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.
fire_probe.sh holds each pad input in flight and photographs the HUD ammo
counters. RB moves NOSE BM 06000 -> 05956 in 4 s (~11 rounds/s, HEAT rises);
Y moves MAIN MPM 00300 -> 00299; nothing else moves either counter. So the
control mapping is measured rather than assumed, and 'we never shoot' is dead:
we shoot and miss.
The disc data says to stop shooting: Shell_TCAF_DeltaSaber_Missile_P is Power
200, GuidanceType 5 (guided), MaximumRange 5000, versus the nose gun's Power 15
unguided — one missile is worth ~14 gun hits on a 500 HP fighter and it steers
itself. Launching them (press Y, release a tick later, >=2 s apart) produced
YOU KILLED: WARPLANES 0002 — the first non-zero kill counter of the series,
against 0000 in all five gun-only runs, with hostiles down 134 -> 104.
Still only 2 kills per 98 missiles (~2%). Likely cause: the game expects a lock
before launch and an unlocked missile is wasted. Reading the lock state out of
RAM is the next step.
Shell_TCAF_DeltaSaber_*_P: Velocity 8000, LifeTime 0.5 s, MaximumRange 4000
(self-consistent: 8000 x 0.5 = 4000), all confirmed. Two things were wrong:
lead computed flight time as d / OUR speed (400-2000 u/s, so every shot was led
4-16x too far), and FIRE_RANGE was 5000 — past where the shells expire.
Both fixed. But the HUD's own kill counters read 0000/0000 at the end of EVERY
run including the nearest-fighter baseline, so the pilot kills nothing in any
configuration and 'fraction of frames firing' was never measuring lethality.
No improvement is claimed.
One clean negative result kept: gating on the target's angular half-size alone
(2.7 deg at 2584 units) is far tighter than the steering loop can hold the nose
— firing collapsed to 1 frame in 2639. Angular size is a floor on the firing
cone, never a cap.
Next: the HUD carries a live ammo count, so holding fire and watching it settles
'we never shoot' vs 'we shoot and miss' in a single run.
While the asset is losing hull, target what is pressing IT — ranked by distance
to the asset minus credit for closing on it — instead of what is nearest to us.
Trigger and ranking both read the live hull (pos+0x154), so nothing is inferred.
DEFEND engaged 1.9 s after the asset's first hit and held 54% of a 330 s run.
It did NOT measurably save the asset: over the window two runs share, the
policies are equal to within noise (t=239: 23218 vs 23038). Two reasons, both
recorded rather than papered over: the runs are not comparable past that window
(spawn timing differs and the hostile count GREW 134->166 in one, fell 147->118
in the other), and the real bottleneck is lethality — the guns are on for 12% of
combat frames because the target is outside the 9 deg cone the rest of the time.
Also corrects a single-run claim in the previous commit: the asset is NOT
reliably safe for the first ~170 s. A second run had first damage at t=70 s. The
stage does not replay identically; only 'the loss is slow' survives.
Fixes a fatal bug the new mode exposed: DEFEND flies at the asset, which sits
inside the friendly formation, and the first escort run went hull 1500 -> DEAD in
one tick at 2026 units/s, 0.6 s from a friendly destroyer that avoidance thought
it would clear by 365 units — the ship's radius is 2000. Keep-out applied only to
hostile turrets. Every entity above BIG_RADIUS now gets its own radius + 800 of
physical keep-out with braking inside it, whatever its faction.
own_state.py found hull = position + 0x154 for the PLAYER. Stage 02 is an
escort and is lost when the ACROPOLIS sinks, so scoring it needs someone
else's hull. Measured over 240 s of Stage 02: at t=0 pos+0x154 equals each
entity's own definition HP across 7 classes and 5 distinct HP values (turret
100, fighter 500, destroyer 10000, cruiser 30000, Acropolis 25000). Nothing
read above its HP; the five that read slightly below were already under fire
when the player launched. It falls with damage (780 events), goes negative at
death, and the object then leaves the heap.
UN_f101_TCAF_Acropolis: HP 25000, radius 1400, measured 25000 -> 23038 over
240 s with the attack starting only at t~170 s (~600 HP/min) — so the earlier
GAME OVER was not a fast loss, it was an undefended one.
Also: REMAINING OB reads 012 while 118 ADAN entities are alive, so it counts
objectives, not hostiles; its address is still unknown.
