The Phase 3-B sweep wrung out the global lever surface and named four
zones that read ~0% completion under every (elite-threshold, drift,
nick-floor, supply-burn) combo: crypt_valdris T1, forest_shadows T2,
manor_blackspire T3, abyss_portal T5. Each has a healthy sibling at
the same tier (goblin_warrens 44%, sunken_temple 13.5%, underforge
2.5%, dragons_lair 57.5%) so the gap is per-zone, not tier-wide.
Adds a structured per-fight trace hook (traceFightStruct + the
harnessFightTrace struct that mirrors the existing string trace) so
diagnostics can aggregate without parsing the formatted log line.
Mirror-format with traceFight; if a field is added, update both
paths.
TestExpeditionBalance_Phase4A_OutlierDiagnostic walks the four
outlier-vs-sibling pairs at 200 trials each on the Phase 3-A/3-B best
cell (e=23 d=1 burn=50) and reports per-monster appearances /
win-rate / avg HP loss / kill attribution + day-of-end histogram +
elite-vs-standard fight mix.
Findings:
- crypt_valdris: dual-killer elite pool (Wight 99 kills, Flameskull
68). Phase 2c left this zone untouched ("already dual-elite") but
both elites are over-tier for T1.
- forest_shadows: standard pool too lethal — Displacer Beast (53
kills, 38% win standard) + Bandit Captain (48 kills, 57% win).
- manor_blackspire: Wraith on the standard slot is dragging the
floor (85 kills, 45hp loss per win). Vampire Spawn + Revenant
elite pair is also rough.
- abyss_portal: Nalfeshnee mis-classified standard (86 kills, 2.8%
win at L17). Vrock at 79% win is borderline.
Phase 4-B applies per-zone roster tweaks (IsElite re-flag, drop a
deadly entry, soften a SpawnWeight) — no monster stat-block changes.
T3 may need a follow-up tier-wide pass since the sibling underforge
also sits at 2.5%; out of scope here.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Wired SurpriseNickFloorOverride and SupplyBurnRatePctOverride into the
harness day-loop via two new parameterized helpers (surpriseRoundNickF,
applyDailyBurnP). Live callers go through the existing constants;
sweep test sits on top of the Phase 3-A best cell (e=23, d=1).
TestExpeditionBalance_Phase3B_NickSupplySweep walks 3×3 (floor ∈ {0, 1,
tier=live}) × (burn% ∈ {50, 75, 100=live}) × 10 zones × 200 trials.
Strong partial T5 positive; nick-floor lever inert.
- Supply burn is the T5 unlock: dragons_lair 0% → ~55% at burn=50.
Fighter survives elites; burn=75 isn't enough margin.
- T4 peaks at burn=75 (~12% underdark/feywild); burn=50 dips T4
slightly (more elites survived into).
- Nick-floor inert across tiers (≤3pp swing); wounded-clamp already
eats the chip-damage budget. Recommend dropping from live-tuning
candidates.
- T2-T3 wall persists: forest_shadows, manor_blackspire,
abyss_portal stuck at ~0% across every combo — outliers, not
addressable by global levers.
Global levers wrung out. Plan-doc Phase 3-B section + memory pointers
updated; next is Phase 4 (per-zone outlier pass). -short shows the
same two pre-existing failures (TestAdv2Scenario_ZoneRunGoblinWarrens,
TestMageSpellbookLineInRender).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Wired two harness lever overrides — EliteInterruptThresholdOverride
(live=19) and ThreatDriftBaseOverride (live=3) — into the day-loop in
expedition_balance.go. Live runHarvestInterrupt / dailyThreatDrift are
untouched; the harness re-buckets Standard↔Elite after the live call.
TestExpeditionBalance_Phase3_GlobalLeverSweep walks a 3×3 grid
(elite ∈ {17,19,23} × drift ∈ {1,3,5}) over the Phase 1 matrix at
200 trials/cell. -short skips.
Elite-bracket threshold is the dominant lever for T1–T3. At
e=23/d=1: T1 mean 24.0% (goblin_warrens 40.5%), T2 7.2%
(sunken_temple 14.5%), T3 1.8%. Still well below target bands
(T1 70-90%, T2 62-82%) — the lever moves the needle in the right
direction but cannot land any tier on-band alone.
T4/T5 fingerprint changed but didn't lift. At e=23 dragons_lair
death drops 60% → 24% but starvation climbs to 75% — the fighter
now survives elites long enough to run out of supplies. T4 cells
shift the same way. Indicates a second lever is needed for the
higher tiers (standard-fight survivability or supply margin), to
be swept in Phase 3-B.
Plan doc updated. Renumbered the trailing "per-zone outlier pass"
to Phase 4 and "MAD / second-order" to Phase 5 so the test names
align with phase numbers going forward.
-short suite: same 2 pre-existing failures
(TestAdv2Scenario_ZoneRunGoblinWarrens, TestMageSpellbookLineInRender).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Sweep the two knobs surfaced by Phases 2a/2b — retreatThreatBump
and clampSurpriseNick's wounded-entrant divisor — across a full
3×4 grid (bump ∈ {2, 5, 10} × divisor ∈ {3, 5, 8, 12}) at 200
trials/cell across every matrix zone.
Wiring is harness-only: clampSurpriseNick keeps its live shape and
delegates to a new clampSurpriseNickD(divisor) variant; the harness
profile gains RetreatThreatBumpOverride/SurpriseNickDivisorOverride
fields threaded onto expeditionHarness; resolvedRetreatBump and
resolvedNickDivisor pick override-or-live. Zero on either field
falls back to the shipped value so live runHarvestInterrupt is
untouched.
Sweep test: TestExpeditionBalance_Phase2_LeverSweep, -short skipped,
mirrors Phase2_CadenceCalibration's per-tier digest shape.
Outcome: across 24,000 trial-cells (12 lever combos × 10 zones
× 200 trials), every cell reports 0.0% completion / ~100% death.
The knobs are inert on the headline metric — even (b=2, d=12)
can't lift any tier off the floor. Confirms the post-2b
tier-lethality trace: remaining deaths are fresh-entry elite
one-shots (Warchief, Hag, Roper, Young Red Dragon), not chained-
interrupt cascades. Justifies Phase 2c (roster dilution) rather
than further tuning of these two levers.
Plan doc updated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Phase 2 diagnostics named the InterruptElite bracket as the likely
first lever; tier-walking the lethality probe at the matrix cadence
told a different story. Phase 1's uniform-0% baseline isn't an
elite-bracket calibration issue at all — every tier reads 0% because
the engine's TimedOut contract was being ignored by every expedition
caller.
combat_engine.go:451 says: "Timeout = retreat, not lethal blow.
Caller treats a timeout loss as 'fight ended, no character death'".
But runHarvestInterrupt / tryPatrolEncounter / resolveCombatRoom all
called abandonZoneRun + retireAllRegionRuns on any !PlayerWon —
ending the expedition outright on a retreat. The retreat flavor line
("X outlasts you. You retreat from the expedition, wounded but alive")
was already in the code, just stapled to an actual run-abort.
Splits the policy by caller:
• runHarvestInterrupt — autopilot daytime interrupt. TimedOut →
retreat: threat +5, HP carries over, run continues, harvest slot
forfeit (no kill / loot). HP<=0 still ends the run + marks dead.
• tryPatrolEncounter — !advance pre-room patrol roll. Same
retreat policy: patrols don't gate progress, so retreating from
one and walking into the next room is the right shape.
• resolveCombatRoom — !advance room/elite combat. Unchanged —
this path gates room progression; a retreat has nowhere to go, so
any loss still ends the run. (Manual zone runs were always
intended to end here.)
Harness mirrored: daytime interrupt timeout → carry HP + threat bump
+ continue day; night-encounter loss → terminate (mirrors
resolveCombatRoom, since live night encounters defer to !advance).
retreatThreatBump = 5 is the per-retreat threat penalty. Low enough
not to compound brutally with chained retreats, high enough that 3–4
retreats noticeably walks the threat clock toward Stirring. Easy to
dial in Phase 3 if zones go off-band.
Phase 1 matrix after the change still reads 0% completion at every
cell — but the encounter counts and survival shape are dramatically
different (T4 underdark 3.6→7.5 encs; T3 underforge trial saw 18
encounters across 10 days where the pre-change run died on day 2/3).
Adds TestExpeditionBalance_Phase2_TierLethality, a tier-walking
companion to the T1/rolls=1 probe, that traces every fight at the
matrix cadence across one zone per tier — the actual Phase 2b lever
work picks from this data, not the old T1-only probe.
The remaining 0% is now legibly driven by tier-disproportionate elite
rosters (Hobgoblin Warchief at T1, Green Hag at T2, Roper/Helmed
Horror higher up) that one-shot or two-shot tier-appropriate
fighters. Phase 2b's lever shortlist:
1. Roster gate / SpawnWeight tuning to dilute over-tier elites.
2. Surprise-nick floor reduction on chained interrupts (carryover
HP + nick is the death-spiral fingerprint at T1 specifically).
3. Per-day cadence reduction if 1+2 don't carry T1 to band.
Pre-existing test failures (TestAdv2Scenario_ZoneRunGoblinWarrens,
TestMageSpellbookLineInRender) verified to fail identically on HEAD;
no new test regressions.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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 permanent test TestExpeditionBalance_Phase1_FullMatrix — every
registered zone × its tier-centerline level, 200 trials/cell, Fighter
fixed (class parity is the class-balance pass's job).
Centerlines per plan doc §Method (median of design-doc level range):
T1=L3, T2=L5, T3=L8, T4=L11, T5=L15.
Gates split: wiring pathologies (zero-day loop, days > cap) are fatal;
"0% at T1 / 100% at T5" land as WARN log lines, not t.Errorf. Phase 1's
deliverable is a logged baseline, not a tuning gate — Phase 2 promotes
those to band assertions once the global levers move.
Baseline numbers (seed 0xE0FFEE1, 200 trials, current Phase 0 harness):
all 10 cells: 0.0% completion, 100% death, median day 2,
avg encounters 2.0-3.6, threat at end 5-7.
The uniform 0% says the placeholder harnessHarvestRollsPerDay=4 plus
the tier-floored AC/atk is overwhelming the fighter on day 1 across
all tiers, well before threat drift matters. Per-tier spread is 0.0pp
because every zone is floored — Phase 2 has plenty of headroom and a
clear first lever (encounter cadence).
Plan doc: gogobee_expedition_difficulty.md §Phase 1.
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>
