5.8 KiB
Experiment 008 Revision 2 Preliminary Analysis — Session 7b7c7a92
Status: telemetry and brief initial report inspected; targeted follow-up pending.
Source: JSONL/catalyst-ecology-7b7c7a92-42cb-4ab2-8a81-d1316ea972c5.jsonl
Session Structure
- 5,338 events over 609.4 elapsed seconds, including a roughly 196-second break between Shoal and Bastion.
- All three eight-field expeditions completed once in displayed order.
- All 24 fields cleared first attempt; no deaths, restarts, abandoned runs, or replays.
- Twelve choices total and exactly three post-build transitions per expedition, confirming the corrective structure worked.
- Seven damage events across the session. Combat difficulty was not a meaningful constraint.
- One save occurred after all three expeditions.
The player reports that revision 2 made it “a bit easier to see how my choices impacted my play.” This validates the correction at the legibility/exposure level, not yet at the enjoyment or strategy-half-life level.
Builds
| Expedition | Choice sequence | Complete build |
|---|---|---|
| Shoal | Bloom → Fork → Conduit → Fork | Bloom 1, Fork 2, Conduit 1 |
| Bastion | Focus → Fork → Bloom → Fork | Focus 1, Fork 2, Bloom 1 |
| Brood | Arc → Fork → Arc → Resonance | Arc 2, Fork 1, Resonance 1 |
Unlike revision 1, Bloom+Arc was not a universal core. Fork appeared everywhere, but at different levels and with different consumers. Each expedition specialized by repeating a module or using Resonance rather than sampling four distinct mechanisms.
The builds are causally distinct:
- Shoal used Fork and Bloom to create secondary hits, then Conduit converted them into 69 heavy lances. Its 237 kills were distributed across primary (46), fragments (73), sparks (70), and lances (48).
- Bastion used repeated primaries for 22 Focus ruptures while Fork produced 658 fragment hits. Bloom supplied 151 spark hits after kills began. Focus caused 13 kills and fragments 60.
- Brood omitted Bloom entirely. Fork generated hits for Arc; Arc was stacked, then Resonance amplified both. Arc triggered 114 times and caused 54 kills; fragments caused 83.
This is much stronger behavioral evidence of conditional composition than revision 1. It is still not proof of deliberate ecology reasoning because the player may have been comparing builds experimentally or avoiding repetition from the previous session.
Mature-Build Exposure
Each complete build persisted through fields five through eight:
| Expedition | Mature field times | Main growth during mature fields |
|---|---|---|
| Shoal | 9.8, 10.1, 9.9, 11.2 s | Conduit lances rose from 18 cumulative to 69; spark hits from 111 to 349 |
| Bastion | 16.8, 18.2, 19.5, 21.7 s | Fork hits rose from 198 to 658; Focus ruptures from 12 to 22 |
| Brood | 10.6, 12.9, 17.1, 15.1 s | Arc triggers rose from 44 to 114; spawned Motes from 24 to 69 |
The extra fields supplied approximately 41 seconds of mature Shoal, 76 seconds of mature Bastion, and 56 seconds of mature Brood, versus 7–22 seconds in revision 1. The player now reports clearer choice impact, so the first-run measurement defect was successfully repaired.
No field exhausted the secondary budget, though Bastion approached it most closely (observed minimum 18/300). Large effect chains were therefore bounded but not usually clipped.
Choice Deliberation
Deliberation did not simply decline with familiarity:
- Shoal Conduit took about 15.0 seconds.
- Bastion's first Focus took about 11.5 seconds and final Fork stack about 14.0 seconds.
- Brood's final Resonance took about 9.8 seconds.
Those pauses are consistent with real build consideration, but reading, distraction, and uncertainty remain alternate explanations. The long Conduit choice is particularly notable because the first session's Conduit selection was a misunderstanding; revision 2 placed it into a functioning secondary-hit engine.
Preliminary Interpretation
Revision 2 establishes that the system can visibly express multiple four-choice builds across different ecologies. It weakens the immediate crystallization interpretation from revision 1: Bloom+Arc was not universal, stacking occurred, and one expedition deliberately or experimentally omitted Bloom despite its known strength.
It does not yet establish why the builds differed or whether the extra exposure was enjoyable. Three readings remain:
- The player transferred module knowledge and selected conditional causal engines for each population.
- The player intentionally sampled three distinct builds to make the experiment informative, regardless of preference.
- More mature fields made effects readable, but the run still lacked enough decision points or surprise to motivate replay.
Fork may be emerging as a reusable abstraction rather than a complete answer. It appeared in all builds because extra hits feed Bloom, Arc, and Conduit, while its partner determined the resulting capability. That would match “reuse components, not answers.” Alternatively, Fork×1/2 may simply be the strongest generic throughput option and thus an early universal core.
No replay followed the clearer mature exposure. As always, this is ambiguous: three eight-field runs may have provided enough evidence, may have become repetitive, or may not have produced a new specific question. The corrective test now permits that question to be asked meaningfully.
Follow-up Needed
- Were the three specialized builds chosen in response to each population, to test different combinations, or for another reason? What was the intended role of Fork in all three?
- During fields five through eight, did any interaction become surprising, satisfying, or fun rather than merely easier to read? When, if at all, did the extra fields become repetition?
- Did the results suggest a specific alternative build worth replaying, and did the four-slot limit now feel productive or still premature/restrictive?