Rules

SMELTER-9 — the full boss script

Raid is five cogs against one scripted boss in a round foundry pit, on a 240-second enrage clock. Slots are dealt one tank, one healer and three dps. The boss never adapts: it runs this published, deterministic script. Everything the raid can do wrong — standing in the cleave, letting a pour go unsoaked, missing the Overload interrupt, leaving adds alive, letting the tank die — is a coordination failure between five policies that have never met.

Seats and roles

• num_agents = 5. One seat = one cog. Slots 0–4 map to the aliases Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo. Those are the only names a prompt or an observation ever contains.
• Roles are dealt. At episode start the sim shuffles ["tank", "healer", "dps", "dps", "dps"] with a Fisher–Yates pass driven by the episode PCG32 stream and assigns the result to slots 0–4. The optional config key roles (exactly five role strings) overrides the deal outright — used by the certification fixture and by every test. A seat learns its role in its first observation and it never changes, so a policy prompt must cover all three roles.
• The boss is SMELTER-9; adds are A1…A8 in spawn order.

The arena

• Floor 1235 × 659 px, origin top-left, +x right, +y down. Everything outside a disc of radius 300 px centred on (617, 329) is solid wall. The pit is the whole game.
• Four solid 40 × 40 pillars centred at (511, 223) (723, 223) (511, 435) (723, 435). They block movement and line of sight — a ranged attack, an interrupt and a heal all need a clear line — but they do not block cleaves or pours, which are floor effects. Hiding behind a pillar stops you being healed; that is the point.
• Boss stand at (617, 329), a 56 × 56 body. It is solid to cogs and adds and transparent to sight.
• Cog spawns, slot-ascending, on the south arc: (497,545) (557,561) (617,567) (677,561) (737,545).
• Add alcoves on the rim at radius 280: (419,131) (815,131) (419,527) (815,527).
• No fog of war. Every seat sees the whole pit, every cog, the boss, every add, every pool and every live telegraph.

Bodies and motion

The control byte pair is move_x, move_y ∈ −100…100. The step scales Accel by |move_a|/100 on each axis and clamps that axis's speed to MaxSpeed × |move_a|/100, so a diagonal is not faster than a cardinal.

Aim is cosmetic for cogs — a cog's attacks hit their chosen target, not wherever they point. The boss's aim is not cosmetic: its cleave cone comes from its facing.

Roles, abilities and resources

• Attack is automatic: the control layer holds the attack bit whenever the order's target is alive, in range and line-of-sight clear and the cooldown is at 0. The order chooses what to hit.
• Taunt (tank): range 200 px, cooldown 192 ticks (8 s), instant. Sets the tank's threat to 1.15 × the highest current threat and locks the boss's target to the tank for 72 ticks (3 s). A taunt fired while the tank already holds the target still burns the cooldown and records taunt{result:"already_target"}.
• Heal (healer): range 360 px, line of sight required, cast 24 ticks (1.0 s), heals 90 HP, costs 60 mana, no cooldown. Cancelled (mana refunded) if the healer moves more than 8 px, the target dies, or the line breaks. Overheal is recorded and wasted. Healing adds 0.25 threat per HP actually healed.
• Shield (healer): instant, range 360 px, 120 absorb on one ally, costs 150 mana, cooldown 360 ticks (15 s), expires after 480 ticks if unspent.
• Mana (healer only): 1200 max, +30 on every tick where t mod 24 == 0, so the sustained ceiling is 45 HP/s of healing and the pool is a burst reserve worth ~20 extra heals. Triage is forced.
• Interrupt (dps): instant, range 420 px, line of sight required, cooldown 480 ticks (20 s). Cancels an interruptible boss cast. If two interrupts land on the same cast in the same tick, the lower slot index wins and the other records interrupt{result:"wasted"} with its cooldown burned.
• Death is final. No resurrection, no respawn. A dead cog is inert, is not asked for an order, and stops accruing anything. Five deaths is a wipe.

SMELTER-9

bossMaxHp = 26000 in the default variant. Body 56 × 56 at (617, 329); the boss never moves. It faces its current target, turning at most 6 brads/tick, except during a cleave telegraph, when its facing is frozen — that is what makes side-stepping work.

Threat and targeting. Every point of damage dealt to the boss adds threat (tank ×3); every HP healed adds 0.25 threat to the healer. On every tick where t mod 24 == 0 the boss retargets to the highest-threat living cog, but only if that cog's threat exceeds the current target's by more than 10 %. A taunt overrides both rules for 72 ticks.

Boss melee. Every 36 ticks (1.5 s), 55 damage to its current target if that cog is within 60 px; out of reach the swing whiffs and is still recorded.

Phases (by boss HP, checked every tick, one-way)

A phase transition zeroes every ability's schedule counter and restarts it, emits phase_start, and (entering 2 or 3) spawns an add wave immediately.

Ability 1 — Cleave (all phases)

A frontal cone: ±32 brads (±45°) around the boss's frozen facing, reach 180 px. Telegraph 48 ticks (2.0 s) — the cone is drawn on the floor from the tick the cast starts. On resolution: 120 damage to every living cog whose body centre is inside. Cadence from the previous cleave's resolution: 192 ticks (8 s) in phase 1, 168 (7 s) in phase 2, 144 (6 s) in phase 3. The first cleave starts on the 96th tick of the encounter — tick index 95, because the counter is armed before tick 0 and tick 0 spends a decrement on it.

Ability 2 — Slag Pour (phases 1 and 2)

At cast start the boss draws one living non-tank cog uniformly from the episode PCG32 stream and stamps a circle of radius 90 px on that cog's position at that instant. Telegraph 60 ticks (2.5 s). On resolution: 80 damage to every living cog inside, and a slag pool of radius 90 px is left for 240 ticks (10 s), dealing 12 damage to every cog inside it on every 24th tick after the pool's spawn tick. At most 6 pools exist; a seventh expires the oldest. Cadence from the previous resolution: 240 ticks (10 s) phase 1, 216 (9 s) phase 2. First pour on the 192nd tick, index 191, the same way.

Ability 3 — Crucible Pour (phase 3 only; replaces Slag Pour)

Same draw, radius 110 px, telegraph 72 ticks (3.0 s), cadence 168 ticks (7 s). On resolution, let k be the number of living cogs whose body centre is inside:

• k == 0 → nobody soaked: the boss gains one permanent Spill stack, +20 % boss damage each, maximum 5 stacks, and no pool is left.
• k ≥ 1 → 240 damage split evenly, 240 div k to each (240 alone, 120 each for two, 80 for three), and a 240-tick pool is left.

One dps alone dies to it; the tank alone survives it and then needs a heal; two cogs eat it cheaply. This is the mechanic that most rewards five strangers agreeing on something in advance.

Ability 4 — Overload (phases 2 and 3)

A 96-tick (4.0 s) cast with a visible cast bar, started every 480 ticks (20 s) measured from the phase's entry tick. Interruptible. If it completes: 70 damage to all five cogs and the boss heals 400 HP (which can push it back above a phase threshold in HP but never re-enters a phase). If interrupted, the cast is cancelled and the next Overload is scheduled 480 ticks from the cancellation.

Ability 5 — Slag Crawlers (the adds)

Phase 2, plus one wave at phase-3 entry. At phase-2 entry and every 360 ticks (15 s) while in phase 2, 2 crawlers spawn at the two alcoves furthest from the current boss target. A crawler: 220 HP, max speed 640 (2.5 px/tick), body 16 × 16, melee range 30 px, 18 damage every 24 ticks, no ranged attack. It targets the highest-threat cog within 400 px, else the nearest living cog, retargeting every 24 ticks. Crawlers take player damage normally and give no threat on the boss. Cap 8 alive. While 4 or more crawlers are alive the boss gains +25 % damage (feed_buff events on both edges).

Damage multiplier order

final = base × (1 + 0.25·feed) × (1 + 0.20·spill_stacks) × (3 if enraged else 1), integer-truncated at the end. It applies to every boss-sourced damage instance — melee, cleave, pour, crucible, Overload and pool ticks — and not to a crawler's own bite.

Time and turns

dt = 1/24 s.

A decision turn is 120 ticks. At the first tick of a turn the server freezes the state, builds a view for every living seat, collects one order each, and hands them to the deterministic control layer, which drives the cogs for all 120 ticks. Dead seats are not queried.

Resolution order (exact, per tick t)

"Seat order" always means ascending slot index 0…4; "add order" means ascending add id.

1. Clock. If t == enrageTicks, set enraged and emit enrage.
2. Control compile. For each living cog in seat order the control layer reads the world and the seat's active order and produces (move_x, move_y, aim_turn, action). A dead cog produces (0, 0, 0, 0).
3. Quantise and record. move_x, move_y → int8 in −100…100; aim_turn → int8 clamped to ±8; action → a uint8 bitfield (bit0 attack, bit1 taunt, bit2 heal, bit3 shield, bit4 interrupt). These bytes are the whole input record.
4. Aim. Cogs turn, then the boss turns at most 6 brads toward its target unless a cleave telegraph is live, then each add faces its target.
5. Cog motion, in seat order, then 6. add motion in add order.
6. Timers. Cooldowns down, casts on, pools and telegraphs age, and on t mod 24 == 0 the healer gains 30 mana (cap 1200).
7. Player abilities, in this fixed sub-order so races are decidable: (a) interrupt (seat order; lowest slot wins a tie), (b) taunt, (c) shield, (d) heal completion, (e) attacks (seat order), (f) heal cast starts (seat order). Starting a cast is last, so a cast begun on tick t first ages on t + 1 and lands exactly 24 ticks later.
8. Threat. This tick's damage and healing fold into the threat table.
9. Boss retarget on t mod 24 == 0, not while a taunt lock is live.
10. Boss scheduling. A finished Overload lands; then, if no cast or telegraph is live and a cadence counter has expired, the highest-priority available ability starts, in the order Overload > Crucible/Slag Pour > Cleave.
11. Telegraph resolution, in creation order.
12. Pools bite and expire.
13. Boss and add attacks.
14. Deaths.
15. Phase check.
16. Meters.
17. Keyframe on t mod 24 == 0.
18. End check, in order: boss dead → complete/kill; all five cogs dead → complete/wipe; t + 1 == maxTicks → complete/enrage_timeout; wall-clock budget exceeded → deadline/wall_clock.

Scoring

removed  = bossMaxHp - max(0, bossHpFinal)
f        = removed / bossMaxHp                     in [0, 1]
T        = enrageTicks / 24            = 240.0 s
elapsed  = finalTick / 24
charged  = elapsed   if end_rule == "kill"
         = T         for every other ending
score    = clamp(f * T / charged, 0.0, 3.0)
results.scores = [score, score, score, score, score]

Higher is better. score is "boss health removed ÷ time spent", in units of the enrage timer, so 1.0 means "killed it exactly on the enrage timer". Faster kills score above 1.0; anything that is not a kill scores the fraction of the boss it removed, because the raid consumed the whole attempt.

Every seat carries the identical score — the idea's "shared equally", and the reason a healer who never damages the boss can still be a champion. The per-seat meters (damage, healing, avoidable hits) are recorded for the endcard and for humans, and are not part of the score.

What the league ranks by: the seat's mean results.scores value across its episodes. Elo is wrong here — with five identical scores every episode is a five-way draw.

End conditions

results.reason is a closed enum of exactly three values; results.end_rule carries the detail and is a closed enum of exactly five.

A seat that never connects does not end the episode: its cog is driven by the stalwart scripted baseline for the whole encounter, the no-show is reported to COGAME_PLAYER_FAILURE_URI, and the raid plays on.

League operations (recorded, not sim logic)

The integrity clause is a scheduling requirement on the ladder, and the sim is deliberately blind to it: (a) the five seats of an episode must be drawn from five different accounts; (b) a seat's ranking figure is its cross-play mean, computed over episodes whose teammate mix varies, and must include episodes seated with the frozen scripted baselines so that a policy which only performs alongside its own twin is visible as such. The game container has no notion of accounts, and no rule here depends on one.