Three Phase 2 diagnostic artifacts. No tuning knob has moved on
production code yet — these tests calibrate the harness and surface
the real first lever for next session.
1) Cadence calibration sweep
TestExpeditionBalance_Phase2_CadenceCalibration sweeps
HarvestRollsPerDay ∈ {1,2,3,4} across the full Phase 1 matrix and
logs per-cell + per-tier completion. Required a new
HarvestRollsPerDay field on expeditionBalanceProfile so cells can
override the package-default constant. Finding: cadence is NOT the
dominant lever — at rolls=1 the T1 cell only reaches 2%, with
bimodal hp_left (100% survivors / 0% deaths). Killed the cadence
hypothesis from Phase 1's commit message.
2) Gear-tier centerline fix
phase1TierCenterline bumped for T3/T4/T5 (8→9, 11→13, 15→17). The
shared gearTier ladder (5/9/13/17 boundaries) was placing T3/T4/T5
centerlines one gear bracket *below* the zone's tier, so those
cells fought with under-spec'd weapons/armor. New centerlines are
the lowest level in each tier's design-doc range where gearTier ==
tier. All centerlines still inside their design-doc ranges. Effect
in the sweep at rolls=1: underforge T3 1.0% → 10.5% comp, underdark
T4 flipped from pure combat-death to 14% starve (i.e. fighter now
survives combat, runs out of food). Real bug, but small — the
structural lethality problem remains.
3) Lethality probe + traceFight hook
TestExpeditionBalance_Phase2_LethalityProbe runs 5 trials at the
cleanest cell (T1 goblin_warrens L3 fighter, rolls=1) with a new
optional traceFight hook on expeditionHarness that logs
monster/AC/atk/HP-pre/HP-post/outcome per fight. Hook is nil in
production runs, zero cost when unused. Finding: at T1, the
InterruptElite branch keeps drawing Hobgoblin Warchief (AC 18,
atk +5) from goblin_warrens' elite roster, and an L3 fighter has
~coin-flip odds against a CR-6-ish elite. One bad draw = dead;
that's the bimodal hp_left fingerprint from the sweep. Non-elite
draws (Worg, AC 13) play out as normal multi-round combats and
are winnable.
Next-session lever choices, in order of suspected impact:
- Roster gate: Hobgoblin Warchief out of (or weighted down in)
the T1 elite pool — it's tier-disproportionate for goblin_warrens.
- InterruptElite threshold: rarer elite-bracket draws at low threat
so a single d20 swing doesn't equal expedition end.
- Tier-floor cap on already-over-tier bestiary entries.
Plan doc: gogobee_expedition_difficulty.md §Phase 2.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
New file internal/plugin/expedition_balance.go — sibling to
dnd_class_balance.go, no dnd_ prefix per feedback_avoid_dnd_naming.
Plan doc: gogobee_expedition_difficulty.md.
Critical de-risk settled: clock-injection seam. The harness does not
run the wall-clock tickers (expeditionBriefingTicker @ 06:00,
expeditionRecapTicker @ 21:00, expedition_ambient @ 3h) and does not
inject a virtual time.Now. Instead, advanceExpeditionOneDay
reimplements the morning→day→night pipeline by calling the math-pure
helpers directly: applyDailyBurn, dailyThreatDrift,
resolveCombatInterrupt, resolveWanderingCheck, simulateCombatWithRNG.
No DB, no goroutines, no clock.
Phase 0 trade-offs (documented in the file header):
- Boss completion deferred; survive-N-days is the proxy.
- Per-region zones, loot/XP, pardon/Sovereign, babysit, temporal
stack effects all skipped — Phase 1+ scope.
- Encounter cadence (harnessHarvestRollsPerDay=4) is a placeholder
to be calibrated against live traces in Phase 1.
Tests:
- TestExpeditionBalance_Phase0_Spike — T2 Crypt Valdris × L5 Fighter,
100 trials, asserts only degenerate sentinels (no 0%/100%, days>0,
days<=cap). Runs in <3s.
- TestExpeditionBalance_Phase0_SeedSpread — confirms the RNG seam is
actually wired by showing two distinct seeds produce different
trials. Full byte-for-byte reproducibility under same seed is not
asserted at Phase 0; surpriseRoundNick + pickWanderingMonster
draw from package-global rand (same caveat as class balance).
Spike numbers (calibration baseline, NOT a target): 1% completion,
99% deaths, median 4 days, ~6 encounters. The headline death rate is
loud but expected — Phase 1's full matrix will diagnose whether it's
HP-carryover punishment, bestiary-vs-abstract-monster delta, or kit
ladder mismatch. Phase 2 is where the centerline gets tuned.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
