KB: night-8 playtest intelligence (build 4.11.674)

Player testimony worth keeping out of the issue tracker alone:

* SENSOR PANEL model, from VGL Lynx -- the last major system without one.
  Sensor damage flickers the HUD (corroborated by period footage), degrades
  radar/map, affects the searchlight, and possibly the hot box.  Gitea #105.
* COOLANT LEAK severity is a THREE-level display (1/2/3 triangles + alarm);
  we only ever produce the lowest.  Our leak rate is a continuous scalar, so
  either the banding is missing or the magnitude never leaves the bottom band.
* MYOMER heat calibration is CHASSIS-RELATIVE: a Thor sustains seek 4
  indefinitely, a chicken-walker cooks in under a minute.  That spread is the
  acceptance test -- a uniform "too hot" indicts the drive-heat coefficient
  rather than the sink capacities.
* RAM damage: the binary's internal-only collision divert MATCHES what players
  observe (gyro/myomer damage, coolant leak, NO armor damage, grinding inert).
  May be working as intended; awaiting a player ruling.  Gitea #103.
* MP stability: 5-player match, no stalls or lag spikes -- bounds how often the
  carried cross-fire-stall / silent-node-crash opens occur.

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

context/open-questions.md

@@ -933,6 +933,40 @@ register.  ⚠ The audit also flags the damage-economy item as SELF-CONTRADICTOR
   corollary). The parallel `DefaultData` half of the table WAS the same trap and is fixed
   (`Simulation__SharedData`).
 
+## Night-8 playtest intelligence (2026-07-31, build 4.11.674) [T2 player testimony]
+
+**SENSOR PANEL — the model, from a player who ran the cabinets** (VGL Lynx; the last major system
+without one; Gitea #105). Sensor damage degrades, in descending confidence: (1) the **HUD flickers**
+— corroborated by period gameplay footage, and the distinctive tell to match; (2) **radar/map**
+degraded or lost; (3) the **searchlight** (cf. #61, where Searchlight/ThermalSight ToggleLamp were
+dead handlers); (4) the **hot box / thermal** suspected but unconfirmable — that feature is not
+functional in our build. Next step is to find the sensor subsystem's damage consumers in the binary
+and check which display paths it actually gates, rather than implementing from the description.
+
+**COOLANT LEAK severity is a THREE-level display** (Oracle + Draco, Gitea #97): one/two/three
+triangles, top level draining the reservoir fast, with an audible alarm. We only ever produce the
+lowest. Our leak rate is a continuous scalar (`ownZone->damageLevel x heatLoad`, floor 0.0025,
+ON hysteresis 0.003) — so either the banding into three display levels is missing, or the magnitude
+never leaves the bottom band. Check whether severity is separately authored before deriving it.
+
+**MYOMER heat calibration is CHASSIS-RELATIVE, not absolute** (Oracle, Gitea #96): a **Thor should
+sustain seek 4 more or less indefinitely** on its heatsink count, while a light chicken-walker
+overheats in well under a minute. This is the acceptance test for the drive-heat coefficient — the
+spread should fall out of (drive heat / authored sink capacity) on its own, so a uniform "too hot"
+across ALL chassis indicts the coefficient rather than the sinks.
+
+**RAM damage: the binary's internal-only divert MATCHES what players see, and may be correct**
+(Gitea #103). Oracle reported ram causing gyro + myomer damage and a myomer coolant leak but **no
+armor damage**, with grinding inert — exactly `Mech::DistributeCollisionDamage`'s type-0 divert
+(internals weighted Myomers/Gyro 0.35, HeatSinkBank 0.30, Torso 0.25; 0.5-pt free-tap floor).
+Awaiting a player ruling on whether a hard ram ever damaged ARMOR in the original before treating
+the absence as a defect.
+
+**MP STABILITY datapoint** (RajelAran): a **5-player match with no egregious issues** — *"no
+stability problems or massive lag spikes"*. Relevant to the carried cross-fire-stall and
+silent-node-crash opens: neither reproduced at 5 players this session. Not evidence of a fix
+(neither was addressed), but it bounds how often they occur.
+
 ## Key Relationships
 - Feeds from: every subsystem/render topic (their deferral notes collect here).
 - Gating master: [[source-completeness]] (the missing BT source).