221 lines
16 KiB
Markdown
221 lines
16 KiB
Markdown
# To do
|
||
|
||
Things worth coming back to. Anything noted here should either get done or get an explicit decision
|
||
not to — the point is that nothing quietly evaporates.
|
||
|
||
Ordered within each section by how much it is currently costing us.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Next
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **Measure with error bars from now on.** Revenue has a standard deviation of ~9, so a
|
||
100-game run carries about ±1.0 of noise — every single-change revenue claim in the changelog
|
||
before the Interlocking work is inside that. Use paired per-seed comparison (the harness deals
|
||
the same seeds either way) and 400+ games before calling a heuristic change good or bad. The
|
||
first attempt at the Running Track straight was read as a 0.6 REGRESSION on 100 games and is
|
||
a 0.7 improvement on 400.
|
||
- [ ] **Confirm the Classification Yard rule against the source.** Cars now return to the Division
|
||
Yard at the Day boundary — an ASSUMPTION, not a recovered rule. Gap 2c says everything but
|
||
cabooses goes to Classification and never says how it empties. It is worth +2.32 revenue a
|
||
game, so if the real rule differs the balance numbers move with it.
|
||
- [x] ~~**Enhancements are placed but mostly do nothing.**~~ Measured: forbidding every Enhancement
|
||
except Interlocking is worth **-0.01 ± 0.41 (t = -0.04)** over 400 paired seeds. They neither
|
||
pay nor cost. Left alone. Unlocking the Running Track straight put
|
||
nine kinds on the board (telegraph 0.73, waterColumn 0.57 …), but only Interlocking has a
|
||
measured effect. The Telegraph/Telephone/Radio chain adds to the other train's number when
|
||
dispatching facing trains, which may be worth nothing in solitaire; Water Column removes a
|
||
Watertower; Facing Point Locks prevents Derail, which is multiplayer-only. Worth measuring
|
||
what each is actually worth before the bot spends actions on them.
|
||
- [ ] **The marginal Local Operations action is worth ~0, and that is the real ceiling.** Three
|
||
separate attempts to spend the 60 actions better — capping the draw, pairing the two halves of
|
||
a load, restricting Enhancements — each measured within noise of zero over 400 paired seeds.
|
||
76% of the time an outbound industry has neither a stocked green box nor a spotted car, and
|
||
only 5% of Stages have a single workable facility anywhere, yet redirecting actions at that
|
||
does nothing. Something upstream limits how much work exists to do at all; find out what
|
||
before spending more effort on the option mix.
|
||
- [ ] **Freight was stuck at ~2.7 loads a game and three fixes have not moved it.** Sidings,
|
||
facility placement, car selection and the discarded-load leak all raised revenue (3.2 → 6.5)
|
||
without raising `loadStarted` past 2.7. The chain is not leaking and the cars are arriving
|
||
correctly (57% of drops land on a facility that wants them, 0% on one that does not). The
|
||
binding constraint is now upstream of routing: 60 Local Operations actions a game, and a load
|
||
needs a stocked green box AND a spotted car AND a free Laborer to line up in the same Stage.
|
||
Measure how many Stages have all three before changing any heuristic — the answer may be that
|
||
the economy, not the bot, is what caps freight.
|
||
- [ ] **`stats.ts` undercounts freight.** `rev.freightUnload` is assigned `eventCounts['unloadBegan']`
|
||
— unloads *begun*, not revenue *earned* — and `grossFreight` uses `freightLoad` alone, so
|
||
`freightShare` omits unload revenue entirely. The comment justifying it ("an unload scores
|
||
through the same event as a load completion") is wrong: `apply.ts:947` emits a distinct
|
||
`freightUnload` reason. This is why freight was recorded at 13–18% of gross.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Open questions for Jesse
|
||
|
||
Blocked on a decision, not on work.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **Q13 — rear-end collisions on a Mainline card.** §10 says a Mainline collision is the
|
||
Superintendent's fault and removes both trains, and ABS Signals exists to prevent rear-enders —
|
||
but §8.3's trigger list does not include one, and **none is implemented**. Granting clearance is
|
||
currently free: verified, both trains survive, no penalty. Three candidates: collide on entry
|
||
(clearance becomes a gamble), collide on catching up (rewards judging the gap), or accept that
|
||
clearance is safe and ABS Signals is worth less than it reads. The buttons currently describe
|
||
only what the engine does, so nothing promises a consequence that cannot happen.
|
||
- [ ] **Poling.** The only card in the deck with no defined behaviour — the sheet records its effect
|
||
as "TBD in the source". A test asserts it stays TBD so nobody invents one.
|
||
- [ ] **Heavy Grade orientation at setup.** The card says "Player sets orientation", but `createGame`
|
||
is synchronous and has no decision point, so it is currently rolled from the seed. Should become
|
||
a real choice when setup gains an interactive phase.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Balance, provisional
|
||
|
||
Numbers chosen to fix a measured problem rather than taken from the design. Revisit once the victory
|
||
target is settled and freight carries its intended share.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **Office card density** (Depot 4→8, Station 2→4, Terminal 1→2). Chosen to remove a 25% chance
|
||
of an unwinnable opening deal. Blunt: it lifts the whole ladder and dilutes every other
|
||
category. The better answer may be fewer Terminals, a cheaper first upgrade, or more A/D
|
||
capacity at the Whistle Post itself.
|
||
- [ ] **Industry density** (9 → 27, Gap 12). Restored roughly the prototype ratio. The "freight is
|
||
only 13–18% of gross" figure that motivated this was partly a measurement bug (see the
|
||
`stats.ts` item) and partly the car-selection bug; freight now runs at 37%. Worth re-deciding
|
||
whether 27 is still the right number now that the industries are actually served.
|
||
- [ ] **Train density.** Left alone by decision, but noted: 22 train cards in 140 are drawn less often
|
||
than 22 in 115 were, and trains scheduled fell 2.9 → 2.1 as a side effect of the other density
|
||
changes.
|
||
- [ ] **The victory target itself** (20 over 5 Days). 5 wins in 100, up from 1, and the bot now does
|
||
exploit sidings — so that unclaimed gain has been claimed and the target is still missed by a
|
||
wide margin (mean 6.0 against 20). This is the next real balance question.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Not yet built
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **Real audio, as committed assets.** Everything the game plays is synthesised from oscillators
|
||
(`src/web/sound.ts`), which was the honest choice for a site that fetches nothing — but it is a
|
||
placeholder, not the finished sound. Sound therefore defaults to OFF.
|
||
- **"All aboard" most of all.** It currently goes through the browser's `speechSynthesis`, so
|
||
it is whatever system voice the player happens to have — a robot, not a conductor. A real
|
||
clip is the single biggest improvement available here.
|
||
- **Find and add the rest as assets**: steam whistle, grade-crossing bell, couplers clashing,
|
||
a train pulling away. Needs licences that permit redistribution (CC0 or similar), files small
|
||
enough to commit, and a check that the "fetches nothing external" test still passes — assets
|
||
must be served from the site's own folder, never hot-linked.
|
||
- Keep the synthesised versions as the fallback for anything not sourced, so a missing file is
|
||
a quieter game rather than a broken one.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **Regions as the primary model (the other half of §8.2).** The Division map now DRAWS regions,
|
||
deriving position from what the crossing already cost. The engine still models a crossing as a
|
||
countdown of Stages, so two things printed on the cards remain unimplemented:
|
||
- `entryPoints` is declared on every Mainline profile and read nowhere. The Heavy Grade card
|
||
has five named Start positions, and playing Brakeman is supposed to move your entry point
|
||
along the card. The engine gets the same ANSWER by taking a Stage off the crossing, which is
|
||
why the derived drawing looks right — but the mechanism is not the printed one, so a card
|
||
whose starts do not correspond to its speed would be drawn wrong.
|
||
- `implications.md` §6 calls this "the single largest mechanical gap" and asks for typed cards
|
||
with speeds and named entries, with crossing time DERIVED from the region walk.
|
||
Doing it properly changes movement, so it invalidates every balance figure — revenue 8.7, the
|
||
freight numbers, all of it — and needs a full paired re-measure over 400 seeds. Needs the
|
||
source Start-position art for the ten card types before it can begin.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **Player settings, saved.** The district's auto-focus is the first of these: it is DISPLAY
|
||
state, so in a multiplayer game two players may reasonably want it set differently and it must
|
||
never become part of game state. It currently resets on reload. Worth a settings object in
|
||
localStorage — auto-focus mode to start with, and whatever else earns a preference — kept
|
||
strictly separate from the save, which is the seed plus the intents and has to stay portable.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **Let the game join a call and talk to the table.** Long-term. If the game could join a Zoom,
|
||
Teams or Jitsi call and post into its chat, it could carry the whole table's shared state
|
||
without anyone alt-tabbing: the history of actions as they happen, and a prompt when someone
|
||
is holding the game up — "Now waiting on player Alice to complete the Cargo phase."
|
||
- Further out, audio into the same call: a crash when a collision happens, a bell as the Stage
|
||
clock turns over.
|
||
- Further out still, a nudge on a timer — if a player has not moved within some interval, the
|
||
game says so, by beep or by spoken line: "Still waiting on Alice to complete the Cargo
|
||
phase." That turns the turn chart's "waiting on" chip into something a distracted table
|
||
actually notices.
|
||
- [ ] **Multiplayer train make-up is a round, not one player's job.** When a new train is built,
|
||
players take turns adding cars to the consist; in solitaire one player does all of it. The
|
||
engine currently has no per-player turn within the New Train phase, so this is unbuilt rather
|
||
than wrong.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **Action cards (10) and Space-use cards (12).** Genuinely multiplayer-only — they are played AT
|
||
an opponent. Rejected with `NOT_IMPLEMENTED`.
|
||
- [ ] **Multiplayer proper.** The engine runs 2–5 player games and the bot plays them, but there is no
|
||
server, no turn submission, and no per-player view.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Smaller things
|
||
|
||
- [x] **Carry `links` forward in replay frames.** Done, and the premise was wrong in an instructive
|
||
way: measured, `links` was 5% of the `cells` payload. What actually cost was the `what` prose
|
||
(32%), the facility object stored a second time inside its own cell (24%) and the rest of the
|
||
static identity (26%). All three are interned now — 3415 KB → 1877 KB, and a round-trip test
|
||
runs the page's own unpacking function.
|
||
- [ ] **The 5 MB replay size limit is arbitrary.** Invented, not a browser constraint. It has earned
|
||
its place — it caught a 5.2 MB payload that turned out to be the whole grid re-serialised every
|
||
frame — but the number itself deserves a reason.
|
||
- [ ] **Curves are drawn as two straight segments meeting**, not true arcs. Fine at this size, angular
|
||
close up.
|
||
- [ ] **Wide boards scroll.** A 40-card district and a 13-section Division both need horizontal
|
||
scrolling. Legible, not compact.
|
||
- [ ] **No way to start a fresh game from inside the page.** `?seed=` gives a reproducible deal and
|
||
"new game" only appears once a game has ended, so abandoning a bad opening means editing the URL.
|
||
- [ ] **Save/restore is not version-aware.** A save from an older ruleset stops replaying rather than
|
||
failing loudly, which is the safe direction but says little about what changed.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Done, kept for the reasoning
|
||
|
||
- [x] **Put rolling stock back into circulation.** The Classification Yard was write-only — seven
|
||
writers, no readers — so 37% of all rolling stock left the game by Day 5. Returning it at the
|
||
Day boundary is **+2.32 ± 0.52 (t = 8.79)**, the largest single change measured on this bot,
|
||
and it was ranked THIRD and predicted not to matter because the Division Yard never runs dry.
|
||
The aggregate was the wrong measure; having the right commodity at the right moment is what
|
||
counts.
|
||
- [x] **Make Enhancements reachable at all.** The bot never laid a straight on the Running Track
|
||
(0.00 in 100 games) because two-arc run-arounds do not need one — so 13 of the 18 Enhancement
|
||
cards had nowhere to go, including Interlocking, the only cure for the only penalty in the
|
||
game (`no free A/D track`, 27% of gross). One scored straight fixed it: enhancements placed
|
||
0.64 → 3.01, collision cost 2.70 → 1.91, worst game −47 → −24. Revenue +0.70 ± 0.74 paired
|
||
over 400 seeds — real but not significant alone; the variance reduction is the clearer win.
|
||
- [x] **Stop the bot discarding its own freight.** `canStockProductively` did not check the Division
|
||
Yard while the engine's `stockOutbound` does, so Freight Agent was chosen when nothing could be
|
||
stocked and the follow-through fell through to an unjam that threw a waiting load out of the
|
||
green box — 3.10 a game against 2.71 started. Now 0.00. Revenue 6.0 → 6.5, wins 5 → 8 in 100.
|
||
Also confirmed **routing was never the problem**: 0% of drops land on a facility that does not
|
||
want the car.
|
||
- [x] **Why switching work did not become Revenue.** Answered: it was the freight the crew shuffled,
|
||
not the shuffling. The chain never leaked — 95% of started loads finished — it was barely
|
||
entered, because a load needs a matching empty car spotted and half the industries never asked
|
||
for one. Three fixes later (sidings, facility placement, car selection) revenue is 3.2 → 6.0
|
||
and freight 26% → 37% of gross.
|
||
- [x] **Fix car selection.** Three of six industries were invisible to `wantedCars` — a hand-written
|
||
industry→car map naming two industries that do not exist and omitting three that do — so tank
|
||
cars were dropped **0 times in 100 games**. Derived from `INDUSTRY_PROFILES` now, and the
|
||
second commodity of the two-commodity industries is reachable. Revenue 5.0 → 6.0, freight
|
||
share 25% → 37%, wins 1 → 5 in 100.
|
||
- [x] **Put the industries on the run-around.** Facility placement was unscored — the first legal
|
||
square — so 0.00 facilities a game sat on a loop; now 1.08. The instructive part was the
|
||
second bug: scoring facilities onto the siding row dropped run-arounds 91→36, because the
|
||
anchor test asked a card's KIND rather than its PORTS and an industry in the line read as a
|
||
dead end. Revenue 4.1 → 5.0. Freight did **not** follow, which is the item above.
|
||
- [x] **Make the bot build sidings that are sidings.** 0 run-arounds in 100 games → 91. Three bugs,
|
||
all scoring on local shape without checking it reached anything; the decisive one was that
|
||
`bestTrackLay` never declined a piece, so it spent the track supply on whatever was legal.
|
||
- [x] **Teach the bot what a siding is for.** Nose coupling (§A.3) implemented, so approach direction
|
||
decides which car is droppable; the bot runs around rather than setting out, when the drop can
|
||
follow. Switching activity transformed, revenue unchanged.
|
||
- [x] **Curve geometry.** Curves were topologically identical duplicates of turnouts, and nothing
|
||
reached north, so a district could only be a vertical column. Now two-port rotatable arcs.
|
||
- [x] **Q10 — when track may be laid.** During the "draw a card" option, one piece a turn. Track was a
|
||
card when §6.2 was written; a 26-piece supply has no hand to bound it.
|
||
- [x] **Q11 — which way a Heavy Grade climbs.** Answered from the card: it prints "(Up)" and "Player
|
||
sets orientation", so it is a property of the placed card, not a compass constant.
|
||
- [x] **Q12 — Whistle Post lock-in.** Players always start at a Whistle Post; office density doubled
|
||
instead.
|