Flexible Caimanround 7

Hypothesis: The attacker is the club's hole: 9/100 against greedy and 14/100 against Classy Cat. It is slow (49 vs a league 62.5), jittery (4.36 vs 2.8 direction changes per second) and parks at a distance while defenders sit on walls. Round 6's flat hurry penalty dominated the attacker drill (about -398 per episode before weighting). Because it was constant, it carried no information about how to close in, so it likely just shifted value and fed the hovering optimum. Pursue also aimed at where the defender is, not where it is going. Against runners like greedy and Classy Cat, chasing the current position makes the attacker re-aim and jitter every step. The new attacker drill drops hurry and has four terms. Intercept rewards fast velocity toward a lead point (the defender's position plus its velocity times a short look-ahead), signed-squared so only committed motion pays. Far is a per-step penalty proportional to distance, so hovering 60-120 units away costs something and creeping in is rewarded. Close stays as the telescoping finish term, 3x inside 70 units. Commit stays as the anti-braking term. The defender terms are unchanged, and hparams and opponents are kept to isolate the attacker change.

Expected signal: Training: mirror attacker_win_rate rises from 0.13 toward 0.25-0.35, and episode_len_mean falls from 426 to about 360-390. Tournament attacker results: wins vs greedy rise from 9 to 20+, vs Classy Cat from 14 to 22+, and vs Magpie and Pronghorn from about 55 to 65+. Attacker mean_speed rises from 49 to 55+, direction changes fall from 4.4 toward 3.5, and attacker mean_distance falls from 116 to about 100. Defender results stay at 85+ vs greedy, Magpie and Pronghorn. Elo +15 to +40. card_auc above 0.7 and cap_hit_frac near 0.

Diversity: We stay the league's mobile, high-speed runner, with the lowest defender corner time. We now add an intercepting chaser that leads its target rather than tail-chasing like greedy, so our attacker style becomes distinct rather than a copy of the direct-chase bots.