combat.md

The Damage Door — work_vector §4, built; dice + 9×9 landed (phase 3)

Track write-up, 2026-08-27; updated 2026-09-05 (RPG phase 3: the dice door, the 9×9 type symmetry, the hybrid armour law, the crit — commits 4efe468..). This is THE doc for the blow: what the law is, where each piece lives, and the contracts that keep the two scales of battle honest. The intent it implements is work_vector.md §4, with CANON S12, S13, S14 and S16 riding along.

The law

One door subtracts hp. Every weapon — a sword, a spell, a cliff, a dev cheat, a harness script — strikes through apply_damage, and death from any of them is indistinguishable by protocol. What differs between weapons is a ROW, not a code path.

One roll makes a wound (phase 3, CANON S13). Damage is NdM dice of the weapon/spell/creature row through the ONE assembly roll_strike (macro/damage_types.h): (roll NdM + attribute add) · skill percent, integer end to end. Attributes ADD, skills MULTIPLY, and there is no to-hit — the physics of the swing or the projectile decides contact. Fixed damage is the degenerate die Nd1 and consumes zero rng. LCK's ONE reader is the crit (crit_procs, 1 LCK = 0.5%): a crit is the blade finding the ARMOUR GAP — it ignores mitigation and multiplies nothing. The verdict is rolled at the strike site (melee) or rides the projectile from the cast/loose (spells, missiles) as DamageSource.critical / Projectile.critical.

Nine damage types = nine armour columns (CANON S13). DamageType — Slash/Pierce/Blunt + the six school elements — is ONE enum for blows and armour both; a body's defence is an ArmorProfile (nine columns on the creature row AND the item row), and the blow argues with the column of its own type. A spell's type is its tag's row (kSpellTagDefs.dmgType, the canon remap as data); a weapon's is its item column; a fist is Blunt.

One rule decides an enemy. A relation below the threshold is hostility, spelled once; everything else is a form of that answer — the battle masks are its baked form, the stance colours its continuous projection, the per-entity door adds only session state.

One law of battle at both scales. What a death pays — facts, reputation, loot, experience — does not depend on whether the player fought it by hand or resolved it on the map.

The pieces

Piece	Where	What it is
THE door	sub/damage.h	apply_damage(reg, target, src, amount, kind, type, bus) — the only code that subtracts subworld hp, in one fixed order: the already-dead guard, mitigation of the blow's own type column (skipped when src.critical — the gap was found), subtract-then-judge, the protocol stamp, Dead once, NpcDeath under the ONE PlayerTag guard. amount is integer like every combat quantity. apply_lethal_damage is the execution form (dev cheat, harness kills; a fractional bar dies to the ceiling blow).
THE dice	core/dice.h	Dice{n,m} as table data; roll_dice (exactly n draws, Nd1 = zero), crit_procs (LCK·5 per mille), dice_mean_x2 (exact expectation ×2 in ints — the auto-resolve's read).
THE strike assembly	macro/damage_types.h	roll_strike(rng, dice, flatAdd, multPct, luck) — every blow's algebra, and strike_mean_x2 its expectation. Carriers: ecs::Combat (dice/flatAdd/multPct/luck/dmgType, filled by project_combat for NPCs and hand_strike_fields for the player), SpellDef.dice + spell_strike for casts. The player's weapon IN HAND (weapon_in_hand, macro/anatomy.h) picks the dice, the type and WHICH weapon skill multiplies; bare hands are kFistDice 1d2 Blunt through Unarmed. A spell's percent is its scaling column × its SCHOOL's rank (phase 5, spell_mult_pct — the school multiplies a cast exactly where a weapon skill multiplies a swing; sleeping Body/Mind tags multiply by nothing). The player's sheet everywhere in this table is the EFFECTIVE one (phase 4, player_effective_sheet).
The kinds	same file	kDamageKinds — melee / spell / fall / script / dev, two columns: attributesKiller and armourApplies. "No XP for gravity" and "plate does not soften a fall" are both the Fall row's DATA, not a skipped component or an if at one call site.
The world remembers	chronicle.md	A death that the auto-resolve settles is filed as a FACT at the cell it happened on, and pays the killer renown priced by what the victim was worth. The trail a monster leaves is made of these.
Mitigation	mitigate_amount() in macro/damage_types.h, read by mitigate()/defense_of() in sub/damage.cpp	The second step INSIDE the door — THE HYBRID (owner verdict 2026-09-05): armour A of the blow's own type cuts the LARGER of A itself (the threshold — a blow the plate outweighs never lands; 100% reduction is real and countered by crits, big dice and the right type) and dmg·A/(A+10) (the percent — a big blow is softened, never zeroed). The branches cross at dmg = A + kArmorHalving. Integer law. kArmorHalving = 10 is the historical plain blow the rows were tuned against. Armour comes from the creature ROW's nine columns (NpcTypeDef::armor, scalar era converted with uniform_armor); what a body WEARS adds per column (worn_armor). The law's HOME is damage_types.h because both scales read it — the macro layer may not include the ECS-facing damage.h.
THE hostility rule	macro/state.h factions_hostile / player_hostile_to	One threshold over the one matrix. Six hand-spelled comparisons converged here, and the last private resolver (the macro Aggressive pursuit, which chased regardless of standing) now asks it. Both ends of the scale — kHostileThreshold, kAllyRepThreshold — and the price of a kill, kKillRepPenalty, live in macro/faction.h beside the matrix they cut.
Faction as an INSTANCE	ecs/components.h NPCKind.factionIdx	Owner's ruling, 2026-08-27: «в записи существа вообще не должно быть фракции — моб/нпц это чистый нпц». NpcTypeDef.factionId is gone; the SPAWNER dresses the body — a town in its kingdom's colours, a landmark in its spawnFaction, a squad in its leader's, the open land in the spawn law's own wildFaction column. The same wolf is wildlife in a meadow and a demon in a ruin.
THE reach	sub/targeting.cpp melee_pick_target	In reach ⇔ dist − body_radius(target) ≤ range, ranked by the surface GAP — the same law the NPC strike always walked (reach + radius[target]). Attack reach is ONE number per row (attackRange); a spear will modify that number, never introduce a second system. Body WIDTH is one column (macro/npc.h radius + npc_body_radius); CombatTemplate::bodyRadius — a shadow copy authored by zero rows — is dead.
THE purse	macro/npc.h kNpcPurse	What a body of this row carries. It lived inside make_npc, so only persistent macro bodies had one and the subworld paid out through a faction-keyed multiplier — a second wealth vocabulary that the faction ruling made outright wrong (the same wolf was six times richer under a ruin's banner). One table now, read by both worlds.
Corpse loot	macro/items.h CorpseLootContext	Owner's design: «контекст от таблицы мобов × зоны сложности (0..255) × богатство ландмарка/экономика, и расширяемо». A PRODUCT OF CONTRIBUTIONS, each 1.0 and silent when its system says nothing: the body (row purse × level), the cell's danger byte, the place's wealthMul (a landmark_registry column). It grows by a FIELD, exactly as MacroWorld does.
The way OUT	macro/macro_world.h BattleFactSink	The macro layer must not see the bus (L3), but a silent system is invisible to the story layer. The envelope carries the channel; the app plugs it in once and raises each fact as the ordinary NpcDeath. An auto-resolved kill counts toward a kill-N quest because it IS the same fact.

What the door killed

Protocol divergences, each now impossible by construction and pinned by damage_door_test:

• a spell that killed the player emitted NpcDeath into quest kill-tallies (no PlayerTag guard) — while melee and gravity both guarded it;
• a spell that killed a kindless body emitted nothing, while every other weapon reported kNoNpcType;
• the spell path had no already-dead guard: a corpse could be struck again, and the re-attribution moved the kill to whoever kicked it;
• gravity and the dev cheat stamped DamageFx without HitFlash, breaking the invariant components.h states about those two travelling together;
• lethality was a prediction on two paths (hp - damage <= 0) and a fact on the others.

The two scales agree

What a death pays	Underfoot (the reaper)	On the map (the auto-resolve)
Facts	NpcDeath from the door	BattleFact::Death → the same NpcDeath
Kill reputation	kill_is_no_crime column, kKillRepPenalty	the same column, the same price
Loot	roll_loot_profile + the purse law	roll_fallen_spoils — the same doors
Player XP	award_exp with the wis dividend	award_exp with the wis dividend
NPC leader XP	award_leader_xp (increment 6)	award_leader_xp
Armour (2026-09-05)	mitigate_amount — the hybrid, per type column	fighter_power (auto_battle.h) credits the PERCENT branch as effective HP ((kArmorHalving + armour)/kArmorHalving over the physical-mean column) and the swing as strike_mean_x2 — the same algebra taken at its expectation. Two deliberate BIASES, not second laws: the threshold branch and the crit both depend on the opponent, which a per-fighter scalar cannot know, so heavy armour soaks slightly more in a fought battle than the resolver credits and crits pierce slightly more. The agreement test (auto_battle_test) softens its hand-fought hits through mitigate_amount itself.
XP price of a body (2026-08-29)	npc_xp_reward(type, level)	the same npc_xp_reward (xp_for_fallen, macro/squad.h)

CANON S14 made literal: a lord grows from a fight underfoot exactly as he grows from one on the map. The killer's body names its squad — MacroOrigin for a projected leader, the roster receipt's spawn ordinal for a member.

One XP law (2026-08-29). What a body is WORTH is a column of its own row: NpcTypeDef::xpReward, authored as 5 × (baseLevel + 1) per row, and the one reader npc_xp_reward(t, level) adds (level − 1) × 5 for a levelled instance — the identity reproduces the old 10 × level payout at the row's own level, but the number now lives with the creature instead of inside a formula. exp_from_fight is DELETED (a tombstone comment in attributes.h is all that remains); the three award sites — the player's kill, the NPC leader's kill underfoot, and the auto-resolve's xp_for_fallen — all ask the same function.

Tests that guard the door

dice_door_test (11 checks) locks the roll contract: bounds, Nd1 = zero draws, exactly-n draws, the crit law's frequencies, determinism, and that dice_mean_x2 IS the expectation of roll_dice — the two scales share one algebra by test. damage_door_test (105+ checks) rolls every kind through the door and pins the one protocol, the attribution column, the two guards, the hybrid law's shape (full block under the threshold, softening past the crossover, monotone in armour, identity at zero) and that the door routes through mitigate_amount of the blow's own column. melee_reach_test pins the surface law with the frog/troll pair (same range, same distance, different answer — because a troll is wider) plus grid-arm/full-scan parity and the -1 fallback. auto_resolve_speaks_test pins facts, the kill price and the rolled spoils with their negative controls (a null channel still settles; outlaws cost nothing; a defeat pays nothing). rpg_loot_test derives every expectation from the row, so retuning the purse touches no test.

Left standing, deliberately

• Worn ARMOUR still protects nobody underfoot — CLOSED, phase 4б (2026-09-06): defense_of reads the player's BodyEquipment off his MACRO squad entity when the flagged body carries none of its own («макро — это контекст для микромира», no projected copy to go stale on a dungeon re-dress) — the same read the strike already does for the weapon in hand. Keyed to PlayerTag, else-branch so a body that one day carries its own wardrobe cannot be counted twice; pinned with its negative control in damage_door_test.
• Health stays float STORAGE — CLOSED, phase 4г (2026-09-06): the bar is int{hp, maxHp} (save v80). Fractional regen lives in its carry accumulators (macro/player_recovery.h), never in the bar; the execution blow (apply_lethal_damage) is exactly the remaining number, no ceil.
• NPC weapon skills — multPct is 100 for every NPC (their rows hold no weapons); their strength rides flatAdd through Armsmaster as before.
• sight stays unauthored — every row answers 200 and only the alert chain reads it. Owner's ruling: it waits for the vision track (CANON S11), where it becomes a real column instead of a number invented here.
• The auto-battle does not touch Population. A squad wiped on the map pays its Roster row; whether a garrison's death should also thin the landmark that raised it is an economy question (the honest-loan track, CANON S5), not a defect of the blow.