re: making turrets targets does not save the escort — the effect is inside the noise

The Stage-02 outcome write-up ended by naming "turrets near the asset must
become targets" as the fix worth ~50% of the escort damage. That was an
inference from a co-presence attribution, not a measurement. Run it and it
does not hold.

Also corrects the run labelling: pilot.py gained the SYLPH_KILL_TURRETS gate
two minutes before mission02 started, so mission02 was already a treatment run,
not a second baseline. Only mission01 (0 of 3968 pilot frames targeting a
turret) is the baseline.

At a common t=428s: baseline 46.9% escort hull, treatment 44.5% and 53.0%. The
two runs of the same arm differ by more than either differs from the baseline,
and the escort still reaches zero at t~590-670s in all three. So the
transferable finding is the power limit: one 430s flight cannot resolve an
effect below ~9 percentage points, and every single-run pilot conclusion,
including this one's, is inside it.

What does reproduce: the assault is scripted (onset 166/167/166s), and the
e007/e010 damage split is 50/50 in all three arms including the one that never
fires at a turret -- so that attribution measures the wave script, not us.

Also records that the viewer's include_external hypothesis in BACKLOG is dead
(it defaults true and is threaded through unchanged).

tools/re-capture/pilot.py

@@ -100,6 +100,18 @@ MISSILE_PERIOD = 2.0      # s between launches; 300 rounds is not unlimited
 # configuration here — override with $SYLPH_ASSET for another stage.
 ASSET_NAME = os.environ.get("SYLPH_ASSET", "Acropolis")
 
+# Turrets are keep-out zones everywhere else in this file, and that rule is what
+# stopped the pilot being shot down. But the 2026-08-10 outcome run measured the
+# cost of it: of the damage that sinks the ACROPOLIS, roughly half comes from
+# e007 turrets sitting 1.5-3 km off it (the other half from e010 bombers), and a
+# turret is 100 HP -- one missile, or ~7 nose-gun hits. Several were already at
+# 45-95 HP from stray fire and were never finished off, because nothing ever
+# targets them. So the rule that keeps us alive is also what loses the escort.
+# Gated rather than simply changed, so the measured baseline stays reproducible:
+# SYLPH_KILL_TURRETS=1 lets DEFEND -- and only DEFEND -- treat a turret that is
+# near the asset as a target. ENGAGE still avoids them.
+KILL_TURRETS = os.environ.get("SYLPH_KILL_TURRETS") == "1"
+
 
 class Pilot:
     KP, KD = 2.2, 0.45
@@ -230,7 +242,9 @@ class Pilot:
         """
         out = []
         for off, nm, p, v, r, hard in hos:
-            if hard:
+            # A turret near the asset IS a killable objective (100 HP) when
+            # SYLPH_KILL_TURRETS is set; a capital hull never is.
+            if hard and not (KILL_TURRETS and "Turret" in nm):
                 continue
             rel = a_p - p
             d = float(np.linalg.norm(rel))
@@ -520,9 +534,12 @@ class Pilot:
                 self.set_throttle(0)
             fire = True
 
-        # a turret inside its keep-out radius outranks the target
+        # A turret inside its keep-out radius outranks the target -- except the
+        # one we are deliberately attacking, or the keep-out would steer us off
+        # the very thing we chose to kill and neither goal would be served.
+        tgt_off = tgt[0] if tgt else None
         for off, nm, p, v, r, hard in hos:
-            if not hard:
+            if not hard or (KILL_TURRETS and off == tgt_off):
                 continue
             d = float(np.linalg.norm(p - me_p))
             if d < self.TURRET_KEEPOUT: