184 lines
9.1 KiB
Markdown
184 lines
9.1 KiB
Markdown
# Master of Vega — build plan and findings
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**Read this before touching `src/games/mastervega/`.** It records the traps
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found while building it; several were only discovered by instrumenting the soak
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and would be very easy to reintroduce.
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Master of Orion clone. Registered as `mastervega`, category `arcade-console-pc`
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("Video Games"), iconFrame **92**. MOO1 rules with three MOO2 conveniences
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(colony building queue, colony detail view, hireable leaders). Preset ship
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hulls with an auto-refitting **Mark**, no ship designer. Tactical grid combat.
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Empires are the ten **species** themselves — this game deliberately does *not*
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use `data/opponents.json` or `ui/Portrait.js`.
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## Architecture
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Split enforced by import discipline, modelled on `totalannihilation/` rather
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than `civilization/` (whose scene grew to 1792 lines).
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**Headless — zero Phaser imports, importable by Node:**
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| File | Role |
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|---|---|
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| `VegaRules.js` | `compileRules(json)` — validate + index the rules file |
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| `VegaGalaxyGen.js` | Deterministic galaxy: shapes, stars, planets, Gabriel-graph starlanes, homeworlds |
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| `VegaLogic.js` | The engine: colonies, sliders, buildings, research, fleets, combat dispatch, council, victory |
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| `VegaShips.js` | Preset hulls + Mark auto-refit; the knapsack loadout |
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| `VegaCombat.js` | Tactical battle **stepper** |
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| `VegaAI.js` | AI empire controller |
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| `VegaDiplomacy.js` | Treaties, attitudes, council politics |
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| `VegaLeaders.js` | Leader pool, offers, postings |
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**Render tier:** `MasterOfVegaGame.js` (scene), `VegaStarMap.js`,
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`VegaNebula.js`, `VegaSystemView.js`, `VegaCombatView.js`, `VegaScreens.js`,
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`VegaArt.js`, `VegaFx.js`.
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State is plain JSON with the RNG cursor inside it (`state.rngState`,
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explicit-step mulberry32), so replaying a seed reproduces the galaxy, the
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battles and the winner exactly. `serialize()` strips `rules` and every
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underscore-prefixed memo cache.
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## Traps found during the build
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Each of these was a real bug that produced a plausible-looking but broken game.
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1. **An immobile hull froze the entire fleet.** `fleetSpeed()` returned 0 if
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*any* ship in a fleet was immobile. A completed Star Base joins the fleet
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over its own colony — which is the empire's main battle fleet — and from that
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moment `canSendFleet` refused every order. Instrumented over one game:
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**338 of 338** valid attacks (in range, strong enough, at war) were refused
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for this reason. No colony could ever be attacked, so no war could be won.
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Fix: `fleetSpeed` skips immobile hulls; `sendFleet` splits them into a
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garrison that stays behind; `consolidateFleets` keys on mobility so the
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garrison is never re-merged.
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2. **Conquest was unreachable without bombardment.** Even at a 2500-turn cap,
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*no empire was ever eliminated*: a cornered empire's beaten fleet always
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retreats to its last fortified homeworld and denies the attacker the clean
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orbit an invasion needs. `bombardPopKill` and the Stellar Converter's
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`planetCracker` were declared in the rules but never implemented. Implementing
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orbital bombardment (MOO1's actual answer) made conquest work immediately.
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3. **The invasion window never opened.** Two versions of this failed the same
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way. Requiring `defenseHp === 0` never worked because combat resolves on the
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attacker's turn and the *defender's* turn rebuilds the batteries first.
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Requiring an empty sky failed too — a besieged colony finishes a ship every
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few turns and that one hull blocked the landing indefinitely. Measured: 1268
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colony-turns under hostile orbit, **2** invasion attempts. Now the rule is
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orbital *superiority*, and surviving defences fight as ground support.
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4. **Transports never left home.** `manageFleets` had an early
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`if (power <= 0) continue`, and transports carry no guns — so transport
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fleets skipped every movement branch. 3495 idle observations against 12 in
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transit. They now escort the main battle fleet.
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5. **The AI threw transports away.** Without a forecast it launched every
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landing regardless of odds: 1971 failures against 130 successes.
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`invasionForecast()` now gates it — success rate went to ~91%.
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6. **Nobody ever met anybody.** Contact required flying a ship into an occupied
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system, so most galaxies had no diplomacy and no wars at all. Empires now
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also make contact by proximity (`economy.contactRange`).
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7. **The Council could never elect anyone.** Every empire stood as a candidate
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and therefore voted for itself — 30 sessions in an 800-turn game, all null.
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MOO1's rule: the **two largest** empires stand and everyone else votes
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between them.
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8. **…and then it elected someone every time.** A dominant empire won its own
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council vote a hundred turns before it could finish a war, so conquest never
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completed. MOO1's **refusal to submit** (the defeated candidate walks out and
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the election is void) restored the balance.
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9. **Combat had a decisive first-strike bias.** Firing was sequential, so
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whichever side acted first in the round contact was made won. Mirror matches
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swung from 100% to 0% attacker depending on tier, because the parity of the
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contact round changes with fleet speed. Damage is now **banked and applied
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together** at the end of the round.
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10. **…and then ties were resolved in a fixed direction.** Symmetric fleets
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reach the disengage round *exactly* tied astonishingly often; giving the
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attacker every drawn battle produced a 44pp bias. The coin is now flipped.
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11. **Every battle stalemated on the round cap.** Two causes: in-combat repair
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(6% of hull/round) outpaced damage, and the attrition tail of an even fight
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is enormously long. Repair was cut to 3%/6%, and a **disengage rule** now
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makes the weaker side withdraw at round 25 rather than grinding to the cap.
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12. **An all-missile ship ran dry and stalemated.** At some tiers missiles score
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better damage-per-space than beams, so a pure knapsack built ships that
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emptied their racks in five rounds and then sat unarmed. `MISSILE_SHARE`
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caps missiles at 40% of tonnage. This is a design rule, not an optimisation.
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13. **Researching a weapon could make ships worse.** A greedy "best
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damage-per-space" fill mounts one oversized gun and strands the leftover
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tonnage — the cruiser's beam damage *dropped* from 42 to 28 on learning
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Death Ray. The loadout is now an unbounded **knapsack**, which is provably
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monotonic in tech because researching only ever adds candidates. The one
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sanctioned exception is the tier where missiles first appear (see the
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verifier's section 4).
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14. **Waste ran away and killed every colony.** Population fell 50 → 20 with 868
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accumulated waste. Cleanup is now **mandatory** and taken off the top,
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pro-rata from the other channels — MOO1's eco slider snapping to the
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minimum. Related: factories beyond what the population can staff are
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**mothballed** (`effectiveFactories`), or a shrinking colony keeps polluting
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from factories nobody is left to run and can never recover.
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15. **Espionage leaked the whole tech tree.** Crediting raw espionage score made
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every empire a spy agency; all five reached 60/60 techs, making the
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per-species availability roll meaningless. Only the surplus over a baseline
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now counts.
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16. **The Council never convened.** `colonizedFraction` measured against *every*
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star, but a third of systems hold only gas giants and belts, so "half the
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galaxy colonised" was unreachable. It now measures against settleable stars.
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17. **Fleets proliferated to 281.** Ships completing while the local fleet is in
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transit each spawn a new fleet. `consolidateFleets` merges idle fleets each
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turn.
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18. **Dead empires left ghost fleets** on the map forever. Caught by the soak's
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invariant checker, not by playing.
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19. **Worldgen fairness could not always be satisfied.** On large sparse
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galaxies a homeworld can have *no* star inside its opening fuel range, so
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there was nothing to upgrade and that empire simply could not expand.
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`guaranteeNearbyWorlds` now seeds new worlds when it must.
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## Balance reference (27-game AI soak)
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```
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outcomes: { conquest: 17, council: 7, timeout: 3 }
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turns: min 110, median 282, max 800
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AI turn time: 0.45 ms average (budget 50 ms)
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mirror-match bias: < 5.2pp at every tier, zero stalemates
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wins spread across 8 of 10 species
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```
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## Files touched to register the game
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`src/data/gamesRegistry.js`, `src/main.js`, `src/scenes/GameRoomScene.js`
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(`slugDispatch`), `src/data/assetManifest.js`, `src/scenes/PreloadScene.js`
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(eager-loads `mastervega-artwork.json`), `src/services/soundtrack.js`
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(`hacker`).
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## Verification
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```bash
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node tools/verifyMasterOfVega.js # 809 checks, ~60s
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node tools/verifyMasterOfVega.js --quick # 808 checks, ~15s
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node tools/verifyMasterOfVega.js --games=50 # a deeper soak
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```
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Ten sections; section 2 runs the real procedural painters against a Proxy fake
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canvas, section 10 is the self-play soak with invariants and a turn-time budget.
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**Never browser-tested.** Everything above is engine- and Node-verified only.
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## Art
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All sheets are optional and start `path: null`; `VegaArt.js` paints stand-ins at
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the identical frame geometry. See `src/games/mastervega/sprites.md` for the
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frame maps. Frame indexes are append-only.
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