534 IXUD entries across 36 paks, 94 distinct keys, 92 resolved by name. Content
identified: mission objective/lose/hint panels, 91 bonus-objective banners,
scripted radio, cutscene dialogue, the reactive combat-chatter pool (MSG_ADAN
23,236 fields, MSG_RHIN 21,196, ...), resupply barks, speaker labels and the
hangar weapon Name/Desc/Condition.
Verified independently: language\MissionDialog_local_string.tbl decodes to 600
fields with the trailer identity holding, giving Stage 02's real objectives --
phase 1 'Shoot down all invading enemy fighters / while watching out for attacks
/ on the ACROPOLIS', phase 2 'Protect the Admiral's ship the CALIBAN', phase 3
'Destroy the interstellar cruise missiles'. That matches the script exactly: the
phase-1 condition polls three enemy squadrons and the escort's loss is the fail
branch, and phase 2 is positional, which is why no kill count appears there.
The .ssb symbol names (S02_P1_OBJECTIVE etc.) are NOT IXUD keys -- they are
records in an IDXD map, message\MissionDialogMessage.tbl, whose positional
fields list the lowercase per-line IXUD names; *_GRAPH holds a texture instead.
Structure: one record per object (except the six 63-record hangar files),
624,440 named fields, 55% of them empty line slots, no control characters, the
only escape a literal two-char \n in block-text tables, and records/fields in
ascending key order so lookup is a binary search. '[OB]' turns out to be a HUD
marker label in this text -- the same one the REMAINING OB work chased.
Six languages confirmed D/E/F/I/J/S; J omits the trailing empty line slot in 78
of 86 objects. Two keys remain unresolved, byte-identical across all six paks
(untranslated Japanese voice transcripts).
Also corrects mission-objectives-text.md: SUBOBJ_009 does have text, and
SUBOBJ_005 is two fields.
pilot.py gained SYLPH_PREFER, a unit-name substring whose matches get their
target score multiplied by 0.05 while everything else is multiplied by 4.0. With
SYLPH_PREFER=e010 a clean 320 s run, zero stalls by the witness, killed eight
turrets and two Attacker_S.
The preference is real -- e010 kills went from roughly one across all previous
runs to two in a single run -- but it is weak. Turrets still outnumber attackers
four to one in the kill log, because target commitment and simple proximity keep
pulling the nose back to them, and phase 1 fields 108 turret craft against 16
attackers. Deployed stayed at 41 throughout, so no phase advance.
That quantifies the blocker. Clearing the marked attackers means destroying 16
craft, and at two per 320 s that is about 2560 seconds, roughly 43 minutes of
continuous verified-live flight across many chained attaches, against a freeze
rate of about two runs in five.
This is no longer a reverse-engineering problem. Everything needed to observe
the phase advance is built and validated -- the roster-to-craft link, the
liveness read, the stall witness, chained attaches and the discard rule. What is
missing is a pilot good enough to complete the mission objective, which is
game-playing work with an uncertain payoff.
The choice is recorded rather than made, because it is about how much effort one
confirmation is worth rather than a technical unknown: invest in the pilot,
accept the static answer where only the trigger is inferred rather than
observed, or attempt one very long chained run betting against the freeze rate.
The localised string tables are decoded. language\*_local_string.tbl uses a
third archive prefix, language\, and is not IDXD: the magic is IXUD and the
strings are UTF-16 big-endian, which is why earlier ASCII-oriented dumps of
these files produced garbage.
That makes Stage 02's nine sub-objectives readable in words -- rescue the ally
destroyer, destroy all enemy fighters, sink all enemy warships, rescue the
Amalthea, keep the Caliban undamaged, sink the destroyer targeting the
Acropolis, destroy all enemy cruise missiles. Ninety-one objectives are defined
across the game.
The guide script then confirms the phase structure twice over. It reads as three
acts -- marked attackers and protecting the Acropolis, then a warship whose
engine, weapons and shield projector must be destroyed, then cruise missiles
taken down one by one -- and each act matches the per-phase roster composition
found independently. Phase 3 fields exactly nine UN_e201_ADAN_ISCMissile against
SUBOBJ_013's "You destroyed all enemy cruise missiles", an exact match between
two files decoded on different days by different routes.
And it gives a mundane explanation for every null result in the arrival work.
The phase-1 objective is stated outright in the script: the attackers with the
orange markers are the targets, meaning UN_e010_ADAN_Attacker_S, of which phase
1 fields four squadrons. Every loss line in every run log reads
UN_e007_ADAN_Turret, with e010 appearing twice in total, because SYLPH_HUNT was
built to make turrets targets and SYLPH_KEEPOUT was tuned for them. The 42 kills
were overwhelmingly the wrong 42.
Kept at 🟡 because the objective text is certain but the inference that this
particular objective gates the phase advance comes from the script's structure
rather than from measurement. The test is a pilot that prioritises e010 over
e007, which is a target-preference knob rather than new decoding, with the
existing probe watching deployed jump from 41 toward the phase-2 roster.
