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softpython2884claude
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Stop the difficulty tiers paying the player back, and thin the escorts
Two findings from the third 24-seed run. CADET measured harder than PILOT -- 12 wins against 13, with longer boss fights (57.8s vs 48.0s) and more damage taken (5.4 vs 4.8) despite firing slower. The cause is the one only half-fixed two commits ago: enemies are salvage, so CADET's 0.85 budget bought fewer crystals, a worse ship and a longer fight. Narrowing that spread was not enough; every tier now fields the same number of enemies and the tiers separate on rate of fire and hull depth alone. HIVE MOTHER's fight ran to 65.6 seconds against 30 to 53 for the other four, and a fight that long accumulates damage whatever its patterns do. Escorts were carrying full wave hit points and soaking the player's fire. They are meant to be moving obstacles, not health bars: half hit points. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01AKLqS4PgnCXrzKHDH8Cnzy
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Lines changed: 20 additions & 8 deletions

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‎pc/nova/combat.py‎

Lines changed: 9 additions & 3 deletions
Original file line numberDiff line numberDiff line change
@@ -126,9 +126,15 @@ def spawn_wave(self, dt):
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self.spawn_t = gap
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def spawn_escort(self, kind, x, y):
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"""A boss launching an escort. Weaker than a spawned wave enemy: they
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arrive in numbers and the boss is the real fight."""
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hp = max(1, data.ENEMY_HP[kind] + self.run.sector - 1)
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"""A boss launching an escort.
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Half the hit points of a wave enemy. They arrive in numbers and they
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are meant to be moving obstacles, not health bars: at full strength
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they soaked so much of the player's fire that HIVE MOTHER's fight ran
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to 66 seconds against 30 to 53 for every other boss, and a fight that
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long accumulates damage whatever its patterns are doing.
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"""
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hp = max(1, (data.ENEMY_HP[kind] + self.run.sector) // 2)
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e = ent.Enemy(kind, max(data.PLAY_L + 12, min(data.PLAY_R - 12, x)),
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y, hp, self.run.sector, self.rng)
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e.score = data.ENEMY_SCORE[kind] // 2

‎pc/nova/data.py‎

Lines changed: 11 additions & 5 deletions
Original file line numberDiff line numberDiff line change
@@ -402,13 +402,19 @@ def SEC_ACCENT(sector):
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# take a third of your hull in one mistake needs a hull you can afford to make
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# mistakes with -- otherwise "hard" just means "the first hit ends the run",
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# which is not difficulty, it is fragility.
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# The budget spread is narrow on purpose: enemies are also salvage, so a tier
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# that fields many more of them hands the player a better ship in exchange.
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# The tiers separate on rate of fire and on the depth of the hull bar instead.
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# Every tier fields the same number of enemies, and the column is kept only
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# because the endless Void still wants to scale.
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#
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# Narrowing the spread was not enough: enemies are salvage, so CADET's 0.85
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# bought fewer crystals, a worse ship, longer boss fights and more damage taken
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# than PILOT -- the easy tier measured *harder* than the intended one, 12 wins
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# against 13. A difficulty knob that pays the player back is not a difficulty
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# knob. The tiers separate on rate of fire and on the depth of the hull bar,
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# and on nothing else.
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DIFFICULTIES = (
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("CADET", 24, 0.85, 0.0, "Forgiving. Learn the patterns."),
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("CADET", 24, 1.00, 0.0, "Forgiving. Learn the patterns."),
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("PILOT", 18, 1.00, 0.35, "The intended fight."),
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("ACE", 12, 1.15, 0.78, "Fast, dense, unkind."),
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("ACE", 12, 1.00, 0.78, "Fast, dense, unkind."),
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)
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# --- map nodes -----------------------------------------------------------

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