Measured, not argued: command a 45-degree-off-the-nose error and watch whether it
shrinks, both axes, both sides, two pulse widths, with the opposite sign as a
control. Yaw's sign is correct (45 -> 11.3/32.7 at 0.6 s, 41.6/33.8 at 1.2 s).
Pitch's is inverted - the pilot's own sign GREW the error every time
(48.3/55.6/70.7/91.7) and the opposite shrank it every time (30.7/41.5/15.7/9.6).
A method artefact is recorded because it gave the opposite answer first: a 3 s
full-deflection pulse overshoots a 45-degree error so far that BOTH signs look
wrong (45 -> 164 and 45 -> 178). A long pulse cannot answer a sign question.
Verified against the game rather than by inspection. Before: fire=1 in 0 of 13521
samples, |aim yaw| pinned at 90.0, target 36-43 km away. After: 43 of 1732, aim
down to 2.3 degrees, range median 6.3 km, and the HUD's own ammunition counters
moving - NOSE BM 06000 -> 05723, MAIN MPM 00300 -> 00298.
Also fixed a leftover of the same FIFO era: pilot.py called pad.f.write("tap A
90") for the target-select double tap, which raised AttributeError once Pad
stopped having an `f`. Pad gained tap()/dpad(); ctrl_probe.py and target_probe.py
still use pad.f and now say so in place.
Still open: YOU KILLED is 0000 after 250 s of firing and REMAINING OB is still
012. The craft shoots, closes and selects; whether it destroys anything is next.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01PMRJjbxLqZtsb5Vb7KunPE
The loop re-scored every contact every tick, so the nose chased whichever
fighter scored best that instant and aim error wandered 10-40 deg through a
pass. A missile lock is time-on-target, so constant switching is the one thing
guaranteed to prevent a kill. Commit to a contact until it dies, passes 6000,
sits >90 deg off the nose for 2.5 s, or 14 s elapse.
Same guns, same ballistics, same escort weighting, same missile cadence:
kills 0000 (five gun-only runs) -> 0002 (missiles) -> 0009 (commitment), with
101 missiles vs 98, and the largest hostile-population fall of any run
(134->97). Own hull untouched. The ACROPOLIS still ended at 76.6%, so this is
lethality, not the mission outcome.
Also records a negative result so it is not re-attempted: the selected target is
NOT a raw entity pointer. Three searches came up empty — a +-0x1400 window of
the player object, a full-RAM sweep of every entity-pointer word tapped through
each button (only thread-stack slots churn, which is frame noise), and a delta
tally over all 150 entities of the kind that found the definition pointer at
+0x130. The selection must be a handle, an index, or in a subsystem outside the
entity object.
