The M1 close-out sweep (new, skip-gated: n=400/cell through the REAL delivery
path, not SimulateCombat) says three wards buy roughly +40pp of survival — a
level 12 fighter meeting a boss at 70% HP goes from 48% to 90%. At a flat €25
that let three friends halve a €1,200 boss contract for €75, which makes the
tier the entire economy rests on feel like money thrown away.
A ward now costs max(€25, 10% of the contract): €25 at grunt and mob, €35 at
elite, €120 at a boss — so covering someone against a boss costs the town €360.
Still a bargain against €1,200, but it has to be a real rally rather than
pocket change. It reads the contract's current basis, so an escalation raises
the price of saving its target too: the counterplay tracks the threat.
The sweep also shows the M0 fee table was priced on a fight we don't deliver.
Its control arm (full HP) diverges from M0 in both directions — up where an
engine timeout now counts as survival, down where the turn engine loops a boss's
full multiattack profile and SimulateCombat doesn't. And the arm M0 could not
see at all, a wounded mid-run target, is the one that matters: boss tier at 70%
HP collapses everywhere. Fees stand; the tiers still do what they were priced to
do. The real-path table is now the reference.
