign-flip permutation p < 0.05** AND the effect is at or above the reported MDE. Otherwise **do not ship**; `TR_RAM_FLOOR_ENERGY` stays `0.0`. No subsetting, no dropping opponents, no re-running to chase a p-value, no reinterpreting the bar after seeing the data. **A clean null is a fully acceptable result** — and a null here licenses only "no effect >= MDE is detectable at this design", never "the knob is harmless". --- ## MEASURED *(appended after the battles — everything above was committed first, at `6cfb169`)* ### MEASURED — the live A/B, 450 runs/arm, 2700 rounds (j163) * **Provenance.** Frozen 15-opponent movement panel (`tools/ab/panel_movement.txt`), 15 x 2 x **30 runs** x 3 rounds = **450 runs/arm, 2700 rounds**, `conc=6`, **0 failed, 0 never started**. Frozen binary `d9a39c3b8472…`, `TR_MOVEMENT=tfil` in both arms; the only difference is `TR_RAM_FLOOR_ENERGY` `0` (`A_floor0`, reference) vs `5` (`B_floor5`). * **Env verification — 0 mis-set.** Every run's `[env]` boot block was checked against its arm as the session progressed, live at **24 / 193 / 410 / 826 / 900** runs completed: no disagreement at any checkpoint. Per-arm `TR_ENV_FILE` in the session's own directory, botdir without a `.env`, loader does not walk up parents. This is contamination control #2 from the pre-registration, satisfied. * **DEVIATION FROM THE PRE-REGISTRATION, DISCLOSED.** The design asked for **42 runs/opponent** (1890 battles, MDE ~0.10 wins/run). Measured throughput was **14-22 runs/min**, not the assumed 22.7-23.2, so the wall-clock cost of the pre-registered n was not affordable. As the pre-registration required, the **panel and the arms were NOT shrunk**: the full 15 opponents and both arms were kept and the **runs per opponent were reduced to 30**. The MDE actually reached is reported below and is the honest resolution limit of this run. No opponent was dropped, no arm was re-run to chase a p-value. **Pooled dashboard (descriptive, NOT the verdict):** | arm | runs | dmg/run | wins/run | round wins | round win rate | |---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:| | `A_floor0` | 450 | 113.65 | 0.200 | — | **40.30%** | | `B_floor5` | 450 | 112.70 | 0.182 | — | **39.70%** | **Verdict layer** (per-opponent paired deltas, arm − reference; the sign-flip is the exact 2^15 permutation the pre-registration names as the decision test): | metric | mean Δ | 95% CI | p(sign-flip) | sign test | Wilcoxon p | **MDE reached** | |---|---:|---|---:|---:|---:|---:| | **round-win rate** | **-0.59 pp** | [-3.90, +2.72] | **0.7676** | 1.00 | 0.84 | **4.73 pp** | | wins/run | -0.0178 | [-0.117, +0.082] | 0.7676 | 1.00 | 0.84 | 0.1420 | | damage/run | -0.95 | [-3.88, +1.98] | 0.5298 | 1.00 | 0.84 | 4.19 | ### HEADLINE FINDING — the mechanism barely fired; the offline energy corpus did not survive contact with the live game 1. **Suppression was 0.04% of ticks, not the 9.6% the offline ruler predicted** — a **~200x** smaller effect. The pre-registration's own mechanism metric (`share of ticks with firing suppressed`, predicted ~9.6%, median suppressed run ~53 ticks) is the number that failed, and it failed by two orders of magnitude. 2. **Only 4.8% of shots are ever taken in the low-energy zone, and the floor removed 14% of those.** The gate therefore touches a small slice of a small slice: a bot that almost never wants to fire at low energy. The pre- registration's expected damage cost (~2 damage/run) was the arithmetic consequence of the 9.6% figure; with 0.04% it is ~200x smaller still, which is why the damage MDE (4.19) is unreachable by construction and not by bad luck. 3. **Rounds ending at self energy <= 0: 40.6% live vs 61.2% implied by the offline corpus** (the j162 baseline the pre-registration quoted). The recorded-fixture corpus over-states how often we die broke by ~1.5x. This is the second, independent way the same corpus mis-called the live game. 4. **Median self energy at death 14.1 -> 15.5** — the floor moved the death energy by +1.4, real but tiny, and nowhere near the "we sit disabled" state the floor was built for. 5. **The pre-registered blind spot was called correctly.** The pre-registration states, in advance, that we expect to be unable to measure the damage cost directly and that a damage null must not be re-read afterwards as evidence. That call was right, and it is the reason this run cannot be misread. ### VERDICT — DO NOT ADOPT 1. **The pre-registered verdict rule is not met.** Adopt required round-win rate favouring `B_floor5` with per-opponent sign-flip p < 0.05 AND the effect at or above the reported MDE. Observed: **-0.59 pp against**, p = **0.7676**, under the 4.73 pp MDE. Round wins and wins/run are the same null (p = 0.7676, MDE 0.1420 wins/run). 2. **`TR_RAM_FLOOR_ENERGY` stays `0.0`.** Do not adopt, do not ship, and **do not re-test this knob.** The design that could resolve a real effect does not exist at an affordable run count, and the mechanism it was built to suppress is nearly absent in the live game. Re-running buys resolution on an effect that is not there. 3. **A null here does NOT prove the knob inert — the opposite.** The mechanism fired on 0.04% of ticks. This run licenses only: "no effect >= 4.73 pp of round-win rate at 450 runs/arm". It says nothing about the ~0.04% of ticks it did suppress, because too few of them existed to measure. 4. **The generalisable finding is the corpus, not the knob.** The offline energy corpus over-predicted both the size of the low-energy firing window (9.6% -> 0.04%) and the rate of dying broke (61.2% -> 40.6%). An offline ruler built on recorded fixtures is only as representative as the fixtures; the death-energy corpus does not represent the live energy ledger. Future offline rulers for exhaustion must be calibrated against a live death-energy distribution before their predictions are pre-registered as expectations, not just as a rationale. **Ship state: unchanged. `TR_RAM_FLOOR_ENERGY=0.0` and `TR_RAM_ENEMY_ENERGY=0.0` remain the shipped defaults, and the ram path keeps its pre-j160 behaviour.** This is the sixth mechanism-positive-or-presumed / outcome-not-positive result in the campaign (j144, j145, j146, j147, j159, j163) — and the first where the mechanism was not merely ineffective but **~200x smaller than the offline ruler said it would be**.