aetherbound-guild/docs/runtime/PHASE9_2_AUTHORITATIVE_BATTLE_CONTRACT.md

P9.2 Authoritative Automatic Battle Contract

Revision: p9.2-contract-r1 Baseline: P9.1 source cca5eae6247f37dc4ee51770819adb6ddfc51cc5 Scope: one deterministic post-first-session encounter

1. Experience Contract

• Fantasy: command a small Guild line through a dangerous breach without manually firing skills.
• Primary action: commit the expedition and watch the selected professions physically advance and execute their jobs.
• Immediate result: within one second the party and enemy lines move; first contact visibly stops the melee line and starts authoritative attacks.
• Automation: movement, targeting, attacks, healing and cooldowns resolve automatically from fixed-tick state.
• Bottleneck: current member HP, enemy HP, contact pressure and remaining time are visible at all times.
• Recurring decision: continue for the victory or retreat after tick 50 to avoid a worse result. Retreat value changes with the visible battle state.
• Mastery: learn when each profession stabilizes, accelerates or fails the line and recognize a recoverable versus collapsing position.
• Continuation: the result names the cause and the exact future system that P9.3 will add; it does not pretend persistence already exists.

2. Fixed Encounter Fixture

The first implementation uses one source-bound fixture named BREACH_WATCH_01. It is deterministic and intentionally narrow.

Player line

The encounter imports the current P9.1 field_order, stable member IDs, levels and end-of-session HP. If a test starts the encounter directly, its fixture must provide the same fields explicitly.

Profession	Max HP	Automatic action
Hearthguard	130	Contact guard strike; lowers the next incoming melee hit.
Wayrunner	100	Fast contact strike; gains a flank hit when not first.
Farstring	85	Ranged shot from behind the contact line.
Kindhand	90	Heals the lowest-ratio living ally below 80%; otherwise makes a weak ranged hit.

Enemy line

Enemy	Max HP	Automatic action
Rift Bulwark	180	Advances to contact and attacks the first living Guild member.
Rift Spitter	110	Remains behind the Bulwark and attacks the lowest-HP-ratio living member.

Numbers are fixture authority for P9.2 only. They are not the final campaign economy or content values.

3. Simulation Rules

• Fixed tick: 100 ms.
• Encounter timeout: tick 900 (90 s).
• Positions are integer logical units on one horizontal axis.
• Guild starts left and advances right; enemies start right and advance left.
• Melee units stop when the distance to the opposing first living unit is at or below their contact range.
• Ranged units never move ahead of the current Guild contact member.
• One actor may resolve at most one action per tick.
• Dead actors act zero more times and are excluded from targets immediately after the resolving event batch.
• Victory: all enemies reach zero HP.
• Defeat: all deployed Guild members reach zero HP.
• Timeout: neither victory nor defeat at tick 900.

Each accepted tick emits an ordered event list. The outcome snapshot stores an event hash and state hash. Rendering and audio consume events but never mutate simulation authority.

4. Controls

Control	Rule
Pause	Freezes accepted simulation ticks; UI/inspect remains responsive.
1x / 2x	Changes how many fixed ticks are requested per wall-time interval; never changes event order or result.
Inspect	Opens recent authoritative events and current actor facts; state mutation is forbidden.
Retreat	Disabled before tick 50. First accepted command records one retreat-start tick. Duplicate commands return the original receipt.

Retreat resolves at accepted_tick + 20. Actors may continue to resolve events during withdrawal. If victory or defeat locks first, that outcome wins. A completed retreat grants no Coin and applies no permanent casualty in P9.2.

5. Result Grammar

Every terminal page displays, in this order:

1. Outcome: victory, defeat, timeout or retreat.
2. Cause: the decisive event or unmet objective.
3. Survivors: stable member IDs and current HP.
4. Cost/reward: P9.2 victory uses one fixture receipt; other results grant zero.
5. Next: Home/Restart, plus an explicit note that persistent casualty/recovery remains a later system.

No result may say a fallen member was permanently removed or restored.

6. Step Ownership

Step	Owned paths
Contract	this file, Goal, plan, checkpoint, ledger
Domain	runtime/domain/p9_2/, runtime/tests/p9_2/authoritative_battle_domain_test.gd
Runtime UI	runtime/main.gd, P9.2 presentation adapters and focused UI test
Result/handoff	P9.2 result UI and result test only
Integrated gate	P9.2 runners/evidence docs and H5 delivery record

7. Legal Terminal

Aetherbound Guild P9.2 authoritative battle candidate ready

or:

Aetherbound Guild P9.2 redesign required: <earliest failed product boundary>