Fix an inescapable debt trap the playtest logs exposed

A 182-turn session spent 30% of its turns below zero, went negative on turn 18
and never recovered, and chose the same hard-times option — "take every shift
going" — thirty-seven times.

The cause was a tuning change made without re-deriving what it meant. Rent went
from 385 to 455 while chasing a different problem, which took the mailroom
baseline from the designed -$3/day to -$13/day. Worse, at the debt that run
accumulated the weekly service charge came to $180 against an escape option
worth $120. The hole was inescapable by arithmetic, whatever the player did.

Nothing caught it. Every archetype either optimised money or got promoted out of
the problem before it bit, and the dominance test passed because rent_bounced
was only 17% of turns.

Fixes: mailroom wages 980 -> 1120, restoring the -$3/day baseline; the escape
option 120 -> 220, so it is worth more than a week's rent; rent_bounced from
weight 5000 with no cooldown to 900 on a cooldown of 3, because being broke
should colour a run rather than replace it; debt_collector from weight 25 to 45,
since at 25 it appeared six times in 262 turns and debt became a ratchet.

Three guards so this class of bug cannot recur quietly.

The baseline is now asserted directly: a test sums the pack's own upkeep over
twenty fortnights and requires the mailroom to net between -90 and +10, and
Dispatch to be better but not so much better that money stops mattering. That
would have failed the moment rent changed. Outcome tests over simulated play are
a slow and noisy way to detect a number that is simply wrong.

A `lifer` archetype refuses any option that would change stage — generically, by
looking for an effect on `stage` — and otherwise plays for people. It reproduces
the session that found this; no other archetype can.

And no archetype may spend more than a quarter of a run below zero. Hard times
is a state a player passes through; living in it is the failure mode.

Also fixed: the analyser reported "every ~-5 turns". One export can hold several
playthroughs and turn numbers restart with each, so spans are now accumulated
per run and pooled rather than measured across the seam between two.

121 tests. Reasoning in docs/DECISIONS.md §29-30.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VMSFHyVPitUoosW5wyEADj

test/content.test.js

@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ import { corporateLadder as pack } from '../content/corporateladder/index.js';
 import { validatePack } from '../src/engine/validate.js';
 import { startGame, currentTurn, takeTurn } from '../src/engine/game.js';
 import { createRng } from '../src/engine/rng.js';
-import { play, sweep, median } from './fixtures/strategies.js';
+import { play, sweep, median, strategies } from './fixtures/strategies.js';
 import { summarize } from '../src/ui/summary.js';
 
 /** Play `turns` turns with independently-seeded random choices. */
@@ -259,3 +259,61 @@ test('the retrospective reports how repetitive the run was', () => {
   assert.deepEqual(summary.stagesVisited, ['mailroom', 'dispatch'],
     'the retrospective knows the career moved');
 });
+
+test('the mailroom baseline is a drift, not a bleed', () => {
+  // The guard that was missing. Rent was once raised from 385 to 455 without
+  // re-deriving this, which quietly took the baseline from -$3/day to -$13/day
+  // and trapped a real playtester below zero for 30% of a 182-turn session.
+  // Nothing caught it, because every archetype either optimised money or got
+  // promoted out of the problem.
+  // Averaged over many fortnights rather than measured on the first one: the
+  // opening turns sit before rent's offset, so a single early window sees one
+  // rent cheque where the steady state has two.
+  const FORTNIGHTS = 20;
+  const perFortnight = (stage) => {
+    let total = 0;
+    for (let turn = 1; turn <= 14 * FORTNIGHTS; turn++) {
+      for (const entry of pack.upkeep) {
+        const every = entry.every ?? 1;
+        const elapsed = turn - 1 - (entry.offset ?? 0);
+        if (elapsed < 0 || elapsed % every !== 0) continue;
+        // Baseline means no debt: only stage-gated entries count.
+        const gate = entry.requires ?? [];
+        if (gate.some((c) => c.path === 'debt')) continue;
+        if (gate.some((c) => c.path === 'stage' && c.value !== stage)) continue;
+        total += entry.effects
+          .filter((e) => e.path === 'money' && e.op === 'add')
+          .reduce((sum, e) => sum + e.value, 0);
+      }
+    }
+    return Math.round(total / FORTNIGHTS);
+  };
+
+  const mailroom = perFortnight('mailroom');
+  assert.ok(mailroom > -90 && mailroom < 10,
+    `the mailroom fortnight nets ${mailroom}; it should be a small drift downward`);
+
+  const dispatch = perFortnight('dispatch');
+  assert.ok(dispatch > mailroom, 'the promotion should be worth having');
+  assert.ok(dispatch < 250, `Dispatch nets ${dispatch} a fortnight; money stops mattering above that`);
+});
+
+test('nobody spends the run stuck below zero', () => {
+  // Hard times is a state a player passes through, not one they live in. The
+  // failure this guards against is a debt whose weekly service charge exceeds
+  // anything the escape options can pay — inescapable by arithmetic, which is
+  // exactly what a real session hit.
+  for (const strategy of Object.keys(strategies)) {
+    const shares = [];
+    for (let seed = 0; seed < 8; seed++) {
+      let red = 0;
+      let turns = 0;
+      play(pack, { strategy, seed, turns: 150,
+        visit: ({ state }) => { turns++; if (state.money < 0) red++; } });
+      shares.push(red / turns);
+    }
+    const worst = Math.max(...shares);
+    assert.ok(worst < 0.25,
+      `${strategy} spent ${(worst * 100).toFixed(0)}% of a run below zero`);
+  }
+});