Add promotion to Dispatch, and measure how repetitive a run is
The mailroom is no longer the whole game. Around turn 50, a player who has
built standing and either Marlene's goodwill or the nerve to ask gets offered
the Dispatch post — and can take it, take it and put Trevor up for the mailroom,
or turn it down, which is a real strategy rather than a mistake and comes back
after a cooldown.
Dispatch is eleven events of its own. The money problem is largely solved up
there and replaced by other people's days depending on yours, including the
mailroom's — which you used to be. Trevor branches on whether you recommended
him: he either runs the mailroom and has opinions about how it used to be run,
or he stays put and starts addressing you by your full title, kindly, in front
of people.
None of this is a promotion mechanic in the engine. It is
`{ path: 'stage', op: 'set', value: 'dispatch' }` on an option, since `stage`
was already how events are filtered. The reserved-write rule now allows it
narrowly — `set` only, and only to a stage that has events, both checked by the
validator, so a typo cannot strand the player in an empty pool. Wages differ by
rank through two upkeep entries gated on `stage`. The hard-times events dropped
their stage entirely: rent is due wherever you work.
The second half of this is the thing the last playtest asked for. A 183-turn
session, and no way to see how much of it was new ground.
`npm run analyze <exported-log.json>` now reports turns against distinct
situations, how often each recurred, which options were most used, which locked
gates players kept meeting, and anything they typed. The retrospective shows the
player-facing version.
It found a regression in this very change on its first run. Dispatch started
with eight events against the mailroom's nineteen, so its two floor events were
46% of every promoted run — one every three turns. Promotion was moving the
player into *thinner* content. Three more events and a weight rebalance took the
top two to 24.5%, and the heaviest recurrence from every ~3 turns to every ~5.
A test now holds that line.
Also corrected: the coverage test was asking whether an archetype ever *took* an
option, which is a property of the bot, not the pack. It had flagged
`rent_bounced.ask_trevor` as dead content when it had been offered, unlocked,
419 times across a sweep and simply never chosen. Options are now checked on
availability; events are still checked on firing.
114 tests. Reasoning in docs/DECISIONS.md §22-24.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VMSFHyVPitUoosW5wyEADj
This commit is contained in:
co-authored by
Claude Opus 5
parent
e482f07157
commit
4cab9fc41e
@@ -24,11 +24,13 @@ currently playable only from a test harness.
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| Event selection, option gating | done |
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| Turn loop, per-turn upkeep | done |
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| Content validator + reachability tests | done |
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| Corporate Ladder pack — 17 events, 2 characters | done |
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| Corporate Ladder pack — 31 events, two tiers | done |
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| Turn screen, retrospective, feedback widget | done |
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| Local-storage save, file export/import | done |
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| Single-file build | done |
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| Calendar, scheduled wages and rent | done |
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| Promotion from the mailroom to Dispatch | done |
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| Repetition analytics (`npm run analyze`) | done |
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| Played in a real browser | done — first playtest 2026-09-09 |
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The first playtest confirmed the interface, saves and the exported log all work
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@@ -61,11 +63,19 @@ That is one self-contained file with the stylesheet and every module inlined.
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It plays by double-clicking it — no server, no network, nothing installed.
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```sh
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npm test # 109 tests: engine, content, UI wiring, and the build
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npm test # 114 tests: engine, content, UI wiring, and the build
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```
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To see what a playtest actually did — turns against distinct situations, how
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often each recurred, which locked gates players kept meeting, and anything they
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typed into the feedback box:
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```sh
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npm run analyze -- theladder-feedback-2026-09-10-11-04-22.json
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```
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There are no runtime dependencies and no build step for development. Node is
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used only to run the tests and the single-file build.
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used only to run the tests, the single-file build, and the log analyser.
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## Layout
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