Correction first. The sed used to derive each session script from the last
stripped the probe's arguments, so wave5, census and wave6 sessions invoked
their probes with no arguments and every derived probe has been running on its
own defaults. The previous iteration's claim that the run was "cut at 240 s by
the turn timeout, not the planned 330 s" is therefore wrong: the probe used its
default of 240. The pilot got the requested duration while the probe watched for
a different one, and the numbers were plausible enough that it went unnoticed.
No earlier conclusion is invalidated -- the windows were real, just shorter than
intended and misattributed. All three sessions now pass SECS and EVERY.
First n -> 0 ever observed: the player's own record went 2 -> 0 at t=83 s and
deployed fell 41 to 40. The signal does register elimination, not just damage.
No arrival followed, which is weak evidence against the squadron-elimination
trigger since the record eliminated was the player rather than an enemy
squadron. Two other turret records dropped from 18 in the same sample; noted
without interpretation.
The important finding is what came after. For the remaining 220 seconds the
mission was frozen -- exactly 288 craft, zero losses, zero arrivals, across 18
consecutive samples. So the usable observation window is not the probe duration
but however long the player survives. A 340 s probe that loses its pilot at 83 s
yields 83 s of evidence and 257 s of nothing, and several earlier "nothing over
240 s" results may have been much shorter in practice than they look.
That also explains why pilot.py was written to survive rather than to shoot. The
SYLPH_HUNT mode added two iterations ago drops TURRET_KEEPOUT from 2500 to 600,
buying kills at the cost of exactly the survival the run depends on.
The elimination test itself did not run: the squadron reached 14, not 0, before
the pilot died. What is needed is a pilot that kills and survives -- hunt turrets
but keep the evade and retire behaviour, or a keep-out between the two extremes.
That is tuning, not discovery.
Two further runs sampled the counts from the instant flight is detected. Both
give 116 roster records in the very first sample, flat thereafter, with 14 unit
definitions throughout. That is not a load race: a race would climb toward 116
from below, and it never does.
The leading explanation was arithmetic rather than behavioural -- census_probe
counts raw aligned vtable hits while wave5_probe counted distinct primary_va
values, which are different quantities if an offset can alias to a VA another
offset also claims. Measuring both in the same run refutes it: 116 raw hits and
116 distinct VAs in every sample.
So the outlier stands unexplained. Four runs now read 116/300, 116/300, 116/296
and one 42/170, with save drift, freezing, load race and VA aliasing each
individually refuted. Recorded rather than dropped, because a one-in-four
anomaly in the measurement apparatus is what later turns into a wrong
conclusion. Practical rule adopted: discard a run that disagrees with 116 rather
than interpreting it, and reproduce any finding in at least two runs.
Useful new fact: craft declines steadily and monotonically in both runs, 300 to
288 and 296 to 280, roughly 16-20 losses over 168 s under the hunting pilot.
Whether the player or NPC crossfire is responsible is not determined here, but
destruction is visible in this signal, which is half of what the kill-versus-
no-kill experiment needs.
Still not observed in any run: an arrival.
