The generated card reference now carries the half TODO #15a said was the
point of generating it: every Enhancement's `live` / `dormantSolo` /
`unbuilt` status — whether its printed effect actually resolves yet — and
the opponent-directed Action and Space-use cards, none of which is dealt
in any deck. A transcription cannot carry either fact.
Card counts are removed throughout, as ruled: they move with play balance
so a document printing them is stale on the next retune. Where a count
matters it is a yes/no "is this dealt at all", which is a fact about the
design rather than the current tuning. #88 closes with it — it asked
whether `card-reference.md`'s industry rows were stale, deliberately
without rewriting them since Laborer counts are a balance decision. They
are; nothing in the engine changed; that file is simply no longer where
anyone looks. The balance question it guarded is #70.
Save compatibility becomes a general rule in `README.md` § Design notes
rather than a fact restated per version: a save is a list of moves and
reopens by being re-played through the CURRENT rules, so any change that
makes a once-legal move illegal stops an older one there — a deck change
being the likeliest breaker. It fails safe every time. #40 generalised,
#32's version-specific note dropped, #52 carries the ruling that
versioned replays are a post-1.0 question.
#94 opened: a Red Flag set out at an Office's Limits holds the next train
from that side and is drawn nowhere. `DivisionView`'s office node has no
`redFlag` field and `board-svg.ts` never mentions one, so after the single
log line announcing it there is nothing on screen. Same class as Gitea#21
and #22, and already on the common board's step 1 list.
No engine change. 897 tests pass, unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01E3Qk7uresKCHksdZajXCLg
"If played, asked FLAG EAST or FLAG WEST. That stops all trains from entering your
limits from that direction (i.e. Flag East holds westbound trains). You can do this
if you see a problem or wish to complete switching."
REPLACES the old rule outright, per Jesse's call. Red Flags used to be played on a
stopped train out on the Mainline and protected it from a rear-ender: offered 4,212
times and played 4 across 600 games, a mechanic nobody used, and ABS Signals already
does that job better. The flag is now planted on one side of your own district and
holds the next train arriving from that side.
SPENT ON THE TRAIN IT STOPS. One card, one train, so there is no lifting action to
build, nothing to forget, and a flag cannot quietly strangle the Division. The held
train loses one Mainline Phase and comes in on the next — it buys a Stage to clear
the lead, which is what "wish to complete switching" asks for.
PLAYABLE OUT OF PHASE, which is the other half of the issue: when an arrival would
certainly collide and the district's owner holds the card, the phase breaks in and
asks. Offered ONLY to somebody holding one — a prompt with a single button is not a
choice, and it would leak that a collision is coming. The danger is read from §8.3's
own two triggers rather than restated, so the prompt cannot offer a flag against a
collision that will not happen.
Built on the decision union Gitea#5 introduced: this adds a `redFlag` case and
nothing else structural.
THE BOT STILL NEVER PLAYS IT, AND I MEASURED RATHER THAN ASSUMED. It now takes the
out-of-phase prompt unconditionally — the engine has already established the danger,
so there is nothing left to judge — and over 200 solitaire games `redFlagsSet` fires
ZERO times. The prompt needs an arrival that would collide (0.14 per game, about one
game in seven) to coincide with holding the card from a three-card hand out of 121.
So the anomaly exemption in sim.test.ts stays, but its comment no longer claims the
bot is unwilling: it is measuring deck luck. What is left to fix is the half of the
card a human would use, planting a flag on purpose to buy switching time, and TODO.md
now says that instead of the old finding.
A BUG WORTH RECORDING, because the next interruption will meet it too: the flag was
originally taken down in a `reduce` case, which never fires for an event advance.ts
emits — the phase driver mutates state and then describes it. The flag stayed up and
held every train that came. test/events.test.ts's unreduced-event registry is what
makes that class of mistake visible, and `redFlagSpent` is on it deliberately now,
with the reasoning.
858 tests pass.
Closes#19
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EAgJSmeV8zrMh55Mj85ESb
Two issues off the tracker, and they are halves of one thing: the end of a game.
Neither ships on the 0.4.9 line — Jesse's call, that line may be complete and
these are not fixes people mid-playtest need.
EXTENDED PLAY (#11). The official result is settled at the original game length
and never changes: in a five-Day game extended to eight, the winner is whoever
led at the end of Day 5. Extending grants exactly one Day and the question is put
again at the end of it — solitaire the player decides alone, multiplayer it is
unanimous and one refusal ends it there. Only days-based endings offer it; a §3.4
collision breach is final, during an extended Day exactly as during the scheduled
game.
It could not be a client-side change. `check` refused every intent once `status`
left `active`; the server never loads a `finished` game back into memory; and a
save is `{ seed, config, history }` replayed through the engine, so a "continue"
the history does not record did not happen. Hence a fourth status,
`awaitingExtension`, and a `game.extend` intent. `config.days` never moves —
`extraDays` counts the borrowed Days and `official` freezes the outcome, the
standings and the statistics at the first ending.
THE RESULTS SCREEN (#16). `GAME OVER — revenueFloor` was `outcome.reason`, an
internal enum interpolated into the page at the one moment the game has the
player's whole attention. Every reason now has a sentence with the game's own
numbers in it. Around it: the result and winner, standings, the rules the game
was dealt under, a per-player breakdown, and the railroad — trains through the
Division and how many worked en route, loads made up and broken, passengers, cars
switched, trains destroyed. It shares the Day-end dialog's blocks rather than
reimplementing them, and stays reopenable so continuing does not cost you the
results.
Statistics are folded, not recorded: `state.tally` counts what the event stream
says happened, hooked at `applyIntent` and `advance` because `reduce` never sees
the phase driver's events — and those are the interesting ones. Nothing in the
rules reads it, and it rides the Frame, so multiplayer gets the same numbers as
solitaire from one implementation.
THREE BUGS FOUND IN TESTING, all of which would have shipped:
- a saved game containing a vote could not be resumed (NO_ACTOR). A history is
a flat Intent[] with no seat recorded; the replay derives who acted from the
turn order, which cannot work for an intent every seat may send in any order.
`game.extend` carries its voter, checked against the authenticated seat.
- an all-bot game hung on the question for ever. `driveBots` loops on
`currentActor`, null the moment the game stops, so it cannot cast a vote, and
the bot-vote driver returned early with no humans to follow.
- the balance harness became unbounded — `test/sim.test.ts` went from under a
second to never finishing. `randomBot` took another Day about half the time,
so every seeded game ran to playGame's 50,000-turn cap. Fixed in the driver,
not in a policy, so it holds for bots not yet written.
All three have regression tests. 832 tests pass, against 793 before this change.
NOT BUILT, and a correction. #16's own comment said `trainStoodStill` "is emitted
per Stage, so a run of them is exactly the sat-on-a-siding streak". It is not:
reading advance.ts, it fires once per game and only for a train whose profile
sets `stopEarnsPoint` — the X18 Circus — with `stopPointClaimed` preventing a
second. The streak was built, rendered "1 Stage at (0,0)", and was taken out
again. There is no per-Stage "this train did not move" signal in the engine, so
"longest an engine sat on a siding" needs one first; TODO.md #36 records what it
would take, and the Circus set-up is reported instead. Badges remain the second
pass #16 asks for (TODO.md #33), and because the statistics are derived rather
than recorded, that pass can add any of them retroactively to games already
played and saved.
Extended play has not yet been played at a real table (TODO.md #35): the
multiplayer vote has only been driven through `session.intent`, never through two
browsers.
Closes#11Closes#16
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EAgJSmeV8zrMh55Mj85ESb
The multiplayer set-up, the lobby, the start of a game, and four signals a remote client had never
been sent. Reasoning, the preset table and what was verified how: CHANGELOG.md.
- Co-op, Competitive, Cutthroat, Solitaire and Custom, on both screens, from one shared block —
they had drifted, and each was missing a question the other asked.
- A player reads the whole rule set before taking a seat, may leave a lobby or a running game, and
keeps a seat across a reload. The host may clear a chair. The browser remembers every game it is
in, not just the last one.
- The start of a game is drawn: a handoff beat, an announcement, the code and type in the header.
- Sound, the timetable flash, announcements and the just-drawn badge now reach a remote client;
justDrawn goes to the seat that drew it and nobody else.
- Played on StartOS, which found the rest: an Extra belongs to the player who played it, the board
never named the Superintendent, bot seats were reported as absent players, and rule section
numbers are out of every string a player reads.
Also carries the previous session's Heavy Grade documentation work — asked again, answer unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_016JczK5i33ZNSf2PtzZqdhS
Gameplay testing on 0.4.9d returned six reports. Five are fixed; the sixth could not be
reproduced and is written up in TODO.md with the two questions that would pin it down.
TWO TRAINS AT ONE PLATFORM ANSWERED TO ONE BUTTON. `porter.board` and `porter.detrain`
carried no tray, so there was one button per platform however many trains stood at it and
the reducer filled the first empty coach on the A/D tracks. `check` and the reducer were not
even asking the same question: `check` skipped a train whose card refuses passenger work and
the reducer did not. Both intents now carry an optional `trayId`, one function resolves the
train and the coach for check/execute/reduce alike, `legal.ts` offers one candidate per train,
and the label names it.
A LOAD COULD BE MADE AND BROKEN WITHOUT GOING ANYWHERE. A Freight House could unload the
boxcar it had just loaded; a platform could detrain the passengers it had just boarded. Full
Revenue at both ends for a movement that never happened. Jesse's rule: a load made anywhere in
an Office Area may not be broken anywhere in that Office Area, ever — it has to be carried to
another district. The load carries the seat that made it (`RollingStock.origin`), stripped by
`pooled` at every yard push. Measured at -0.60 +/- 0.10 Revenue a game (t = -6.1) over 400
paired deals: 78 worse, 3 better, 319 unchanged — free Revenue coming off the board, not a nerf.
THE GROCER'S WAREHOUSE SHIPPED AND THE REFINERY RECEIVED. Both were `flow: 'both'` on the
reading that "Freight House" was a collective term for exactly those two, and therefore what
§9.3 described. The engine has dealt a Freight House CARD since before v0.4.9, so §9.3 names
it and the argument goes. The card set agrees: all three Refinery modifiers grant +1 outbound.
Refinery outbound-only, Grocer's inbound-only, Freight House the one two-way industry — which
leaves exactly the one same-district pairing the rule above refuses.
NOT REPRODUCED: cars left behind when backing up over them. Five layouts tried, including cars
spotted at an industry; every one couples the lot. Three are pinned in `apply.test.ts`. One way
to create such cars was closed anyway — `flyingSwitch` wrote its cut past `carsOn`.
Both published replays that had gone dead were re-recorded; a rules change retires a save, and
`harness.test.ts` is what catches it.
The same change ships as v0.4.9e on the 0.4.9 line, branched from the v0.4.9d commit — the engine
files these fixes touch are identical across the two lines, so the patch applied cleanly both ways.
Also carries the two "Queued 2026-08-22, from playing on StartOS" TODO items that were staged
before this work started (Games in Progress readability, and getting back into a game after
losing a browser). They are notes, and items 9-12 below them are numbered against them.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011nbvwWMef8CuEP6t5cgkTv
Fifteen items from two playtest sessions. Three that read as drawing faults were engine
bugs: cars could be added to a train that was not being made up (50 offers in 8 games),
the make-up panel merged two trains and could couple a car to the wrong one, and an
Office upgrade silently deleted what a Modifier had added. A fourth was a sentinel
inside a coordinate's own value range — a Mainline placement travelling as row -1, which
is an ordinary district row.
Trains are now drawn the way they stand: west on the left, nose toward the way the engine
faces, on both the district card and the Division chip. Undo steps back through the game
by replaying the save without its last intent. The switching walk keeps its rejections, so
the board can say why a square is not offered. Laborers and Porters are on the card, and
the rule that a district only grows outwards is finally written down.
Versions start here: third digit for fixes, second for a feature set, 1.0 for a release.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GgtkX8JnvKa8y2tuJ8aQf4
