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SirStone fb36a0a685 tracker: corpses do not exist - revert the fix and retire the workaround

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.

2026-09-21 22:41:11 +02:00

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Enemy-tracker deaths: there are no corpses

Question. Two independent agents believed "BotDeathEvent never reaches ModularBot, so dead enemies stay alive in enemyTracker forever." If true, every consumer of the tracker (targeting, the adaptive melee radar, the virtual-bullet enemy table) would silently mis-prune. This note records the direct measurement that settled it and the verdict, so the premise is not re-invented a third time.

Why the premise sounds right (and is still real)

In robocode_tankroyale_botapi 1.0.7 the event queue's isCritical set is only ekDeath, ekWonRound, ekSkippedTurn — not ekBotDeath. removeOldEvents deletes any non-critical event with turnNumber < currentTurn - MAX_EVENTS_AGE (2). So a bot that falls more than two turns behind does drop BotDeathEvent. That mechanism is genuine and is proven at the API level by common_libs/tests/test_event_drop_mechanism.nim.

The mistake was assuming the mechanism triggers in a real ModularBot match.

Measurement

A 7-bot melee (ModularBot + DrussGT + 5 legacy sample bots). A per-tick probe compared enemyTracker alive-count against the server's getEnemyCount(), and a queue probe inspected the event queue before removeOldEvents ran. The probe ran with TR_TRACKER_RECONCILE=0 — i.e. raw behaviour, no reconciliation masking anything.

metric	server 1.3.1 (20 rounds)	server 0.35.5 (15 rounds)
observed enemy deaths	83	68
non-round-ending deaths	83 (100%)	66 (97%)
`ekBotDeath` events DROPPED	0	0
max dispatch lag (turns behind)	1	1
phantom ticks (`tracker_alive > server_ec`)	1 / 16,820	1 / 12,596
max corpse lifetime	0 ticks	0 ticks
victims still alive at round end	0	0

The maximum dispatch lag of 1 turn is below MAX_EVENTS_AGE (2), so the drop path is never reached. onBotDeath fires for every death, including non-round-ending ones, and markDead takes effect on the same tick.

Verdict

There are no corpses. onBotDeath + EnemyTracker.markDead is a complete, prompt death signal at this workload. The API-level drop mechanism is real but never triggered. The two rare phantom ticks resolve within one tick and are not persistent corpses.

Do not re-add a corpse workaround

Do not reintroduce tracker reconciliation against getEnemyCount() (the removed reconcileWithServer). It was a latent mis-prune path: its own doc comment recorded that a short persistence window marked a live enemy dead (it then "fired three more times").
Do not add an "unseen for N ticks => treat as dead" filter to adaptive_melee_radar or any other consumer. The tracker's alive flag (and allAlive() / aliveCount()) already excludes dead enemies. Treating a long-unseen entry as dead is actively wrong: it is a stale live enemy that the freshness fallback must re-acquire.
The CorpseTicks = 40 radar filter and the >60-tick coverage filter that existed only because of this premise have been removed.

If a future workload ever does show corpses (e.g. a much larger melee, a higher-latency link), reproduce the measurement above first — do not patch from the premise.

Artifacts

Instrument: TR_TRACKER_PROBE=1 in ModularBot (default off; writes JSONL to TR_TRACKER_PROBE_PATH). Kept because it produced the table above.
Measurement harness: common_libs/tests/measure_corpse_melee.nim.
Kept API-level proof: common_libs/tests/test_event_drop_mechanism.nim.
Death invariant: common_libs/tests/test_enemy_tracker_death.nim.

3.6 KiB Raw Blame History