#111 FIXED: the peer-visible warp sphere is RETIRED -- observers see the un-wreck model swap, exactly what the pods showed. The blue bubble on another player's dying/respawning mech was never binary behavior: the authentic effect is the POV-ONLY translocation (POVTranslocateRenderable, the dying pilot's own eye-centred collapse/reveal -- btl4vid.cpp's own banner says 'the authentic effect is POV only', twice), and the world-anchored peer sphere was a deliberate July-10 port extension (160b78e) that the field read as a wrong effect ('should just be the big boom from other POV' -- Lynx, night 9, confirmed in follow-up). The death-side collapse was already local-gated (GetMissionPlayer, verified back through build 693), so retiring the extension removes the LAST peer-visible warp; the corpse-vs-dropzone replication-order question the field receipts could not settle becomes moot. Un-wreck edge keeps everything else: pfx cleanup (#129), model rebuild, the ungated [respawn] receipt (text updated: 'un-wrecked', no '+ warp'). BTStartWarpEffect kept caller-less as slot-guard documentation. Night-16 field receipts audited on the way in: all 24+ un-wreck edges are clean mode 9->1, no death-state jitter.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_016bw71WVsccjwW7uKRg4aWD

game/reconstructed/btl4vid.cpp

@@ -3786,6 +3786,11 @@ void BTStartWarpExpandPOV()
 // World-anchored warp (a PORT EXTENSION -- the authentic effect is POV only): an
 // OBSERVER seeing a peer respawn over THERE.  No world mask (the observer is alive);
 // expand-reveal at the peer's world point.
+// *** RETIRED (#111, 2026-08-14): no caller.  The field read the peer-visible
+// bubble as a wrong effect on the dying/respawning mech ("should just be the
+// big boom from other POV"); the authentic effect is the POV-only translocation,
+// and observers now see the un-wreck model swap itself (mechdmg.cpp).  Kept as
+// documentation of the one-warp-slot guard. ***
 //
 void BTStartWarpEffect(float x, float y, float z)
 {

game/reconstructed/mechdmg.cpp

@@ -1387,7 +1387,6 @@ void
 			&& owner->GetInstance() == Entity::ReplicantInstance)
 		{
 			extern void BTRebuildMechModel(Entity *entity);
-			extern void BTStartWarpEffect(float x, float y, float z);
 			// #129 (fresh spawns smoking, peers' screens only): the wreck plume
 			// is re-armed LOCALLY on every node (entity-attached, 10s windows),
 			// and only the master's Mech::Reset ran the @004d0c14 effect
@@ -1397,13 +1396,20 @@ void
 			extern void BTStopEntityPfx(void *entity_v);
 			BTStopEntityPfx((void *)owner);
 			BTRebuildMechModel((Entity *)owner);
-			BTStartWarpEffect((float)owner->localOrigin.linearPosition.x,
-							  (float)owner->localOrigin.linearPosition.y,
-							  (float)owner->localOrigin.linearPosition.z);
+			// (#111) the peer-visible warp sphere that used to fire here is
+			// RETIRED.  It was a deliberate port extension (160b78e, "observer
+			// sees peer un-wreck") -- but the authentic effect is POV-ONLY
+			// (POVTranslocateRenderable, the dying pilot's own translocation;
+			// btl4vid.cpp's banner says so twice), and the field read the blue
+			// bubble on another mech as a wrong effect ("should just be the
+			// big boom from other POV" -- Lynx, night 9, confirmed).  The
+			// observer sees exactly what the pods showed: the un-wreck model
+			// swap itself.  This also retires the one-slot contention skip
+			// (a peer landing mid-POV-warp no longer competes for the slot).
 			// #108 forensics: UNGATED -- one line per peer respawn; a field
 			// night's ghost triage needs these without asking players for envs.
 			DEBUG_STREAM << "[respawn] replicant " << owner->GetEntityID()
-				<< " un-wrecked + warp (mode "
+				<< " un-wrecked (mode "
 				<< oldMode << "->" << mode << ") at ("
 				<< owner->localOrigin.linearPosition.x << ","
 				<< owner->localOrigin.linearPosition.z << ")\n" << std::flush;