KB + tracker: night-9 playtest (build 4.11.693)

CONFIRMED FIXED and closed: #95 (missile salvo damage), #97 (leak gauge 3 levels),
#98 (loop-6 lamp), #99 (leak alarm audible).

#95 deserves a note: a tester reported "LRMs still doing 3.3 damage", but that is
the PER-MISSILE figure.  382 impacts across three 693 logs show the cluster being
delivered correctly -- LRM20 3.25 x burst 5..20 (total up to 65), LRM15 3.33 x
3..15, LRM10 3.50 x 2..10 -- and those burst ranges match the binary's
Random(n)+n/4 roll exactly.

#32 REOPENED.  The pooling change removed the alloc/free churn (the ~10% frame
time is real) but every 693 field log still shows
    ACQUIRE FAILED (requested=4 live=240 pooled=240 free=0 ...)
19,182 fails (Sauron) / 15,333 (Rajel) / 6,818 (Ronin), high-water 225 of 240,
starting ~1% into every session.  `free=0` is the diagnosis: sources are never
returned.  This is precisely the risk flagged when the fix landed -- retention,
not pool size.  Players called audio "fine" the same night; the log disagrees.

#84 still present, but the surviving explosion is a DIFFERENT mechanism from the
bundled one that was fixed: "where the mech was when I fired" is the stale
fire-time aim point already recorded as an open in rendering.md, i.e. an MP
visual, not the message-manager path.  Needs a two-node bench logging the
OBSERVER -- the earlier two-node run verified damage delivery but never the visual.

New: #108 ghost mech (peer never sees the death; shots still register, so it is a
visual/replication desync, the inverse of #94), #109 panic/eject, #110 arm
parent/child linkage (gun pod survives its mount -- three chassis, both arms;
parentArtifactZone exists but only drives LOD), #111 death warp bubble shown to
peers, #112 AFC shotgun spread (may be authentic Ultra-AFC burst), #113 LRM burn
duration, #114 missile smoke as a smoke screen, #115 hot box, #116 Standard-vs-
Expert heat gating, #117 per-chassis cockpit bounce.

⚠ A MEMBER OF THE ORIGINAL TEAM IS NOW TESTING -- "Ronin" (log user torak).  He
worked on the 1995 game and has played the pods recently.  Treat his pod
comparisons as primary evidence above reconstruction inference.  First two
contributions recorded in the KB: per-chassis cockpit bounce was deliberate, and
NARC likely shipped as data without an implementation.

⚠ Conn Man ran the OLD build (.674) for all seven of his sessions, so his reports
are not evidence about 693.  His arm-linkage audit is still valuable -- nothing in
693 touched that path.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

context/open-questions.md

@@ -1016,3 +1016,51 @@ heat / FailureTemperature scaling is too aggressive, or the roach-motel (no reco
 falls) is the wrong reading. NEXT: audit the SRM6 heatPerShot vs FailureTemperature vs the mech's
 dissipation, and whether the binary's gate-1 FailureHeat is a LATCH or clears when heat drops.
 Trace it live with `BT_AMMO_LOG=1` (+ `BT_PROJ_LOG=1` for per-tick heat/recoil).
+
+## Night-9 playtest intelligence (build 4.11.693, 2026-08-01)
+
+**A MEMBER OF THE ORIGINAL TEAM IS NOW TESTING.** "Ronin" (log user `torak`,
+machine TOWER_OF_TERROR) worked on the 1995 game and has played the pods
+recently, including in Japan. He is a **primary source** — treat his comparisons
+against the pods as high-value evidence, above reconstruction inference. Two
+contributions already:
+  * **Per-chassis cockpit BOUNCE was deliberate** [T1, testimony]: "all of the
+    chassis have different cockpit 'bounce' — this was made so to help give the
+    'mechs some individuality". If our port applies one shared bounce curve, a
+    deliberate identity cue is missing. (Gitea #117; `jointshakey` is the likely
+    carrier — its pick sphere radius already differs per chassis.)
+  * **NARC may never have been implemented** [T3, recollection]: the loadout data
+    shipped but he does not recall the weapon being built. Squares with what we
+    see — an authored record that resolves with no distinct behaviour to
+    reconstruct. Mike L. could confirm. (Gitea #104.)
+
+**AUDIO SOURCE POOLING IS NOT FIXED — retention, not churn, is the wall** [T2].
+The `#32` pooling change removed the per-sound `alGenSources`/`alDeleteSources`
+churn (a real ~10% frame-time win) but every 693 field log still shows
+    `ACQUIRE FAILED (requested=4 live=240 pooled=240 free=0 ...)`
+19,182 fails (Sauron) / 15,333 (Rajel) / 6,818 (Ronin), high-water **225 of 240**,
+starting ~1% into the session. `free=0` is the diagnosis: the pool fills and never
+returns a source. Each audio component reserves a SourceSet of up to 25 voices and
+holds it to entity teardown, so peak demand scales with live audio COMPONENTS, not
+audible sounds. A bigger cap only delays the wall. ⚠ Players reported audio as
+"working fine" the same night — subjective impressions do not clear this class of
+bug; read the log.
+
+**Reading the missile impact line.** `[projectile] IMPACT damage=X ... burst=N`
+prints X = **per missile**; the delivered total is `X * N`. A tester reading X
+alone will report LRMs as doing ~3.3 damage when the salvo is landing up to 65.
+Field-verified across 382 impacts: LRM20 3.25 x 5..20, LRM15 3.33 x 3..15,
+LRM10 3.50 x 2..10 — burst ranges matching the binary's `Random(n) + n/4` roll
+exactly.
+
+**Weapon damage values are published** in the original manuals (Oracle: "that is
+published ... Manuals had that info and it was accurate") — but NOT in the 4.0
+manual we have archived (confirmed by Lynx). A later manual, or the wayback
+capture of the original site's final build notes, would give hard per-weapon
+numbers to test the authored data against. Worth chasing: it converts weapon
+tuning from taste into arithmetic.
+
+**Standard vs Expert heat is unsettled** and it contaminates every heat report:
+Conn Man saw heat build-up in Standard while Rajel expected none there. See
+Gitea #116 and `experience-levels.md`.
+