Jesse.Markowitz
e255076b5c
The 0.6.2 change, ported to the playtest line. Three from the v0.4.9e gameplay-testing round — Gitea#4 extras did not start where the player said, #6 train cards could be discarded, #7 four train cards had the wrong coach counts — plus two bugs found underneath #4. Gitea#2 is diagnosed but NOT fixed; it needs a ruling, and the reasoning is in TODO.md. GITEA#4 — AN EXTRA STARTS WHERE THE PLAYER PUTS IT. Both Division Points are offered now, and the START decides the direction rather than the number: an odd westbound Extra placed at the WEST end would otherwise leave the Division on its first move having crossed nothing and be paid for the run. At an Interchange or a Control Point the player picks the direction. The Interchange start is a YARD, off the running line, which is what makes the Superintendent clause work — placing an Extra there can never force a collision, a guaranteed one holds it for another Stage, and a potential one is the Superintendent's to rule on, which are §8.1's two existing answers. Where an Extra may start is a new setting in the New Game dialog, defaulting to what the engine already did so this build does not change under its testers mid-line. FOUND UNDERNEATH IT, both already shipping: an Extra started away from a Division Point could never be given a consist and ran empty, so the Control Point start has been broken since it was added; and collide left destroyed trains' transits on the Mainline card, permanently poisoning that card for every later train. THE MAINLINE CARDS ARE DEALT FROM THE PRINTED DECK NOW, without replacement. They were drawn from the nine types with replacement, so a Division could hold two Interchanges — and "an Extra may start at the Interchange if one is on the board" only reads as a rule if the board holds at most one. This re-deals every seed, so both published replays were retired and re-recorded. GITEA#6 — A TRAIN CARD IS NEVER DISCARDED, Timetabled and Extra alike. No forcing mechanism was needed: nothing discardable plus a hand over the limit leaves exactly one legal way to end the turn, and playing a train is unconditionally legal, so a hand of four cannot trap anyone. The hand panel says so on the train, and the blocked end-turn button changes its wording. GITEA#7 — COACH COUNTS. 1/2 Crack Limited 3 -> 2, 5/6 The Sparrow 2 -> 3. WHAT DIFFERS FROM THE MAIN LINE. The car-placement round rotation test that accompanies #7 there arrived with the 0.6 multiplayer work and does not exist here, so there was nothing for the coach-count change to follow. src/web/main.ts and test/web.test.ts needed hand-resolution: this line's New Game dialog has neither the mode radios nor the victory dials, so only the Extra-start parts were taken. The content.ts comment pass came across whole; main's TODO documentation item did not, since this line keeps its own TODO. 623 tests pass, tsc clean, site builds.
846 lines
68 KiB
Markdown
846 lines
68 KiB
Markdown
# To do
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Things worth coming back to. Anything noted here should either get done or get an explicit decision
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not to — the point is that nothing quietly evaporates.
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Grouped by what kind of work it is — Next, Replay/Save Games, Bot Performance, Play Balance,
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Multiplayer, Rules Questions, Other — and ordered within each by how much it is currently costing us.
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Reorganized 2026-08-20 from a flat list; nothing below changed, only where it lives. Two duplicate
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entries (Heavy Grade orientation, the Local's coach) were merged into one each, and the industry-table
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item that had been sitting in a "these are all done" section without actually being done was moved out
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to Rules Questions.
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---
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## Next
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Queued 2026-08-22, from the v0.4.9e gameplay-testing report filed as Gitea issues.
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1. ~~**Gitea#4 — confirm that extra trains start properly**~~ — done in v0.4.9f. Either Division
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Point, the Interchange with a direction chosen there, a Control Point gated by a new `extraStart`
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setting, and the Superintendent's hold on the way out of the Interchange yard. Reasoning in
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`docs/rules/implications.md` §7.
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2. ~~**Gitea#6 — players may not discard train cards**~~ — done in v0.4.9f. Timetabled and Extra
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alike; the forced play falls out of the hand limit rather than needing a mechanism of its own.
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Reasoning in `docs/rules/implications.md` §6.2.
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3. ~~**Gitea#7 — coach counts on four train cards**~~ — done in v0.4.9f. 1/2 Crack Limited 3 → 2,
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5/6 The Sparrow 2 → 3.
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4. **Gitea#2 — four porters, two passengers on the platform, and only one may be worked.**
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DIAGNOSED, AWAITING JESSE'S RULING — see Play Balance below.
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The rest of v0.4.9's plan (coordinate labels, the no-switching fix, the expedite rewrite, the
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`evaluateClearance` bug, the splash artwork) is built; see Done below.
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---
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## Replay / Save Games
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The replay viewer, the save format, and how a game gets shared.
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- [ ] **INVESTIGATE: how would a player publish a replay so other people can watch it?** Today
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"Save replay" downloads a JSON file to the player's own machine, and the only way it reaches
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the site is by sending it to Jesse to drop into `public/replays/` and redeploy. The question is
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what a self-service version would look like.
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**The constraint.** The site is fully static — `dist/` is uploaded to File Browser and Start9
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Pages serves the folder — and the replay list is a build-time `manifest.json` because static
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hosting cannot list a directory. So publishing needs something that accepts a write.
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**The one measurement that matters:** a full 5-Day game is **451–1017 bytes** compressed
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(brotli), about **600–1150 characters** base64. A save is the seed plus the intents and the
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engine recomputes the board, so a whole game fits in a URL.
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Four shapes, roughly costed:
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1. **Share by link, no server (~1–2 hours).** Put the compressed save in the URL fragment
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(`replays.html#s=…`); "Share replay" copies a link and anyone opening it watches the game.
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The viewer already parses saves and already has a file-open path, so this is compression, a
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hash reader and a copy button. The fragment never reaches the host. It is a link rather than
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a gallery: nobody discovers a game they were not sent.
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2. **A write endpoint (a day or two, and it is a service).** Accepts a POST, validates the save
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by replaying it through the engine — `save-replay.ts` already does exactly that check —
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writes the file and regenerates the manifest. The work is the surround: auth or rate
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limiting, abuse handling for a public write, CORS, and a deploy story. It also ends "static
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hosting is all this needs", which has been load-bearing.
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3. **Browser writes to File Browser directly — rejected.** It needs FB credentials in a static
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page, so anyone viewing source gets write access to the whole File Browser, and the manifest
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would need a read-modify-write from the browser that loses a save when two people publish at
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once.
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4. **Curated, manual (zero code).** What happens today, and it composes with (1): players send
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links, Jesse publishes the good ones.
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**The question behind the question is whether a gallery of strangers' games is wanted on a
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personal StartOS box at all.** If it is, (1) is the piece (2) would need anyway, so it is the
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right thing to build first either way.
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- [ ] **Review the standalone replay against the site's replay viewer.** `node src/sim/replay.ts
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--seed 1234 --out replay.html` writes a self-contained HTML file; the site instead reads JSON
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saves from `public/replays/`. Nothing links to the standalone one and its output is gitignored,
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so it is a developer tool that happens to look like a product feature. It carries two panels
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the site viewer does not — the bot's decision trace ("what it chose, why, and what it passed
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over") and the timetable — which is debugging material rather than something a player wants.
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Decide: fold the decision trace into the JSON viewer and delete the standalone, or keep it and
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accept that it is a tool. No action for now.
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- [ ] **The yards are shown on the play page but not in either replay viewer.** The Frame carries
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them, so it is a rendering job, not a modelling one.
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- [ ] **Undo is unlimited step-back, and that is a decision to revisit.** The save is the seed plus
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the intents, so `undo()` replays without the last one and can walk all the way to the deal. The
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RNG advances with the replay, so the same play re-rolls the same 1D12 — you cannot undo your
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way to a better die. But you CAN see a train's departure Stage and then spend the turn
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differently, which is an ordinary solitaire take-back and also a real information leak. Options
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if it starts to feel like cheating: make the Stage boundary a commit point, or cap the depth at
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the current Stage. Deliberately left open until it has been played with. Multiplayer gets
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nothing until there is a proposal/agreement flow — undo there is a table decision, not a
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button.
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- [ ] **The 5 MB replay size limit is arbitrary.** Invented, not a browser constraint. It has earned
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its place — it caught a 5.2 MB payload that turned out to be the whole grid re-serialised every
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frame — but the number itself deserves a reason.
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- [ ] **Save/restore is not version-aware.** A save from an older ruleset stops replaying rather than
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failing loudly, which is the safe direction but says little about what changed. **This has now
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bitten once**: both published replays were dead — one got 42 intents into 360, the other 4 of
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338 — and nothing said so; they simply ended early and looked like short games. A save should
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carry a ruleset stamp and the page should say "this replay was recorded under an older
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ruleset and stops at Stage N" rather than presenting a truncated game as a whole one.
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---
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## Bot Performance
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What the developer bot can and cannot yet do, measured. Every revenue figure below measured before
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v0.4.7 is low by roughly half a point — see the stub-industry entry — and the rebalance pass should
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not read that drop as a deck problem.
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- [ ] **THE BOT DOES NOT KNOW TO BRING AN EXPEDITED TRAIN BACK TO THE STATION — new in v0.4.9.**
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The `expediteFault` mechanic (§7, Q3) charges 1 Revenue every Mainline Phase an expedited train
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is left off the Office square, and the bot has no heuristic that accounts for it: measured over
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30 fresh games, one left Train 4 (3/4 Express) parked on Secondary Track from Day 3 Stage 10 to
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the end of the game, drawing the fault **26 times**. Not an engine bug — the mechanism fires
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exactly as designed — but a clear next bot heuristic: prefer ending a switching turn with any
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expedited crew back on the Office square, at least once it has finished the work it went out for.
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- [ ] **THE BOT CANNOT SPOT A CAR AT A STUB INDUSTRY, and the cut-ordering rules made that visible.**
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Coupling is mandatory on your own square now (v0.4.7), so a crew that sets a car out *between
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itself and the only way out* picks it straight back up. At a stub industry that is every
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set-out the bot makes: its trains run engine-first with all four cars behind, so the tail cut
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always lands on the exit side. The correct play is §A.5's **facing point** move — couple the car
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onto the nose, shove it into the stub, set out off the nose, back away — which is the same
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cross-turn planning already recorded as out of reach of any bot in "THE RUN-AROUND IS OUT OF
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REACH OF ANY BOT" below.
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Measured over 200 paired seeds: **-0.55 revenue** (t = -3.63) and freight revenue 1.11 → 0.56.
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Filtering self-recoupling moves out of the bot's options took recoupling from **625 of 1,029
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set-outs in 60 games to 101 of 677**, and all 101 that remain are this case. Nothing is broken —
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the game models the difficulty correctly and the bot cannot yet play it — but **every revenue
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figure in this file measured before v0.4.7 is now low by roughly half a point** and the rebalance
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pass should not read the drop as a deck problem.
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- [ ] **BOT DRIFT ACROSS THIS RELEASE — four measurements, all for the rebalance pass.** Recorded
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together so the pattern is visible rather than four relaxed thresholds nobody adds up:
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- **Switching work down ~16%, 1.76 → 1.48 productive acts a game** (400 games), because an
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expedited train now stands at the Office for a Stage instead of passing straight through, and
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a train on the A/D track and the Office square is in the crew's way. That is the change doing
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its job rather than a fault — but it is drift. Collisions also went 0.05 → 0.06 and the worst
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game went −3 → −9, same cause: the Office fills up. **Separately, the `work > 2` floor that
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caught this had never actually been met** — it read 2.16 at 150 games and 1.76 at 400, so it
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was passing on which seeds the sample happened to include. Now 400 games and a floor of 1.2.
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- **Track laid badly, 7% → 15%** of pieces butting a card that cannot accept them. Forced to
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shed on turn one, the bot would rather lay a piece than discard it; a player would discard
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the ones with nowhere good to go. It also means the district-size gain from the new deal is
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partly padding rather than useful railroad.
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- **Interlocking placed, 15/60 → 7/60 games.** Departure Revenue pulls the bot toward other
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work and it spends its opening on the track it was dealt.
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- **Aimless shuttling in 3 games of 16** — thirteen are clean, so this is a minority behaviour
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rather than the every-game waste the detector was written for.
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Each floor was moved to match what is measured, with the reasoning written into the test. None
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is a crisis on its own; together they say the bot spends its openings worse than it did.
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- [ ] **The bot was partly living off an illegal placement.** Barring curves from the Running Track
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(they have no east-west road and dead-end the main) cost it districts 28.0 → 19.7 cards and
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revenue ~2.0 → 0.8. It has no plan for where a curve should go once the easy square is gone.
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Same root cause as "the bot cannot get a crew next to an industry" and "THE RUN-AROUND IS OUT
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OF REACH OF ANY BOT" below; fix them together, after the rebalance.
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- [ ] **THE BOT'S PRIORITIES ARE NOT THE PROBLEM — measured.** Ten heuristic variations, each paired
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over 400+ seeds. Every reordering of what the bot prefers came out inside the noise; the only
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thing that moved revenue was refusing to schedule a train the Office cannot hold
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(**+1.09 ± 0.16, t = 6.79** at 1600 seeds, revenue 1.19 → 2.28). Notable failures, all
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instructive:
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- **Refusing to bury the engine costs more than it saves** (−0.35, t = −2.98). It works —
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burial falls from 8.4 decisions a game to 0.03 — and freight halves with it, because
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coupling is mandatory (§A.4): the moves that bury the engine ARE the moves that pick cars
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up. Burial is the price of collecting, not a mistake.
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- **Reserving Moves to get home costs 0.55** (t = −2.32), though 62 of 120 trains left on the
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board at game end were stranded in the district. The switching work is worth more than the
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departures.
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- **Granting clearance when the train ahead has one Stage left is −0.98** (t = −5.24). Trains
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move in numeric order, so a follower can enter the region the leader still occupies before
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the leader moves. "About to leave" is not "gone".
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- Preferring coaches at make-up, stocking the platform first, playing Interlocking earlier,
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hunting the Depot in the Departments: all within noise, and three of them were exact
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no-ops — Interlocking sits in hand alongside a train card **0.04 decisions a game**.
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The funnel says why: only **8% of Cargo phases** have a stocked green box, and the bot already
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takes 42% of the turns where stocking is productive. The opportunities are not there to be
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prioritised better. What is left is the economy itself, which is a deck question.
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- [ ] **The bot cannot get a crew next to an industry, so Flying Switch never fires.** Industries are
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now stub-only and the bot places 2.23 a game (was 3.84), in districts averaging under two rows
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deep. `flyingSwitch` is exempted by name in the reachability sweep in `sim.test.ts`; deleting
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that line is the test that this is fixed. Same root cause as the item below.
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- [ ] **THE RUN-AROUND IS OUT OF REACH OF ANY BOT, AND THE DECK IS WHY — measured, five ways.**
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"Teach the bot to plan across turns" was tried properly and does not work. Every attempt is
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neutral or negative, and they fail for one reason that the numbers make plain.
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| attempt | result |
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| hold ALL track for the siding | **−0.70** (t = −3.27) |
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| hold only CURVES, the closing piece | **−0.26** (t = −3.22), district 17.9 → 16.7 cards |
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| finish a run before cutting another way down | 0.00 — 398/400 games identical |
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| treat a second turnout as the closing piece | 0.00 — **400/400 identical** |
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| spend a curve only on a square that CLOSES | −0.11, and only 15 games in 400 differ at all |
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**The pieces never meet.** Over 12,000 Local Operations turns: a turnout and a curve are in
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hand together on **0.3%** of them, and a turnout with a MATCHING-hand curve on **0.2%** — about
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once every eight games. A run-around needs five specific pieces of the right hands in a usable
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order; the bot does not get to the two-piece prerequisite.
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And it is not hand pressure. The hand is FULL — mean 2.66 cards, at the three-card limit on
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78% of turns. The bot plays 11.4 track cards a game and discards 1.5, so it spends the pieces
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as they arrive because a piece that builds anything outscores holding one that might build
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more later. Holding is the only counter, and holding measures worse every way it is tried.
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This is a consequence of moving track into the deck, not a bot weakness: 91 run-arounds per 100
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games when track was a private 26-piece supply the player chose from, 29/100 once it was drawn,
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4/60 now. **If the run-around is meant to be the central switching puzzle — and the rules
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present it that way — the supply has to change, not the player.** Options: give track its own
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hand or yard the way the prototype did, raise the hand limit for track specifically, or print a
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siding as a single card. Nothing else reaches it.
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- [ ] **Re-run the three "worth ~0" action-mix experiments against the new floor.** Capping the draw,
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pairing the two halves of a load, and restricting Enhancements were each measured "within noise
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of zero" over 400 games — but at 400 games the standard error is ±0.33, so a real +0.5 would
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have looked like nothing. They are nearly free to re-run now and at least one may have been
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discarded wrongly.
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---
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## Play Balance
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- [ ] **Gitea#2 — passenger operations starve themselves of coaches, and the game says nothing.**
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Reported from v0.4.9e play: the Sparrow pulls into the Terminal with two loaded coaches, two
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passengers wait on the platform, four porters are unused, and only ONE of the four intended
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actions can be taken. Reproduced from the save: the Division Yard holds **1 empty coach and 0
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loaded**, while the Classification Yard holds **4 loaded and 4 empty** that cannot come back.
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**The engine is not deviating from the rules.** §9.2 discards the white coach into the
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Classification Yard on boarding, draws the white coach from the Division Yard on de-training,
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and §2.2 returns the Classification Yard only when the Division Yard is empty — all three
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implemented exactly. The problem is the interaction: a single global refill condition over a
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pile holding six commodities with very different demand, where coaches are consumed by BOTH
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halves of every passenger cycle. Traced over the reported game, the coach pool runs from 8+/8−
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to 0+/1− by Day 5.
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**Three ways out, and it is Jesse's call which:** (a) refill when the Division Yard is dry of
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the type-and-state being asked for rather than dry of everything; (b) the same trigger but
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return only the cars of that type; (c) leave the rules alone and raise the coach count in
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`ROLLING_STOCK_SUPPLY`. Measure (a) or (b) over 400 paired seeds before shipping.
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- [ ] **A blocked PASSENGER facility produces no impediment at all.** `impediments()`
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(`src/sim/narrate.ts`) opens with `if (!f || f.kind !== 'freight') continue`, so the "why
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nothing is moving" panel has never had anything to say about a platform. That is the second
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half of Gitea#2 and the half that is unambiguously a bug: the player was not merely blocked,
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he was given no reason — the button simply was not there. Worth fixing whichever way the
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supply question is settled.
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Numbers chosen to fix a measured problem rather than taken from the design. Revisit once the victory
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target is settled and freight carries its intended share; read no balance conclusion from a revenue
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number until the rules stop moving.
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- [ ] **A DISTRICT CAN NOW ONLY WIDEN AS FAR AS ITS MAIN REACHES (v0.4.8) — worth watching in the
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rebalance rather than acting on now.** Track stays inside the Limits at every row, so extending
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the Running Track is the only way to buy room for sidings, and a straight laid on the sign is
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worth more than it was. The bot barely notices — it built outside its own Limits 5 times in 100
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games — but the bot also builds close to its Office; a human building deliberately hits this on
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the first wide district, which is how it was reported. If territory turns out to be the real
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constraint on freight, this is one of the two places to look (the other is the track supply,
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in Bot Performance).
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- [ ] **REBALANCE, once the rules are right — deliberately deferred.** Card counts, industry counts
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and the track mix all need a pass together, and none of them should move until the rules stop
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moving. Standing distortions to account for when it happens: offices are doubled (Q12) and
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industries tripled (Gap 12), both tuned when the deck held 139 cards and **no track**; it now
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holds 235 of which 96 are track, so every draw is diluted by 41% — precisely the pressure
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those multipliers exist to relieve. The 8 sharp curves have already been taken out on that
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argument; offices and industries are the two left. Until then, read no balance conclusion from the revenue
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numbers; they are a functionality signal only.
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- [ ] **RE-MEASURE THE BOT AT THE NEW DEFAULTS.** Both provisional rules below are now **settings on
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the New Game dialog** rather than fixed choices, and the defaults are not what the numbers in
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this file were measured under: the opening hand defaults to **three random cards** (the
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prototype rule) rather than 3+3, and **train revenue per transit defaults to 0** rather than 1.
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That second one is the big move — it was worth ~5.4 of a 7.0 mean, so the bot's revenue should
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fall to roughly the working freight-and-passenger economy alone, which is the number this game
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has actually been trying to read all along. Every mean, floor and threshold quoted below and in
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the tests predates it. The three revenue rates run 0–5, so the useful next step is a sweep
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rather than a single re-run.
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- [ ] **REVIEW THE TWO NEW RULES ONCE THEY HAVE BEEN PLAYED — both went in provisional, and both are
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now selectable rather than fixed.** Jesse's call, both implemented and measured, both flagged
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in `rules-v0.2.md`. What follows is what was measured when each was the only option.
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**The opening deal (3 track + 3 other, from two separately shuffled piles).** It did what it
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was aimed at, modestly: run-arounds **4/60 → 7/60** and districts **17.9 → 20.3 cards**, with
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revenue unmoved on its own (−0.1, inside noise). Still nowhere near the 91/100 of the
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private-supply era, so the supply question is softened rather than answered. Two things to
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watch at the table: whether opening with six against a limit of three is a real decision or
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just bookkeeping, and whether three is the right number of each.
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**~~One Revenue for every train that clears your section.~~ Now: one Revenue to EVERY player
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when a train completes its run.** Jesse's revision in v0.4.2. The first version paid the Office
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a train departed, which on a five-Office railroad paid five separate times for one train and
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paid most to whoever it passed first. It pays once now, when the train runs off the end of the
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Division, and it pays the whole table — getting a train the length of the railroad is the
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shared achievement, and every Office it crossed had to clear it.
|
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Solitaire is nearly unmoved (7.0 → 7.3 mean over 200 games) because one player's departures and
|
||
completions run at almost the same rate; **in a multi-player game the shape is completely
|
||
different** and needs measuring once multiplayer exists — N players × 1 per completed run
|
||
against the old N payments per train. **The victory-target question stays live**: 20 over 5 Days
|
||
is still reachable largely on traffic, which is either the intent or an argument for raising it
|
||
— and at the new default of 0 per transit it is not reachable on traffic at all, which is the
|
||
first thing a playtest should check.
|
||
- [ ] **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.
|
||
- [ ] **The rolling stock supply is a guess.** `ROLLING_STOCK_SUPPLY` (coach 8+8, boxcar 10+10,
|
||
hopper 8+8, reefer 5+5, tank 6+6, caboose 6) is marked provisional in `content.ts` and was
|
||
scaled alongside the Gap 12 industry increase. Now that the Classification Yard returns stock
|
||
only when the Division Yard empties, these numbers set the real supply pressure. Adjust from
|
||
playtesting rather than theory, and watch whether industry density feels light or heavy at the
|
||
same time.
|
||
- [ ] **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 in Done) 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 (20 over 5 Days) is out of reach by a factor of about four, and the
|
||
Office ladder is why.** Measured over 800 games with the tuned bot, which no longer throws
|
||
revenue away on collisions (0.0 a game, down from 0.4):
|
||
|
||
| trains scheduled | games | revenue | | Office reached | games | trains | revenue |
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||
| 0 | 110 | 0.67 | | Whistle Post | 297 | 0.81 | 0.62 |
|
||
| 1 | 379 | 1.69 | | Depot | 272 | 1.49 | 2.92 |
|
||
| 2 | 234 | 3.72 | | Station | 176 | 1.89 | 4.36 |
|
||
| 3 | 68 | 5.68 | | Terminal | 55 | 1.93 | 5.04 |
|
||
| 4 | 9 | 5.78 | | | | | |
|
||
|
||
Revenue is almost exactly linear in trains scheduled — about **1.9 a train** — and trains are
|
||
capped by A/D capacity, which is the Office tier, which is a card you have to draw. So the
|
||
whole economy hangs off one valve: **37% of games never leave the Whistle Post and earn 0.62;
|
||
53% of all games earn nothing at all.**
|
||
|
||
Extrapolating the line, 20 Revenue needs roughly **11 trains and therefore 11 A/D tracks**. A
|
||
Terminal has four. The target is not merely missed, it is structurally unreachable under this
|
||
deck at this Office ladder — no amount of bot skill closes it, and the best game seen in 800
|
||
was 26 against a median of 0.
|
||
|
||
The three ways out are all yours to choose between, and they are different games:
|
||
1. **Lower the target** to what a 5-Day game can produce (6–8 looks like the honest number).
|
||
2. **Open the valve** — more Office cards, or a cheaper first upgrade, or more A/D capacity at
|
||
the Whistle Post, so the ladder is climbed rather than drawn.
|
||
3. **Raise revenue per arrival.** It is 0.46 today; each arrival can in principle pay 2 for
|
||
passengers alone. That is the freight/passenger conversion problem, not the traffic problem.
|
||
|
||
Nothing here is a bot weakness any more, which is what this measurement was waiting on.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Multiplayer
|
||
|
||
Deferred while planning the server; decisions and reasoning are in `docs/architecture/multiplayer.md`.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **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.
|
||
- [ ] **MULTIPLAYER — three things deliberately deferred while planning the server.** Decisions and
|
||
reasoning are in `docs/architecture/multiplayer.md` §11; these are the ones left open.
|
||
- **Bots should take minimally damaging, defensive actions when a player steps away**, so a
|
||
game is not permanently halted. Deliberately NOT automatic today: a turn timer forfeiting is
|
||
different from a bot competing, and the clearance ruling is the one decision that changes
|
||
another player's score. Bots fill empty seats at lobby time only (D8).
|
||
- **Let a player resign and hand their railroad to a bot** to finish. Same care needed as
|
||
above, but it is consented rather than imposed.
|
||
- **A forcing turn timer — explicitly NOT in the design.** `lobby-and-sessions.md` §5 used to
|
||
specify one: on expiry the server took "the safest legal action", including denying a
|
||
clearance. Cut in the review, because it is the same objection as a bot playing for an absent
|
||
player — the clearance decision changes somebody else's score, so anything that answers it
|
||
automatically changes the game. Explore later if halted games turn out to be a real problem
|
||
at a real table; the reasoning worth keeping is that **deny** is the safe default, since a
|
||
held train costs a Stage and a wrecked one costs 5 Revenue and feeds the collision floor.
|
||
- **~~The opening D12 for the Eastern Division Point (§4.4) decides nothing.~~ Done in
|
||
v0.4.1** — it orders the whole chain now, west to east by ascending roll. The lobby still owes
|
||
it a display: `state.openingRolls` is kept so clients can show the rolls forming the chain
|
||
rather than only the result (`lobby-and-sessions.md` §4).
|
||
- **Revisit the join secret** (D14). One server-wide secret, passed out of band, gates create
|
||
and join. Enough for a private box, probably not enough if `stationmaster.<domain>` is
|
||
pointed at the open internet for long. Note that one-game-at-a-time per person is expected
|
||
usage and deliberately NOT enforced — enforcing it needs cross-game state whose only job is
|
||
deciding when to release someone, and getting that wrong locks a player out.
|
||
- [ ] **WHY DOES A 4-PLAYER COMPETITIVE GAME END AFTER ~16 STAGES OF A POSSIBLE 60?** Measured while
|
||
sizing multiplayer: 8 games, all reaching Day 5, but only ~16 distinct (day, stage) pairs each
|
||
and ~355 intents. Most likely the collision or revenue floor (§3.4) firing early, which would
|
||
make a competitive game about an hour rather than four. Worth knowing whether that is the
|
||
design working or a balance bug — it decides what a lobby should tell players about length.
|
||
- [ ] **THE 22 OPPONENT-DIRECTED CARDS — 10 Action, 12 Space-use — ARE OUT OF EVERY DECK UNTIL THEY
|
||
ARE BUILT.** Jesse's call. They were already cut from solitaire (Q6, no legal target with one
|
||
player); they are now cut from the competitive deck too, because `checkPlay` answers both
|
||
categories `NOT_IMPLEMENTED` and dealing them would make ~9% of draws reject outright. Flip
|
||
`opponentCardsInDeck` in `setup.ts` when they land. They are played AT another player —
|
||
Watertower, Derail, Railroad Crossing and so on — so they are genuinely multiplayer work, and
|
||
**three Enhancements are waiting on them**: Facing Point Locks, Water Column and Overpass are
|
||
wired and read, and fire only against these cards. Until then those three are dormant by
|
||
design rather than broken.
|
||
- [ ] **Multiplayer proper — Phases 0 and 1 done (v0.4.0), Phases 2–6 to go.** The full plan is
|
||
`docs/architecture/multiplayer.md` §12. The engine now has seat/player separation and
|
||
per-player turn state, the page renders from `Frame` + `Menu` alone and talks to a `Session`
|
||
rather than to the engine — so a `RemoteSession` can be dropped in without the page changing.
|
||
Still no server, no turn submission and no per-player push: that is Phase 2, and it is
|
||
deliberately held until the two provisional rules have been playtested, because a rule change
|
||
after the wire format is live is much more expensive than one before it.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Rules Questions
|
||
|
||
Blocked on a decision, not on work.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **NOT REPRODUCED: "when I back up to collect standing cars and, further down the tracks, the
|
||
caboose, I get the caboose but the cars remain. I can later drive right through them."**
|
||
Reported against v0.4.9d by a playtester (not Jesse, who forwarded it and could not add detail;
|
||
his guess was that the cars were spotted at an industry).
|
||
|
||
**What was tried, all of which works.** Cars on plain track on the way to the caboose; cars
|
||
SPOTTED AT AN INDUSTRY on the way; the train's own cut standing on the square it is pulling out
|
||
of; a stale `standingWest` on the intermediate card; the industry locked by MEN AT WORK (which
|
||
correctly blocks the whole route rather than letting the crew past). Every one couples the lot.
|
||
The first three are pinned in `apply.test.ts` — "backing up over a cut to something beyond it
|
||
takes both" — so if the case is found later it is somewhere none of them cover.
|
||
|
||
**Why it is hard to make happen.** Coupling is mandatory (§A.4) and `exploreMoves` accumulates
|
||
what it meets card by card, so a route that reaches the caboose has already met everything
|
||
between. `carsOn` (`state.ts`) is the SINGLE answer to "what is standing here", and the movement
|
||
walk, the sweep in `carsCoupled` and every renderer all ask it — so cars a train can drive
|
||
through would have to be cars that are on screen and not in `carsOn`, and there is no such
|
||
place. (One route to one was closed anyway: `flyingSwitch`'s reducer wrote the cut straight into
|
||
`industryTrack`, which for a Passenger Facility is not where `carsOn` looks. `check` refuses a
|
||
non-freight target, so it never fired.)
|
||
|
||
**The two questions that would settle it**, for whoever has the board: was there a SECOND route
|
||
to the caboose — a parallel row, or a turnout — so the move could have gone round the cars? And
|
||
what did the move button say it would couple? The label names every car (`describeIntent`), so a
|
||
button that read "couples caboose" and one that read "couples 2 boxcars, caboose" are different
|
||
bugs: the first is route selection, the second is the sweep.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **An unload does not check the facility's commodity.** `laborer.beginUnload` gates on
|
||
`allows.inbound`, a loaded car, an empty of that type in the Division Yard and room in the red
|
||
box — but never on `facilityCarTypes(f)`, which `freightAgent.stockOutbound` does check. So a
|
||
Freight House (boxcars) will unload a hopper. Found reading the code for the v0.4.9e district
|
||
rule, not from play. Low impact today because the district rule now refuses the only same-Office
|
||
pairing that made it easy to hit, and because the bot spots matching cars — but it is a rule the
|
||
engine states in one direction and not the other.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **WHERE THE LOCAL'S COACH STANDS WHILE ITS ENGINE WORKS (§A.4) — now hit in play, still open.**
|
||
Trains 7/8 print "coach must remain on station track if switching", read as "the coach is never
|
||
set out". A cut comes off an OUTER end, so a coach on one outer end with the engine on the
|
||
other locks the train completely: it cannot set its freight car out, and cannot uncouple to run
|
||
around either, because that leaves the coach standing. Measured over 60 games — **1,181
|
||
positions where a set-out should have been possible, every one refused; no other train blocked
|
||
once.** Two of the six possible arrangements lock, and `ENGINE boxcar coach` — the one that
|
||
locks — is both prototypical and what make-up naturally produces.
|
||
|
||
**Worked around, not solved.** The make-up panel now tells the player to add the coach first
|
||
(v0.4.6), which produces `ENGINE coach boxcar` and works. The rules question is untouched: if
|
||
the coach may be set out **at the Office**, which is what the card's wording plainly says and
|
||
what a real mixed train does, then the prototypical make-up works and the advice becomes
|
||
unnecessary. That needs one exception to §A.4's blanket refusal to leave Rolling Stock at the
|
||
Office, for the coach and only on the Local. **Decision needed:** should the Office square — or
|
||
a station track beside it — accept a parked coach?
|
||
- [ ] **3/4 EXPRESS PRINTS A RULE IT CAN NEVER USE — Jesse's call.** The card says *"may drop or pick
|
||
up one freight car at every location"* and also prints **Expedite**. Expedite means the train
|
||
departs the Stage it arrives (Q3): it arrives in the Mainline phase, stands through Cargo, and
|
||
highballs in Supervisor Shift — so it is never on the board during a Local Operations phase,
|
||
which is the only phase in which freight is coupled or set out. Measured over 40 bot games:
|
||
**31 Office visits, 31 of them with no Local Operations turn.** X14 Fruit Growers Express is in
|
||
the same position, though its "may pick up one extra loaded reefer" is only a note today.
|
||
|
||
The four options put to Jesse, unchanged: drop Expedite from 3/4 only (the other Expedite
|
||
trains all print "no switching" and lose nothing); leave Q3 alone and strike the freight line
|
||
from the card; drop Expedite everywhere (it partly exists to relieve Crew Tray scarcity, so
|
||
this needs re-measuring); or move the Express's freight budget into the Cargo phase, where an
|
||
expedited train does still get a turn. **Nothing is broken** — this is a contradiction between
|
||
two lines on one card, and the timing rule itself is behaving exactly as recorded.
|
||
|
||
**Should be resolved as a side effect of the Expedite fix in Next**, once built: correcting
|
||
Q3 so an expedited train gets an ordinary Local Operations turn removes the contradiction
|
||
without picking any of the four options above. Leaving this open until that lands and is
|
||
confirmed in play.
|
||
- [ ] **THE INDUSTRY TABLE STILL DISAGREES WITH THE CARD REFERENCE — two items left, Jesse's call.**
|
||
v0.4.7 corrected the DIRECTIONS: the Grocer's Warehouse and the Oil Refinery are `flow: 'both'`,
|
||
as `card-reference.md` always said, which is what let an Ice House finally give a Grocer's its
|
||
outbound slot. Two discrepancies remain and both are deliberate for now.
|
||
**(a) Base capacities.** The reference prints Grocer's 2/2 with 2 Laborers and the Refinery 2/2
|
||
with 3; the engine gives every industry 1 per direction it allows, Mine Tipple included. Raising
|
||
one alone would be a balance change rather than a correction.
|
||
**(b) The Freight House card.** The reference is explicit — "'Freight House' is not a card. It is
|
||
the collective term for a freight facility that loads *and* unloads" — and the engine deals 6
|
||
copies of one. Removing them is a deck-composition change worth measuring, not a quiet delete.
|
||
- [ ] **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 is rolled, not chosen.** The card prints "Player sets orientation",
|
||
but it is dealt during setup and setup has no decision point at all — `createGame` is a pure
|
||
function of the seed, which is also what makes a save portable. Rolled from the seed for now.
|
||
Revisit when setup gains an interactive phase; the orientation matters, because it decides
|
||
which direction climbs and therefore what Brakeman and Helpers are worth.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## Other
|
||
|
||
Doesn't fit the above.
|
||
|
||
- [ ] **Engines are not a SUPPLY yet, only a position.** `engineAt` now records where the engine
|
||
sits in the tray and the consist shows it, but an engine is still conjured with the tray
|
||
rather than drawn from the Division Yard and returned to it. The rules put engines in the
|
||
Division Yard alongside the cars, with a predefined number of them, so running out of engines
|
||
should be a second way trains get held — today only the Crew Tray count does that. Needs a
|
||
number to start from, then playtesting.
|
||
- [ ] **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.
|
||
- `arrive` (a train pulling into an Office), `depart` (a train highballing out of one) and
|
||
`crash` (§10 — a collision) are now synthesised too, v0.4.9 — three chuffing/screeching cues
|
||
built from the same oscillator-and-filtered-noise toolkit as `stage`, wired to `trainArrived`,
|
||
`trainHighballed` (Office departures only), and `trainsDestroyed`. Good enough to keep as the
|
||
real thing rather than a placeholder — no WAV clips needed for these three.
|
||
- **Find and add the rest as assets**: steam whistle, grade-crossing bell, couplers clashing.
|
||
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.
|
||
- [ ] **The test suite fails at random under `npm test`, and it is the runner rather than the code.**
|
||
`node --test test/**/*.test.ts` runs the files in parallel and three suites write and read the
|
||
same `dist/` — the static build, the published-replay check and "the three places a game is
|
||
drawn stay in step". Back-to-back full runs measured **9 failures then 0**; run one file at a
|
||
time and every suite passes. That is worse than a slow suite: it trains us to shrug at a red
|
||
run, which is exactly how a real regression gets waved through. Give the build test its own
|
||
output directory, or mark the trio to run serially.
|
||
- [ ] **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.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
## 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] **§6.2's reshuffle.** Implemented, and the `deckReshuffled` event it had already declared and
|
||
narrated — but never emitted or reduced — is now real. Not yet reached in play: solitaire
|
||
Campaign ends with 168.8 of 243 in the deck and four-player Campaign with 86.6, and no run of
|
||
any length has emptied it. It is a safety net rather than a live mechanic today, which is worth
|
||
knowing before tuning draw rates.
|
||
- [x] **Q12 — Whistle Post lock-in.** Players always start at a Whistle Post; office density doubled
|
||
instead.
|
||
- [x] **~~CLEARING AN INBOUND BOX MINTS A CAR — measured at 1.29 a game against a supply of 80.~~
|
||
Re-audited in v0.4.3: rolling stock is EXACTLY CONSERVED, 100 games out of 100, range 0..0.**
|
||
The old audit's premise was right — the two directions were not symmetrical — but the asymmetry
|
||
has since been closed from the other end. `unloadBegan` and `passengersDetrained` now take their
|
||
replacement empty OUT of the Division Yard rather than conjuring it, so a load is a car that
|
||
moved rather than a car that appeared: one leaves the yard, one arrives in Classification.
|
||
Jesse's description of the tabletop procedure confirms this is the intended model — the token
|
||
you push along the MEN|AT|WORK sign IS the car, fetched from the yard by the Freight Agent and
|
||
swapped onto the industry track at the end.
|
||
Both conjuring fallbacks now **throw** rather than minting, so the leak cannot silently return;
|
||
neither fired across the suite or 100 audited games.
|
||
**`ROLLING_STOCK_SUPPLY` is therefore unblocked** — it was waiting on this and can now be tuned
|
||
in the rebalance pass. (The first audit's own arithmetic was off in the same way mine was on the
|
||
first attempt: cars set out on a card, in `card.standing`, are easy to leave out of the count and
|
||
make a conserved game look like a leaking one.)
|
||
- [x] **`state = fold(events)` was not true, and the docs said it was. Settled: the INTENTS are
|
||
canonical.** Measured before deciding — `advance.ts` never calls `reduce`, so **14 of the 46
|
||
event types are never reduced**: the clock, and the entire Mainline phase, which is every train
|
||
movement in the game. Folding the log rebuilds a district and not a railroad. Jesse's call, and
|
||
the cheap one: the plan never needed fold — persistence is `{ engineVersion, seed, config,
|
||
history }` (`multiplayer.md` §10) and the wire carries `Frame`s, not events (D2/D3), so
|
||
reconnection is a fresh Frame rather than an event tail. Making the phase driver reduce would
|
||
have been a rewrite of the most rule-dense code in the project to buy something nothing uses.
|
||
Corrected in the README, four architecture documents and six source comments; `test/events.test.ts`
|
||
pins the unreduced set so that closing the gap later is a deliberate act, and asserts the
|
||
property that does hold. **If you ever do make the phase driver reduce, that test fails and
|
||
tells you which docs now understate the engine.**
|
||
- [x] **Measure with error bars from now on.** Built: `node src/sim/compare.ts 1600 <tweak>=<n>`
|
||
runs the current bot and one variant over the same deals and reports the paired difference.
|
||
Pairing drops σ from ~9 on the level to **5.3 on the difference**, so 1600 seeds gives ±0.13 in
|
||
about 1m45s — the noise floor is now ~±0.15 rather than ±1.0. Threshold to keep a heuristic is
|
||
**t ≥ 3**, and the report prints the better/worse/identical split beside the mean, because a
|
||
mean carried by a skewed tail is a different claim from broad improvement.
|
||
- [x] **Confirm the Classification Yard rule against the source.** Confirmed, and the guess was
|
||
wrong. The rule is: used Rolling Stock to the Classification Yard, used engines and cabooses
|
||
straight back to the Division Yard, and the Classification Yard empties ONLY when the Division
|
||
Yard is bare — then all at once. The Day-boundary version I had invented was far more generous
|
||
and worth **+2.42 revenue a game the game does not actually grant**. Corrected; revenue 9.67
|
||
→ 7.25.
|
||
- [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.
|
||
- [x] **`stats.ts` undercounts freight.** Fixed: both halves counted, freight share 39% → 49%.
|
||
Worth revisiting the **industry density** decision in Play Balance, which was taken on the old
|
||
number.
|
||
- [x] **LEFT AND RIGHT ARE ON THE WRONG DIAGONAL — for turnouts and for curves, the same way.** The
|
||
engine's `left` turnout is `{stem:'w', through:'e', diverge:'s'}`: a train entering at the
|
||
points from the west heads east and the diverging route leaves to its **right**. The engine's
|
||
`left` curve is arc `sw`, which turns an eastbound train **right** as well. One consistent sign
|
||
error in the hand↔diagonal mapping, and it mislabels every track card a player ever holds.
|
||
**The artwork is right and does not change** — `board-svg.ts:462` draws rails from
|
||
`connectionsFor()` geometry alone, so only words are wrong. **Decision: flip the `hand` value on
|
||
the `TRACK_CARDS` rows AND the two variant tables in the same commit**, so the code keeps
|
||
speaking left/right like the physical supply and now means it. Keep the **row order** in
|
||
`TRACK_CARDS` untouched: `setup.ts:95` builds the deck by iterating that array, so flipping only
|
||
the labels leaves pre-shuffle slot 32 holding a `ne_sw` curve before and after, and
|
||
`variantsFor(…)[0]` still `'sw'` — same seed, same board, and every published replay still
|
||
plays. Also: `track.ts:126` arc fallback, `track.ts:191-212` doc block, `view.ts:1041` and
|
||
`view.ts:1208` diagonal phrases, `bot.ts:837-852` `arcInHand`, seven test files, and the prose
|
||
plus ~14 `data-tip="Turnout · left"` strings in `docs/design/track-geometry.html` — which has no
|
||
generator and must be hand-edited. Verify by fingerprinting a fixed seed's board before and
|
||
after: identical geometry, different words.
|
||
- [x] **A turnout should be playable as an UPGRADE, on top of a card already down.** On a straight,
|
||
or on a curve whose arc matches the turnout's diverging leg. Nothing like this exists — the only
|
||
"upgrade" in the game is the Office tier change, which is explicitly not a card swap
|
||
(`apply.ts:1290`), and `canPlaceAt` hard-stops at `if (existing && !isMovableSign) return false`
|
||
(`track.ts:518`). **Decision: cars AND enhancements both block it** — `standing.length > 0` →
|
||
`UPGRADE_OCCUPIED`, `enhancements.length > 0` → `UPGRADE_ENHANCED`, so an Interlocked straight
|
||
stays a straight. Express the curve rule on **arcs, not hands**, so it survives the flip above.
|
||
No extra connection requirement: all four turnout orientations are port supersets of a straight
|
||
and of any same-arc curve, so an upgrade can never sever an existing join, and the new leg is
|
||
allowed to dangle — that is what it is for. The lifted card leaves play, which is already how
|
||
board cards behave (`apply.ts:1249` salvages only cards that were *not* placed). Reuse
|
||
`card.play` with a placement on an occupied square; `legal.ts:252` must offer those squares for
|
||
turnouts, and the `attachments` set at `legal.ts:137` is already exactly that list.
|
||
**The other half of this report needs no work:** a turnout carries the through route
|
||
(`carriesThroughTrack`), so it is already legal at a Limit, along the Running Track and on
|
||
Secondary Track. Confirmed, not re-investigated.
|
||
- [x] **A Depot shows three MEN AT WORK boxes it can never work.** Offices are Passenger Facilities —
|
||
no freight — but `setup.ts:176` gives every one a three-slot `menAtWork` array, and the three
|
||
renderers loop it with no guard while the green and red rows beside them *are* guarded
|
||
(`board-svg.ts:548`, `panels.ts:218`, `replay.ts:522`). **Decision: all three tiers** — Depot,
|
||
Station and Terminal are all Passenger Facilities and all get `laborers: 0`, so the boxes are
|
||
inert on every one. **Fix it in the model, not the renderers**, so it cannot reappear in a
|
||
fourth place: make `menAtWork` nullable and null for passenger facilities, which is what the
|
||
"Freight only" comment at `state.ts:153` has claimed all along. Freight handling must be neither
|
||
allowed nor displayed there. Two more artifacts of the same "an Office is a Facility" modelling
|
||
go with it: `board-svg.ts:562` calls a Depot **"SHIPS + RECEIVES"**, an industry's flow word,
|
||
and `board-svg.ts:599`'s `Math.max(1, trackCap)` draws it a siding slot although its industry
|
||
track has length 0. `FacilityView` needs a `kind` field; it has no freight/passenger flag today.
|
||
- [x] **Two Ice Houses can be built in one district.** Industries already ban duplicates per Office
|
||
Area — `isLockedOut` (`apply.ts:1774`) covers the Mine Tipple half of the report — but **Ice
|
||
House is a Modifier, not an industry**, and `checkPlay`'s modifier branch (`apply.ts:662`) has
|
||
no duplicate check at all. **Decision: extend the ban to modifier kinds, leave enhancements
|
||
alone.** An Interlocking is a plant at one junction, so a second on another straight is a
|
||
different installation, and the Telegraph → Telephone → Radio chain is already gated per card.
|
||
Expect modifiers with `copies > 1` to go partly dead in solitaire, where there is one Office
|
||
Area — correct, since the spare copies exist for other players' districts.
|
||
- [x] **A drawn card lands at the far end of the hand with nothing to mark it.** `apply.ts:1219`
|
||
pushes, the hand renders in state order (`game.ts:355`), and with `flex-wrap` the newest card is
|
||
exactly where the eye is least likely to be. **Decision: reverse in the display layer, not the
|
||
engine** — `view.ts:898-899` (reversing `hand` and `handWhat` identically, or they desync)
|
||
covers the replay viewer and the standalone replay together, and `game.ts:355` covers the play
|
||
page. Keeping `hand.push` means the bot's option-iteration order does not move, so every revenue
|
||
figure in this file stays comparable; an engine `unshift` would invalidate the lot. The marker
|
||
is play-page only — a `Frame` carries card names, not ids, so a replay cannot say which card
|
||
arrived that step. Follow the `game.scheduled` precedent for a `justDrawn` field, but make the
|
||
badge **persist** rather than flash: it says *which card is new*, not *something just happened*.
|
||
A static `::before` badge as `.handcard.target` does it (`panels.ts:262`), no keyframe — the
|
||
innerHTML rebuild would restart an animation on every render. Clear it in `renderUndo()` and
|
||
after `fromSave()`, or a fresh page load badges last session's draw.
|
||
- [x] **The inbound boxes render green in the side panel.** Green is outbound and red is inbound
|
||
everywhere the colour carries direction — `board-svg.ts:528-545`, `replay.ts:452`, rules §9.1 —
|
||
except `panels.ts`, whose shared `boxes()` helper (`panels.ts:162`) emits class `f` for every
|
||
filled box regardless of direction, so the red row at `panels.ts:222` comes out green. The board
|
||
SVG on the same page draws it correctly, which makes the panel actively contradict the board.
|
||
Give `boxes()` its class from the caller as `replay.ts` already does, add `.box.r` in
|
||
`board-svg.ts:820`'s palette, and take the siding off green in both panels and `replay.ts:525`.
|
||
- [x] **An Interlocking on the board is a bare label, and it does nothing.** The enhancement text is
|
||
drawn with no tooltip (`board-svg.ts:651`) while the copy already exists as data in
|
||
`ENHANCEMENT_CARDS` (`content.ts:589`). Done: every card prints its effect, and the one nothing
|
||
reads says so. **CORRECTED — the first pass had five of the ten statuses wrong.** It claimed
|
||
only Telegraph/Telephone/Radio were live, because the survey grepped for four helper function
|
||
names and read "no match" as "no implementation". In fact **seven are live**: those three plus
|
||
Interlocking (`advance.ts:770`), Yard Office (`advance.ts:750`), Small Yard (`apply.ts:405`) and
|
||
ABS Signals (`advance.ts:599`, stored on the Mainline node). Facing Point Locks and Water Column
|
||
are wired but dormant in solitaire; **Overpass alone has no code path at all**. The shipped
|
||
tooltip briefly told players four working cards did nothing, which is worse than the bare label
|
||
it replaced — `enhancements.test.ts` had passing tests for all four the whole time.
|
||
- [x] **A modifier's grant can land on a direction its host cannot use, and nothing says so —
|
||
corrected in v0.4.7.** The earlier "no bug" verdict below was wrong. The reasoning had been that
|
||
a Grocer's Warehouse is inbound-only. It is not — the card reference says "Both" — so the grant
|
||
was being dropped on a direction the facility should have had. Reported again in play as
|
||
"grocer's warehouse didn't get extra outbound slot for truck dock". The suppression machinery
|
||
itself was right and is kept: it still fires for a passenger Modifier beside a Whistle Post,
|
||
which is not a Passenger Facility — and v0.4.7 gives that grant BACK when the Office is
|
||
upgraded, which it never used to. Original note follows.
|
||
Reported as "Ice House added the laborer but not the outbound slot" — **checked, and there is no
|
||
bug**: Ice House prints +1 *outbound*, a Grocer's Warehouse is `flow: 'inbound'` so
|
||
`allows.outbound` is false, and the capacity was raised on a direction that can never render or
|
||
be stocked. The laborer arrived because laborers have no direction gate. **Decision: an
|
||
industry's printed flow is absolute** — drop the grant on hosts that cannot use it rather than
|
||
opening the direction up. So `applyModifier` (`apply.ts:1788`) gates each capacity grant on
|
||
`allows` and grows `industryTrack.length` only by what was actually applied. **Audit all 17
|
||
profiles for the same trap:** `iceHouse`, `truckDock` and `forklifts` all print `addOut: 1` and
|
||
list `grocersWarehouse`; `waitingArea`, `restaurant` and `hotel` print `addOut: 1` for
|
||
`hosts: ['office']`, which includes a Whistle Post. Then say it in both directions — the hand
|
||
tooltip naming which printed hosts cannot use which half (computable from the profiles, no host
|
||
on the board needed), and the panel's "prints N, Modifiers add M" line showing a suppressed
|
||
grant as suppressed instead of quietly omitting it. That delta display already cites the Ice
|
||
House as the bug that motivated it.
|
||
- [x] **Q13 — rear-end collisions on a Mainline card.** Answered: collide on catching up.
|
||
Implemented, and not on cards that print "trains may pass". Invisible to a bot that always
|
||
denies clearance; a bot that always allows drops from 7.34 revenue to **-5.13**.
|
||
- [x] **Nine of the twelve special-train rules are declared and read by nothing.** Done — all
|
||
nine enforced, and one of them deleted instead. `copiesNextScheduled` was never carried by any
|
||
train card: a Second Section is a Maneuver with its own working intent, so the flag was an
|
||
unreachable second description of an existing mechanic. Cost 0.8 revenue and half the wins
|
||
(8.0 → 7.2, 14/200 → 6/200), which is what enforcing restrictions does.
|
||
- [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.
|
||
- [x] **Every published replay was dead.** All three replayed **2 intents of roughly 400** and
|
||
presented as short games, exactly as the item below it (now in Replay / Save Games) predicted.
|
||
Re-recorded from bot games with `node src/sim/save-replay.ts`, which verifies each save
|
||
round-trips before writing it, and `harness.test.ts` now fails if a published replay stops
|
||
short. The version-stamp item in Replay / Save Games is still worth doing — this catches the
|
||
breakage, it does not explain it to a player.
|
||
- [x] **Coordinate labels read Y,X on the board — v0.4.9.** Now X,Y everywhere a coordinate is shown
|
||
to a player: the on-card label (`board-svg.ts`), the switching-crew tooltip and button
|
||
(`main.ts`), the rejected-option and switching-group text (`game.ts`, `view.ts`), and the
|
||
blocked-move text (`narrate.ts`). Display-only — `GridCoord{row,col}` already had the right
|
||
geometry (row increases north, col increases east), and internal `Map` keys are untouched.
|
||
- [x] **"No switching" blocked moving a train clear of the mainline — v0.4.9.** The six no-switching
|
||
cards (both expresses, Light Engine, Campaign, Circus, Military) mean may not add or drop cars,
|
||
not may never be touched. `switch.move` now refuses only a move that would couple a fresh car —
|
||
the same way `dropOnly` was already handled — so these trains can still be shunted onto
|
||
Secondary Track to clear the mainline. `switch.dropCars` and `switch.sortConsist` stay blocked.
|
||
- [x] **Q3 corrected: Expedite governs WHERE a train may stand, not WHEN it leaves — v0.4.9.** The
|
||
forced same-Stage departure (`departsThisStage`, the `shiftChange` expedite pass) is gone; an
|
||
expedited train now arrives and is released like any other train, switchable in between. New
|
||
fault instead: left off the Office square when a Mainline Phase begins, it costs 1 Revenue
|
||
(`expediteFault`, `EXPEDITE_FAULT_PENALTY`), every Phase it is still caught there. Resolved
|
||
"3/4 EXPRESS PRINTS A RULE IT CAN NEVER USE" as a side effect — it can now reach the Local
|
||
Operations turn its printed freight rule needs. Revealed a bot gap instead: logged above under
|
||
Bot Performance.
|
||
- [x] **`evaluateClearance` checked only the first occupant it found — v0.4.9.** Found while
|
||
explaining a playtest report: the Superintendent was asked to rule on a same-direction train
|
||
instead of being held against an opposite-direction one also on the card, because the loop
|
||
returned on whichever occupant it examined first rather than checking all of them — invisible
|
||
until the Telegraph/Telephone/Radio exception made it possible for a card to hold two trains at
|
||
once. Now checks every occupant for an absolute bar before offering any judgment call. Pinned
|
||
with a test that fails against the old single-pass code.
|
||
- [x] **The splash page now shows the box art — v0.4.9.** `docs/StationMasterSplashScreen.png`
|
||
(3.0 MB) resized to a 145 KB JPEG (`public/images/`, copied into the build by `build-web.ts`)
|
||
and placed beside the title, tagline, blurb and both buttons in a side-by-side hero, stacking
|
||
to image-above-text on mobile.
|