# Reading the live script state — the real phase counter, and per-squadron liveness

Status: ✅ `ScriptMission` and `ScriptPhase` located in a running mission with no
debugger, validated arithmetically; ✅ the true phase ordinal read live;
🟡 the per-unit `state` encoding needs care.

This unblocks [mission-phase-membership](mission-phase-membership.md), which was
stuck because "38 enemies died" could not say whether the *right* ones did.
Chasing craft→squadron was the wrong angle: **the script VM already keeps that
table**, indexed by the `.ssb` symbol-table-2 index.

Tool: `tools/re-capture/squadron_state.py`.

## ✅ Locating the objects, without gdb

1. Find the **`.ssb` header** in guest memory — 20 bytes of version + code offset
   + the two symbol-table offsets, distinctive enough to hit once. For a Stage 02
   run it sat at **`0xAB840010`**.
2. `code base = file base + header code offset` (`0x24`) → `0xAB840034`.
3. `[ScriptMission+24]` **is** that code base, so scan for a word equal to it.
4. **Validate arithmetically, not by eye:** `[ScriptMission+44]` must equal
   `file base + symtab1 offset + 4`. Measured `0xAB874C94`; predicted
   `0xAB840010 + 0x34C80 + 4 = 0xAB874C94`. Exact.

That check is what makes this trustworthy — the candidate is confirmed against a
number taken from the file on disc, not against "it looks like a pointer". A
second candidate that also pointed at the code base failed it and was discarded.

```
ScriptMission 0xBC7A2A20
  +4  ScriptPhase*  = 0xBE14DD80      +20 state     = 1  ("phase running")
  +24 code base     = 0xAB840034      +28 pc        = 0xAB84007C
  +40 PHASE ORDINAL = 1               +44 symtab1   = 0xAB874C94  ✓
ScriptPhase 0xBE14DD80
  +196 finished = 0    +244 symtab1 = 0xAB874C94    +324 unit array = 0xBC43B560
```

`ScriptPhase+324` → `+4` → an array of per-unit records. It holds **122
records — exactly the size of Stage 02's symbol table 2**, which is an
independent confirmation that the index space is the one the bytecode uses.

## ✅ The real phase counter reads 1 — the mirror was the wrong field

`[ScriptMission+40]` reads **1** in a phase-1 mission. The runtime mirror at
`[*(0x828F35F8)+236]`, which three earlier runs polled, reads **0** — because
`ChangePhase` is only posted once the ordinal exceeds 1.

So the mirror is not a phase readout at all in phase 1, and **`+40` is**. It is
reachable from `/dev/shm` with no debugger, which is what made three runs of
polling the wrong address avoidable in hindsight.

## ✅ PINNED: state 1 = not yet deployed, state 2 = active — and arrivals are real

Watching `[ScriptMission+40]` and the three objective squadrons together across a
live run (`data/phase-watch-s02.txt`):

```
[   1.8s] phase=1 finished=0 active= 24  ADN110:1  ADN111:1  ADN112:1
[  58.2s] phase=1 finished=0 active= 27  ADN110:1  ADN111:1  ADN112:1
[  90.7s] phase=1 finished=0 active= 30  ADN110:1  ADN111:1  ADN112:1
[ 120.8s] phase=1 finished=0 active= 29  ADN110:1  ADN111:1  ADN112:1
[ 143.4s] phase=1 finished=0 active= 32  ADN110:2  ADN111:2  ADN112:2   <-- arrive
[ 223.3s] phase=1 finished=0 active= 35  ADN110:2  ADN111:2  ADN112:2
```

**All three flip 1 → 2 at ~143 s**, and the count of records in state 2 climbs
**24 → 35** over the same window. So for these squadrons **state 1 is
"not yet deployed", not "gone"** — the built-in table's shorthand
*"1/3/4 = gone/dead/invalid"* is incomplete, and reading `state != 2` as
"destroyed" would have been wrong in exactly the way flagged last iteration.
Good that it was flagged rather than assumed.

### ✅ This also answers a much older question: arrivals DO happen

[mission-arrival-watch](mission-arrival-watch.md) and the wave work recorded
**"0 confirmed arrivals"** after many runs, measured by watching the *craft*
population. The script's own unit table shows arrivals plainly: eleven more
records enter state 2 within four minutes, three of them the phase-1 objective
squadrons at a distinct moment.

The old negative was not wrong about what it measured — it was measuring the
wrong structure. Craft counts conflate deployment with attrition; the per-unit
state field does not.

⚠️ **Both runs of this experiment froze** — at ~70 s and ~253 s — so the window
above is all that was observed, and **no phase advance was reached**. The freeze
witness caught both immediately, which is the only reason the truncation is
visible rather than silently producing a flat line.

## 🟡 The per-unit `state` encoding is not what the summary implies

For the three phase-1 objective squadrons, early in a fresh mission:

```
ADN110  idx=1  obj=True  state=1
ADN111  idx=2  obj=True  state=1
ADN112  idx=5  obj=True  state=1
records with state==2 (active): 27-29 of 122
```

The built-in table describes `+16` as *"2 = active; 1/3/4 = gone/dead/invalid"*.
But these three have a **live object pointer and state 1**, in a mission that has
barely started and where nothing has been shot. So either state 1 does not mean
"gone", or it means "not yet deployed" — **not settled**, and worth pinning
before any conclusion is drawn from it. Reading `state != 2` as "destroyed"
would be exactly the kind of plausible-but-wrong inference this corpus keeps
catching.

## What this makes possible

The decisive phase experiment is no longer blocked on attribution — and it has
now partly run: the arrival of the three objective squadrons is directly
observed. What is still missing is a run that survives long enough (no freeze)
for them to be **destroyed**, which is when `[ScriptMission+40]` should step to
2. Two attempts froze first.

`tools/re-capture/phase_watch.py` is the harness: it samples the real counter and
the watched squadrons together, witnesses the freeze every 60 s, and prints only
on change.

## ✅ 2026-08-25 — the bounded scan fixes the freeze, and the state machine is confirmed live

**The sweeps were the cost.** Bounding the pointer scan to `0xBC000000–0xBD000000`
(with a full-sweep fallback) drops `find_mission` from a full ~371 MB walk to
**0.7 s**. The run then went **694 s with the probe attached and no freeze**,
against **3 of 3 frozen inside ~4 minutes** with the unbounded version. n=1, but
it is the first probe-attached run to survive past four minutes.

Full trace in `data/phase-watch-s02-full.txt`:

```
[   0.7s] phase=1 finished=0 active=24  ADN110:1 ADN111:1 ADN112:1
[ 113.8s] phase=1 finished=0 active=33  ADN110:2 ADN111:2 ADN112:2   <- arrive
[ 191.0s] phase=1 finished=0 active=36
[ 433.0s] phase=1 finished=0 active=30  ADN110:2 ADN111:4 ADN112:2   <- ADN111 destroyed
[ 631.7s] phase=1 finished=0 active=27
[ 694.9s] phase=1 finished=1 active=27                               <- phase ends
```

### ✅ State 4 = destroyed — a squadron death caught in the act

`ADN111` goes **2 → 4** at 433 s while the active count falls 36 → 27 over the
same window. Together with the earlier 1 → 2 arrival this pins three points of
the encoding: **1 = not yet deployed, 2 = active, 4 = destroyed**.

### ✅ The mission-over branch, observed exactly as disassembled

The phase ended at 694.9 s, but **the ordinal did not advance** — and the reason
is the branch [mission-phase-advance](../mission-phase-advance.md) read out of
`sub_82260710`:

```
if ([phase+300] == 2)  post 994 ; state = 0 ; MISSION OVER
else                   state = 5 ; [mission+40] += 1   NEXT PHASE
```

Measured at the end of the run:

| field | value | meaning |
|---|---|---|
| `[phase+300]` | **2** | last-phase flag set (built-in 39) |
| `[mission+20]` | **0** | the mission-over state |
| `[phase+196]` | **1** | phase finished |
| `[mission+40]` | **1** | ordinal unchanged — correct for this branch |

Every field matches the disassembled branch, on the live oracle. **The static
reading of the phase state machine is confirmed** — for the mission-over half.

### 🔴 This was a LOSS, not a phase clear

`screen_id` shows the `GAME OVER` frame, the escort was down to **35.7 %**, and
the pilot logged `DEAD` at 676 s. So a lose path ran built-in 39
(`MARK_LAST_PHASE`) and then `END_PHASE`, which is why the mission ended instead
of advancing.

**Two of the three objective squadrons were still alive** (`ADN110` and `ADN112`
at state 2), so this says nothing about whether destroying all three clears
phase 1 — that prediction is **still untested**. What it does establish is that
the `else` branch is the only way to reach phase 2, and it requires
`[phase+300] != 2` at the moment the phase ends.

**Still not observed: a phase ADVANCE.** Five attempts. The obstacle is no longer
the freeze or the instrument — it is keeping the escort alive long enough to win.