v0.8.0.3 — Skip on the left, a caption that says who, and a clock that stops

stretching

Three things from playing v0.8.0.2, all about the row rather than the mechanism.

Skip was on the far right and a player's eye is on the countdown. Moved to the
left, in front of the count.

The caption said what but never who. Measured over 40 turns of a real 3-seat game,
half the waiting is automatic phases — 21.0s of phases against 21.7s of other
players — and a phase narrates as "Mainline", which is accurate and no answer at
all to "who am I waiting on". A phase introduces itself now: "The Division:
Mainline phase". A player's move already carries its name from record(), so it is
left alone. The row was also hiding one step early, because it showed only while
behind > 0 — which goes false exactly when the last step of a burst goes up, so the
step most likely to be read lost its caption.

And the speed control was stretching the clock along with the players. It was not
his own move being replayed — own moves have cost nothing since v0.8.0.1 — it was
the phases behind it, which put 105 seconds of clock-ticking into a 5x game. pace
now scales a player's move and leaves a phase at its tabled beat, which is what the
control has always claimed to do. Off still means off for both.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01X6cF1iYvJ1kNmzYBzu4QX6

src/sim/pacing.ts

@@ -182,10 +182,25 @@ export function dwellFor(cause: StepCause, pace = 1): number {
  * have to import `DisplayStep` back from the module that imports `StepCause` from it.
  */
 export function dwellForStep(
-  step: { cause: StepCause; lines: readonly unknown[]; frame: { table: object } },
+  step: { cause: StepCause; player: number | null; lines: readonly unknown[]; frame: { table: object } },
   pace = 1,
 ): number {
-  if (step.lines.length > 0) return dwellFor(step.cause, pace);
+  // Off means off, for the clock as much as for anybody's move.
+  if (pace <= 0) return 0;
+  /**
+   * THE SPEED CONTROL IS ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE, NOT ABOUT THE CLOCK.
+   *
+   * A phase keeps its tabled beat at every speed. Measured over 40 turns of a real 3-seat game, the
+   * waiting split almost evenly — 21.0s of other players against 21.0s of phases turning over — so
+   * scaling both put 105 seconds of clock-ticking into a 5× game, all of it after the player's own
+   * move and none of it anything to watch. Jesse, from that game: *"after my turn, when I actually
+   * execute my turn, I'm still subject to that same delay before it moves on. That makes no sense."*
+   *
+   * The phase still gets its beat (TODO #18) — it just does not get longer because somebody wanted
+   * to watch a bot shunt cars.
+   */
+  const speed = step.player === null ? 1 : pace;
+  if (step.lines.length > 0) return dwellFor(step.cause, speed);
   /**
    * A SILENT STEP EARNS A BEAT ONLY WHEN THE CLOCK TURNED OVER — which is TODO #18 exactly: "give
    * every phase a visible beat", for New Train, the Mainline and the shift change.
@@ -194,12 +209,11 @@ export function dwellForStep(
    * silently killed #18: a phase can move trains without saying anything, and those steps were being
    * flashed past. "Anything that changed the board" is wrong the other way: `submit()` steps
    * `advance()` about 4.6 times per intent and most of those merely hand the turn on, so beating on
-   * all of them would cost a quarter of an hour a game. The phase turning over is the thing a player
-   * is being shown, and there are about 180 of those in a full game.
+   * all of them would cost a quarter of an hour a game.
    */
   const table = step.frame.table as Record<string, unknown>;
   const turned = 'phase' in table || 'phaseKey' in table || 'stage' in table || 'day' in table;
-  return turned ? dwellFor(step.cause, pace) : 0;
+  return turned ? dwellFor(step.cause, speed) : 0;
 }
 
 /**