#179 FIXED: the look-state machine never committed the SPAWN state -- the Nova showed its rear laser's range pips in the forward view until the first look toggle (Oracle, night 17, same-evening report). The mapper commits eyepoint/enables/pip-group-mask on lookState EDGES only, and both state cells constructed equal (LookNone), so the first tick saw no edge; the reticle's group mask kept its construction bits. Fix: ctor seeds lookState = -1 (impossible), making the first tick an edge into LookNone that stamps the forward view at spawn. The firing half was never wrong -- the weapon ctor is binary-faithful (viewFireEnable = !rearFiring @004b99a8 [T1]); only the pips lied. Verified: pre-fix logs show ZERO [mppr] look-state commits without a look press (retroactive proof of the bug); the fixed build prints exactly one 'look state -> 0' at spawn with zero inputs (25s solo smoke). Rides Friday.

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

game/reconstructed/mechmppr.cpp

@@ -365,7 +365,17 @@ MechControlsMapper::MechControlsMapper(
 	lookRight			= 0;
 	lookDown			= 0;
 	lookBehind			= 0;
-	lookState			= LookNone;
+	lookState			= -1;	// IMPOSSIBLE state (#179): the commit below fires
+								// only on lookState EDGES, and both cells started
+								// equal (LookNone) -- so the spawn state was never
+								// COMMITTED: the reticle's pip GROUP mask kept its
+								// construction bits and the Nova showed its REAR
+								// laser's pips in the forward view until the first
+								// look toggle (Oracle, night 17).  Seeding -1 makes
+								// the mapper's first tick an edge into LookNone,
+								// stamping the forward view exactly as the machine
+								// showed it at spawn (weapon enables were already
+								// ctor-faithful: viewFireEnable = !rearFiring).
 
 	torsoUp			= 0;
 	torsoDown			= 0;