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>
