SYLPH_WEAKEST=1 (a25ddab) worked on its first live run: concentrating fire on the
already-damaged attacker produced the kill that four previous runs could not.
All gates enforced first -- FLIGHT confirmed, stage asserted, mission clock shown
advancing -- then:
live e010 floor: 16 for samples 0-11, then 15 for samples 12-39 (one death)
counter: 004 -> 008 at 02:06.33 (t=120 arrival, +4)
008 -> 007 at 03:10.28 <-- DECREMENT, bracket (171.2s, 190.3s]
007 -> 011 at 03:48.40 (t=210 arrival, +4 FROM 7, not from 8)
011 held to 06:50.30 -- ceiling 11, where every prior run reached 12
Conclusive because: it fell by exactly 1 and not by 4, so the counter tracks CRAFT
not squadrons; exactly one attacker died and exactly one decrement occurred, in the
same window; and the CEILING moved with it -- a counter that merely read arrivals
would still have shown 012. Control held: turrets fell 109 -> 92, seventeen
deaths, none of which moved it.
Settled reading: REMAINING OB is the number of objective-marked craft still alive,
the marked craft being exactly the members of the phase's A-route squadrons. It
rises by a squadron's membership on that squadron's route arrival time and falls by
one per marked craft destroyed. Every number was predicted from Route_S02.tbl and
UnitGroup_S02.tbl before it was measured.
Fourth Stage 02 run: 520s of pilot with SYLPH_PREFER=e010 (198 fire=1), per-class
counts every 10s, OB+TIME throughout.
ARRIVAL TIMING n=4: 008 first at 02:05.00 (step bracket contains 120), 012 first
at 03:45.47 (bracket contains 210), then 012 held 3.5 more minutes with no fall
and no 016.
THE BLOCKER IS MEASURED, and it is not aim. Reading hull at pos+0x154 for every
live e010 at the end: 14 of 16 are damaged, hulls 360..500, lowest 360/500 = 28%
gone. The shots land; they just do not finish. A kill needs roughly 3-4x longer
on one target than ~8 minutes of combat produced.
The contrast with the control shows the mechanism is hit points: e007 turrets
(HP 100) lost ~9 dead, 106 -> 97 live, while e010 attackers (HP 500) lost none and
the floor never moved off 16.
Decrement therefore still unproven after four runs, and "fly longer" is not a fix
since ~half of runs end early. Options recorded for a redesign: point the pilot
at the WEAKEST attacker (hull is readable per entity; one is at 360/500), use
missiles (never deliberately fired), or wait on a scripted kill.
Third Stage 02 run, pilot with SYLPH_PREFER=e010 (312 fire=1 samples), per-class
live counts logged every 11s beside the HUD (new tools/re-capture/class_count.py).
CONTROL CONFIRMED: the live turret population fell 108 -> 101 -- seven e007 deaths
-- and REMAINING OB never decremented, only rose. Previously this was inferred
from a run whose kill log happened to be turrets; it is now measured with the
classes counted directly.
ARRIVAL TIMING n=3: 004 -> 008 in (108.7s, 125.5s] and 008 -> 012 in (204.2s,
221.7s], both brackets containing the predicted 120 and 210.
The live e010 count sat at exactly 16 in 20 of 26 samples -- precisely phase 1's
e010 roster (ADT102/ADT107/ADT113/ADS151, each n=4) -- an independent runtime
corroboration of the static roster.
DECREMENT STILL UNPROVEN: the e010 floor never fell, so no marked attacker died
and the counter had no chance to move. Three runs have failed to kill one. The
blocker is combat effectiveness, not instrumentation.
Artifact recorded: six of 26 class samples read 17-28. Spikes are always upward
and transient -- the tool dedups on a position triple read just after the pattern
scan, so an entity written between the two reads is counted twice.
pilot.py with SYLPH_PREFER=e010, 300s, mission clock sampled throughout.
RISES REPRODUCED: 004 -> 008 in (114.8s, 134.7s] and 008 -> 012 in (196.4s,
213.3s], both brackets containing the predicted 120 and 210. Second independent
run, so the arrival half is now n=2.
DECREMENT INCONCLUSIVE. The pilot fought properly -- 424 fire=1 samples, 865 with
the target inside 1500 units, closest approach 79, target e010 throughout, hull
untouched -- and 13 ADAN died (129 -> 116). The counter held 012 for 98s. That is
NOT evidence against the decrement: the 13 dead were not identified by class, this
pilot's kills historically skew to turrets, and the live e010 count ROSE over the
run so attacker deaths cannot be inferred from it. Recording it as inconclusive
rather than as a negative, which is the error this corpus has already logged twice.
POSITIVE RESULT: at TIME 05:56.85, both arms sampled together, REMAINING OB = 012
while live UN_e010_ADAN_Attacker_S = 23. So the counter is NOT the live attacker
head-count; it tracks a subset, and 12 is exactly the three A-route squadrons'
membership (3 x n=4). Phase 1 fields only 16 e010, so 23 live means later-phase or
F-route squadrons joined without touching the counter.
Anomaly recorded, not explained: the enumeration reports 2 _Player entities at two
distinct positions.
Predicted from the disc alone, before the run: ADT102/ADT107/ADT113, each n=4,
arrive at t=0/120/210, so the counter reads 004, steps to 008 at t=120 and 012 at
t=210, and goes no higher in phase 1.
Measured with the mission clock sampled beside the counter throughout:
004 held over six samples to 01:45.44
008 first seen at 02:00.87 -> step bracketed in (105.4s, 120.9s]
008 held over five samples to 03:17.55
012 first seen at 03:30.66 -> step bracketed in (197.6s, 210.7s]
012 held four more samples to 04:36.95, no 016
Both steps land on the predicted second, and the ceiling holds. Three independent
features -- starting value, both step TIMES, and the ceiling -- came from
Route_S02.tbl and UnitGroup_S02.tbl with nothing fitted to runtime data. So the
counter's rises ARE the A-route attacker squadrons arriving.
Status upgraded to CONFIRMED for the rises. The DECREMENT half stays 🟡 and is
now the only open part: this run killed nothing, and the single observed 12 -> 11
remains one sample.
Swept every Route_*_p<n><kind> in every stage table, resolving each squadron to
its unit via that stage's own UnitGroup, with F/S/M routes as the control:
A/B routes : 23 of 67 resolved are attacker/bomber = 34.3%
F/S/M control: 27 of 928 = 2.9%
A ~12x enrichment, so the signal is real and not a one-stage accident. But "A
means the marked attackers" remains too strong: of the 67 resolved A/B routes, 35
carry UN_mn040_Asteroid_Big and 9 carry UN_n001_TTRL_Box (TTRL = tutorial). A
reading covering all four is "things the mission wants shot" -- attackers in a
combat stage, asteroids in an asteroid stage, boxes in a tutorial -- which keeps A
as an objective marker rather than a unit-class marker, but that is a reading of
four unit types, not a measurement.
Records a near-miss: a truncated listing showed the first ~26 rows, dominated by
early stages, in which every resolved row was an attacker. I nearly wrote "23/23,
unanimous". The full set is 23/67 -- the tail of a sorted listing is not the
distribution.
The Stage 02 derivation is unaffected: its three A routes are still exactly the
three n=4 attacker squadrons.
Pure static, from Route_S02.tbl. Only THREE routes in the entire stage are kind
'A', all in phase 1 -- ADT102, ADT107, ADT113 -- and every one is a
UN_e010_ADAN_Attacker_S squadron of n=4. The fourth phase-1 e010 squadron,
ADS151, is kind 'F'.
Their first-keyframe times are t=0, t=120 and t=210, so counting only the 'A'
squadrons predicts the counter exactly: 004 at entry, 008 at t=120, 012 at t=210,
and never above 012 in phase 1. That is what every run has shown -- starting
value, step size and ceiling all fall out of the disc with nothing fitted.
It also explains the two awkward observations: the fifteen-minute hold at 012 (all
'A' squadrons arrived, and those kills were turrets), and why 016 never appeared.
The earlier prediction of a 016 cap is WITHDRAWN: ADS151 is an F route and is not
counted, so the ceiling is 12.
Kept 🟡: "A = marked attack objective" is inference from three routes in one
stage, consistent with the mission dialogue and with A appearing only in early
phases, but the letter's meaning is not proven and the kill test is still unrun.
Replaces the 16/4 MEAN with a per-group measurement, closing the caveat that a
5/5/3/3 split would have made the counter's step-of-four a coincidence.
Route_S02.tbl names routes Route_<squadron>_p<phase><kind>, so the squadron->phase
link is readable off the disc. Stage 02 has 37 phase-1 squadrons; intersecting
with the e010 roster gives exactly FOUR -- ADS151, ADT102, ADT107, ADT113 -- and
every one has n=4, summing to 16 craft.
The five e010 groups NOT in phase 1 (ADN204, ADN206, ADN208, ADN209, ADS251)
include both n=6 groups and the n=9 group. That is why the stage-wide mean
misled: the odd-sized squadrons belong to later phases. Restricted to phase 1 the
size is uniform.
Pure static, no emulator. The hypothesis itself stays 🟡 -- the runtime
kill-one-e010 test is still the thing that would confirm or kill it.
Decoded stage\UnitGroup_S02.tbl with the existing unitgroup.py (pure static, no
emulator; 111 squadrons, roster self-check 111/111).
The "four per squadron" premise was 16/4, a mean, and I flagged that 5/5/3/3 would
make the step-of-four a coincidence. Measured: Stage 02 has NINE e010_Attacker_S
squadrons totalling 45 members, sized 4,4,4,6,4,6,4,9,4 -- not uniform across the
stage, but SIX of the nine hold exactly 4, and phase 1's share is independently
recorded as 4 groups / 16 craft = 4 x 4. So the phase-1 squadrons are the n=4
ones and the step-of-four is a real size, not an averaging artifact.
But a premise of the note is refuted: ADN110/111/112, which I cited as the polled
squadrons arriving at t=170, are UN_e007_ADAN_Turret with n=9 -- TURRET squadrons,
not attackers. That arrival evidence is about turrets and is withdrawn from the
argument.
Records the tension it exposes: mission-wave-arrivals.md calls ADN110/111/112 the
squadrons the phase-1 clear condition polls, while mission-objectives-text.md has
the phase-1 objective as the marked attackers. Unresolved.
Assembled from existing captures, not newly measured, and marked 🟡 accordingly.
mission-objectives-text.md gives phase 1's roster as 4 e010_Attacker_S GROUPS
totalling 16 CRAFT -- four per squadron -- and the counter moves in steps of
exactly four (004 -> 008 -> 012). The phase-1 objective is stated in the mission
dialogue as "the attackers with the orange markers", i.e. the e010s, not the
turrets that outnumber them 7:1. mission-wave-arrivals.md pins the arrival of the
three polled squadrons at t=170 SECONDS, which is when the counter is seen to
climb.
That accounts for every number taken so far, including the two that looked
contradictory: the counter held at 012 while the hostile population fell by a
third because those kills were almost all turrets, and it decremented 12 -> 11 in
the one run whose pilot actually killed attackers.
Recorded with its own refutation tests (kill one e010 -> must fall by exactly 1;
kill a turret -> must not move; phase 1 should cap at 016) and with the weak point
stated: "four per squadron" is 16/4, a MEAN, and if the squadrons are 5/5/3/3 the
step-of-four pattern is coincidence.
