Aetheria/docs/deterministic-combat-resolution.md

Deterministic Combat Resolution

Status: target authority map

Objective

Combat outcomes are deterministic probabilistic transactions resolved by the daemon from observer-local information and authoritative spatial state. A rendered projectile is evidence of a committed shot, not the owner of hit or damage truth.

The same resolver serves pilot cognition, RTS agents, autonomous NPCs, replay, and conformance. No caller receives hidden target truth or a more accurate execution path because it is human-controlled.

Authority

Owner

The daemon combat resolver owns shot identity, solution quality, seeded outcome, impact distribution, damage transaction, and combat receipts.

Inputs

The resolver may read:

• the attacker's observer-local contact and information state;
• selected target and intended effect or subsystem priority;
• fire-control cognition allocation, quality, load, and retained solution;
• weapon range, dispersion, damage spread, penetration, damage type, timing, guidance, visibility, ammunition, heat, and energy state;
• Ymir-authored positions, orientations, velocities, angular motion, body bounds, and line-of-fire geometry at commitment time;
• target signature, known silhouette/topology, countermaneuver, countermeasures, and only those defenses exposed by gathered information;
• doctrine constraints and accepted semantic action parameters;
• a deterministic entropy key derived from run seed and stable shot identity.

Missing knowledge remains uncertainty. The resolver must not replace an observer's weak contact with canonical target internals when constructing its forecast or firing solution.

Outputs

One committed shot produces an immutable receipt containing:

• shot, attacker, target-contact, weapon, and semantic-action identity;
• observation versions and solution inputs used;
• normalized solution quality and factor contributions;
• hit probability and deterministic hit roll;
• miss or hit classification;
• aim intent and deterministic impact distribution;
• impact region/cell or miss vector;
• damage type, penetration, pre-mitigation damage, mitigations, and applied shield/armor/hull/equipment damage;
• resource, heat, signature, cooldown, ammunition, and wear transactions;
• causal refusal or cancellation facts when no shot was committed;
• presentation timing and trajectory hints derived from the result.

Receipts are CultCache/CultMesh state. Eve projects them without becoming a second combat model.

Pipeline

semantic fire request
  -> command validation and doctrine gate
  -> observer-local firing-solution snapshot
  -> weapon resource transaction
  -> deterministic hit and impact sampling
  -> canonical damage transaction
  -> immutable shot receipt and feedback events
  -> derived Eve presentation trajectory/effects

The transaction boundary is the committed shot. Resource payment, outcome, damage, and receipt publication either commit together or do not happen.

Deterministic Entropy

Each stochastic dimension uses a named roll derived from:

run generation seed
shot sequence or stable shot id
attacker entity id
weapon owner/behavior identity
target contact id
named dimension salt

Named dimensions include hit, impact-angle, impact-radius, penetration, damage-spread, countermeasure, and malfunction. Adding a new roll must not perturb existing dimensions. Replaying the same accepted commands against the same state versions produces the same receipts.

Solution Quality

Hit probability is not one opaque accuracy stat. The receipt publishes bounded factor contributions, initially:

• contact information and evidence age;
• lock/solution maturity;
• fire-control cognition quality and allocated throughput;
• range against weapon effective range and damage curve;
• weapon dispersion and platform stability;
• target apparent size, aspect, transverse motion, and acceleration uncertainty;
• attacker motion and damaged-control penalties;
• target signature, jamming, decoys, and defensive maneuver;
• aim-point specificity and subsystem knowledge;
• guidance quality and time of flight where relevant.

The first implementation may use a documented weighted log-odds model. It must retain named contributions so later calibration can change without turning the result into an unexplained percentage.

Impact Distribution

A hit samples an impact distribution rather than applying damage to an abstract target total. Distribution width comes from residual solution error, weapon spread, target motion uncertainty, range, and cognition quality. Distribution center comes from accepted aim intent and the observer's known target topology.

Low-information subsystem targeting broadens or biases the distribution; it does not secretly reveal the canonical component location. The sampled impact then enters the target's shield, armor, hull-cell, equipment, thermal, and crew damage pipeline.

Charged Weapons

A charged fire request commits time before it commits a shot:

1. The daemon begins spool without requiring a current firing solution.
2. Charge consumes authored energy and heat and reaches ready state.
3. If an acceptable solution exists at readiness, the shot commits.
4. Otherwise the weapon holds full charge while solution state continues to evolve.
5. After the authored safe hold interval, one deterministic malfunction hazard check occurs per completed held second. Risk increases with overdue time.
6. The first acceptable solution commits the shot automatically; a separate semantic cancel command may discharge it safely if the weapon supports that.

This preserves the tactical timing commitment without rebuilding a release-key dexterity test that agents solve differently from humans.

Ymir Boundary

Ymir owns world geometry and kinematics. At commitment, the resolver may query Ymir for relative transforms, motion, body bounds, occlusion, and line-of-fire constraints. Ordinary weapon damage does not wait for a projectile body to overlap a target.

Physical entities remain appropriate when their continued existence changes the world: mines, drones, interceptable missiles, torpedoes, debris, boarding craft, area fields, and recoverable or destructible payloads. Those objects are not exempt from deterministic fire-control receipts; Ymir owns their later motion and collision after launch.

Eve Presentation

Eve receives:

• persistent firing-solution and weapon state;
• immutable shot and damage receipts;
• hit/miss, impact, malfunction, refusal, and destruction chronology;
• derived trajectory hints such as origin, impact/miss endpoint, launch time, impact time, effect identity, and view channels.

Unity, Electron, and future runtimes may interpolate tracers, beams, recoil, audio, impact effects, and cockpit instruments from those facts. A renderer may drop or simplify an effect. It may not promote a visual collision into damage.

Forbidden Writers

• IAetheriaRuntimePhysicalPayloadPhysics.Step may not decide ordinary weapon damage.
• Unity physics, effect managers, colliders, and particle systems may not report hits back as combat truth.
• cognition and agents may propose shots but may not sample or apply outcomes.
• Eve lowerers may not reconstruct hit probability from presentation props.
• a repair loop may not reconcile client-observed impacts into daemon health.

Cut Line

Ordinary weapon authority is the shot resolver and damage transaction. It does not spawn a physical payload, advance one through Ymir, or apply damage from a returned contact. Physical payload documents exist only for objects whose continued motion and contact are gameplay state; their contact facts do not implicitly carry weapon damage authority.

The cut is complete only when a physical payload contact can no longer alter ordinary weapon damage and a missing presentation trajectory cannot suppress a resolved hit.

Conformance

Required proofs:

1. Identical state and semantic commands produce byte-equivalent shot receipts.
2. Changing only a named entropy salt does not perturb other roll dimensions.
3. Weak target information changes solution quality without reading hidden target topology.
4. Cognition quality, range, aspect, and target motion contribute independently and are visible in the receipt.
5. Hit and miss both consume the committed weapon resources.
6. Impact distribution reaches shield, armor, hull-cell, and equipment damage.
7. Removing all projectile presentation still produces the same damage receipt.
8. Injecting a fake visual collision cannot produce damage.
9. Charged hold risk replays exactly and commits immediately when a valid solution appears.
10. Pilot and agent requests traverse the same command, resolver, and damage transaction.