Restructure balancing docs into docs/balancing/

Split the cluttered progression_design.md and content_design.md into
separated documents by role:

- docs/balancing/rules.md    - design rules and principles (moved from
                               progression_design.md, which is removed)
- docs/balancing/targets.md  - the chosen base numbers: run shape,
                               factory curve, threat ladder (achieved
                               values adopted), combat anchors, pacing
                               anchors
- docs/balancing/derived.md  - current tuned state of all derived
                               numbers, mirroring the configs
- docs/balancing/process.md  - pass order, tuning discipline learned in
                               arena rounds 1-5, tools, next-round
                               checklist
- docs/balancing/history.md  - chronological record: decisions, numbers
                               pass, calculator bugs, arena rounds,
                               pacing pass
- docs/balancing/README.md   - index, status, open action items (moved
                               from progression_design.md)

content_design.md slims back down to actual content: footprint gating,
hull grids, gating matrix (module names updated to railguns), and the
production tree structure with its fiction - numbers, anchors, arena
logs, and pacing all moved to docs/balancing/. Stale references in the
config comments updated to the new locations.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01DyCu8vwChKMbLJQ3xosYEN
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2026-07-06 17:12:25 +02:00
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# Balancing Targets (base numbers)
The root numbers of the balancing. Everything in `derived.md` is tuned to
hit these; when rebalancing, **change these first and re-derive — never
patch derived values directly**. The rules these numbers follow live in
`rules.md`.
All time targets are in **game time**. The player can pause and
accelerate, so real session length differs; playtests measure both. The
time unit is the boss cycle (`world.toml boss_countdown_seconds`, 300 s).
Destroying a station set advances the boss countdown by
`boss_advance_seconds` (60 s), so cycles run shorter than nominal when
pushing actively — targets deliberately ignore that.
## Run shape
1. **Run length** — a winning run takes up to 2 hours of game time: win
around boss cycle 2024. Losing runs end earlier.
2. **Phase boundaries** — early = cycles 15 (iron/copper, small hulls),
mid = cycles 614 (quartz, medium hulls), late = cycles 15+
(voidsteel, capitals). Push cadence: first station set around cycle
23, roughly one per cycle from mid onward — so the destroyed set's
level is reached around cycle +2.
3. **Factory size curve** — producing buildings over time; when
saturated, output threat/s equals this count, so this curve IS the
player power curve: ~25 when the starting asteroid is full (end of
cycle 2), ~60 at the start of mid (cycle 6), ~120 at the start of
late (cycle 15), ~150 near the win. `threat_rate_formula` must remain
a fraction of this curve; buildings plus belts must physically fit
the asteroid plus affordable expansions.
4. **Threat-cost ladder** — total production-seconds per *fitted* hull
(including the typical/default module loadout): drone 10.5,
frigate 47, destroyer 99, cruiser 233.5, battlecruiser 354.5,
battleship 722.5, dreadnought 1491.5, carrier 1436.5. Every
production chain must sum to its ladder value. (The original strawman
was 10/40/80/200/350/700/1500; the small end runs ~1020% hot because
fixed chain overhead dominates small hulls — accepted, and the
achieved values adopted as the ladder. The ~×2-per-class curve shape
is the invariant.)
5. **Fleet size** — swarm-leaning: ~25 player combat ships as the
standing mid-game fleet. Standing fleet = build cadence (4) × average
ship lifetime, so this target drives time-to-kill and therefore all
combat stat magnitudes.
6. **Block economy roots** — bootstrap complete (starting asteroid full)
by the end of cycle 2; a factory spending ~30% of its capacity on
blocks doubles in ~4 minutes early game; one expansion affordable per
cycle at ~1/3 of block income mid-game, decelerating to one per 23
cycles late as escalating costs outrun income.
## Combat anchors
All combat stats derive from these; per-hull HP additionally carries
empirical trims from arena rounds (values in `derived.md`).
- **Weapon DPS per threat pays a concentration tax that grows with gun
size**: small ≈ 0.62, medium ≈ 0.48, large ≈ 0.41 DPS per threat of
weapon contribution, compensated by the range ladder 50/70/100 m.
Rationale: concentration itself (focus fire, no DPS loss to attrition,
range) is worth paying for — with a flat curve, concentrated fleets
win equal-threat fights outright (arena round 1).
- **Hull HP = 15 per threat of hull contribution** as the prior; per-hull
HP is the empirical trim knob (guns are shared across hulls, hull HP
moves exactly one matchup). The arena consistently prices capitals as
*tanks with taxed guns* — capital hulls sit well above the prior.
- **Armor HP ≈ 37 per threat** — a strong premium over hull HP because
armor is pure HP with no capability, and fights snowball: killing
removes enemy DPS, surviving merely delays — HP must be cheaper than
DPS.
- **Repair ≈ 0.7 HP/s per threat** — in-combat sustain effectively
removes enemy DPS and must be priced like DPS, not like HP.
- **TTK / fight duration**: parity fights in the 3060 s band at
mid-game scale; capital mirrors ~90 s deliberately; the extreme
tank-vs-chip-damage matchup (dreadnought vs destroyer swarm, ~3.5 min)
is an accepted outlier.
- **Mobility is monotone in size** — the smallest hulls are the fastest
and nimblest. Sensor ranges (150→350 m) always exceed weapon ranges.
- **Weapon modifiers are capital economy**: a ×1.2 damage modifier at
~22.5 threat beats adding a gun once a ship carries more than ~68
threat of weapons — modifiers pay off on gun-heavy big hulls, waste on
small ones. Range modifiers are the strongest and are priced/kept
small (×1.3): range is the dominant stat under the orbit AI (free
approach fire).
- **Stations**: a fresh player station holds one early parity wave
unaided; the enemy station at level 0 matches the player station
exactly and scales per push level. Station range is the dominance
lever, not HP (at 4× a small gun's range, two stations annihilated a
3× threat swarm through approach fire alone).
- **Accepted imbalances**: the carrier loses its equal-threat fights
until the drone-launching capability exists (the hangar is dead
threat) — fix by implementing drones, not stats. A pure smallest-ship
fleet modestly loses (~1525%) to a range-fitted capital — desirable
doctrine texture; the fair anti-capital answer is the mixed fleet.
## Pacing anchors
- **Starting set** is the rule-minimum: drone, frigate, small gun,
salvager (plus the explicitly unlocked building-block recipe).
- **Threat rate shape**: below the player's achievable military output
(≈ half the factory curve) early, crossing at the late boundary
(~cycle 15), overwhelming by ~cycle 24.
- **Winning = five real decisions**: `artifact_win_count` is set so that
across a winning run's ~1518 pushes (~7 cumulative artifact offers at
the current chance formula), the player must choose the artifact over
a schematic about five times.