In nightmare the merc dies most games, so resurrect_merc runs constantly — and Qual-Kehk
detection was failing 100% of the time (5 timeouts in 5 attempts, 107 hover attempts over
12 games). Each failed hunt costs ~40s and the code retried once, so a dead merc cost
~80s in EVERY game. Game length blew out to 185-250s against a normal ~60s.
GameStats._merc_resurrect_failed did not help: log_start_game resets it, so it only ever
suppressed a second attempt within one game. Nothing carried across games.
The name tag template is degenerate rather than merely stale — every grid-sweep "hit"
reported the identical score at unrelated positions:
found name tag at (255, 227) (score 0.424)
found name tag at (1110, 100) (score 0.424)
found name tag at (930, 310) (score 0.424)
so "found" is meaningless; it is matching uniform background.
Fix is cost containment, not detection: a cross-game circuit breaker on GameStats that
log_start_game deliberately does NOT reset — _merc_resurrect_fail_streak and
_merc_resurrect_skip_until, with Bot._MERC_RESURRECT_FAIL_LIMIT=2 and
_MERC_RESURRECT_SKIP_GAMES=15. The retry is also skipped once the streak is >=1, since
that is a second guaranteed-futile 40s hunt. Both counters clear on any successful
resurrect so a transient failure cannot permanently disable resurrecting.
Simulated over 30 games with an undetectable NPC: 60 hunts -> 4 (~40 min -> ~2.7 min).
Measured live: the breaker engaged on game 2 and game times went 250s / 185s -> 14s, 14s,
43s, 71s, 111s.
Still open: recapturing qual_name_tag_white.png is the actual fix for detection.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
