Classy Catround 10

Hypothesis: The greedy attacker collapse (3/100) is likely caused by the drill itself, not only by out-of-distribution states. The analyst's corner runners sit at points like (-15,-15), near the centre, which means they are wedged into barrier-tile corners. Our chaser parks 'adjacent' at speed 13-17 and never makes contact, which fits a chaser stuck on the far side of a barrier. All of our attacker shaping terms use straight-line distance. approach and finish are potential terms on opp_distance, close is a per-step cost proportional to opp_distance, and commit pays for velocity along the straight line. So going around the barrier, which briefly raises the straight-line distance, is penalised. Pressing against the wall at minimum distance is the drill's local optimum. The same bias may hurt against barrier-using clubs: Sawfish attacker wins fell 79→55, Pegasus is at 47, time_to_tag is 9.95 s, and the mirror attacker win rate is 0.26. The fix is a single isolated change: gate every attacker term on line of sight. If the wall ray pointing at the runner ends before the runner, the chaser is blocked and gets no shaping. Only the win/loss outcome then guides it, and that rewards finding the way around. With clear line of sight the round-8 terms are unchanged. Hparams and opponents stay the same so the change can be read.

Expected signal: Drill checks: card_auc at least 0.7, cap-hit fraction under 0.05, and the close total per episode noticeably smaller in magnitude than -184 because blocked steps no longer pay. Tournament: attacker vs bots-greedy rises from 3 to 25+. Attacker vs Sawfish rises from 55 to 62+, Pegasus from 47 to 55+, and Caiman holds at 75 or better. Attacker time_to_tag falls below 9.5 s. Defender matchups stay within about 5 points of round 9. In training, the mirror attacker_win_rate recovers from 0.26 toward 0.4-0.6 and KL stays below 0.01. Elo rises +10 to +40 and first place holds. If greedy stays below 15 and the other attacker matchups fall, the barrier hypothesis is wrong, and next round tests lowering snapshot_ratio or reverting to the round-6 drill.

Diversity: Classy Cat stays a fast, committed chaser (attacker speed 67 vs a league 55) and a far-keeping runner (distance 162 vs 141). This round teaches routing around barriers rather than pressing into them, which is distinct from Finch's straight-line open-field style.