CodexGameDev/experiments/003_rig_trials/hypothesis.md

Experiment 003 Hypothesis

Primary Comparison

One persistent rig is exposed to three qualitative requirements:

• Haul: tool exposure, cargo mass, and navigation;
• Furnace: drive heat, ambient heat, ward orientation, and cooling layout;
• Gale: changing wind, ballast anchoring, directional thrust, and maneuvering.

The comparison is not which trial is best. It is whether the player changes a physical construction for reasons learned by piloting it, and whether knowledge about parts transfers without one whole layout solving everything.

Competing Explanations

1. Construction is valuable when it becomes the player's directly controlled capability.
2. Changing requirements create useful adaptation even if any single trial is shallow.
3. Direct piloting adds surface action but construction remains obvious loadout selection.
4. Physical placement is too weak or too opaque, so only part counts matter.
5. A universal rig crystallizes immediately.
6. Cheap revision still feels like repetitive implementation rather than reasoning.

Evidence Priorities

Strong positive evidence:

• rebuild after a concrete observed failure;
• preserve a useful subassembly while changing other structure;
• deliberately exploit exposure, adjacency, mass, or directional behavior;
• voluntary trial or layout experiment not needed for completion;
• desire to improve or test the rig after a pass.

Weak evidence:

• completing all trials;
• spending a long time driving;
• repeatedly retrying the same build;
• placing the part named by a trial description.

Confounds

• poor driving feel;
• an impossible or trivial tuning threshold;
• unclear placement/rotation controls;
• trial geometry requiring dexterity rather than construction;
• the starter rig being too competent;
• checklist-like descriptions prescribing the solution.