Generation 2's first two real stage-1 attempts both independently restarted
from curric-s5-aggression (reset_retry_checkpoint) with identical flags and
landed at 32% and 27% win rate vs the reference -- a real regression either
way, but too much spread between "identical" runs for repeat fresh restarts
to be a controlled test of anything. The first attempt's own trajectory
(ep_rew_mean climbing from -10.86 toward ~0 by the 240M-step cutoff,
briefly touching positive) looked closer to convergence than the second's,
so retries now continue that attempt's own checkpoint for another full
timesteps budget instead of resetting to foundation again.
Drops retry1 and retry2 (checkpoints, logs, exported bots, eval_history
entries) -- retry2 never trained meaningfully before crashing on the
GoalRateCallback bug just fixed, and retry1 was the inferior of the two
real samples. curriculum_state.json rewinds to attempt 1, in_progress, so
the next run resumes 20260726-1904-curric-s1-unmask/final.zip directly.
Re-ran stage-3 (curric-s3-no_draws vs curric-s2-defend) and the missing
stage-4 gate now that the locomotion-mask inference bugfix is in. Both
reverse or contradict the pre-fix bookkeeping: curric-s2-defend (grounded)
beats curric-s3-no_draws 60-26 and curric-s4-mechanics 57-24 when fairly
evaluated, so lifting the locomotion mask in stage 3 was a real regression
in floor play, not the improvement the buggy eval reported.
Adds a stage-5 "aggression" curriculum entry that resumes from stage 2
directly (via new resume_from_experiment/reference_experiment stage-dict
overrides in curriculum.py) instead of compounding the regression through
stages 3-4, keeps the locomotion mask on, and retunes ball-pursuit reward
weights for much more aggressive floor play. Extends train.py with the
three new --velocity-to-ball-weight/--ball-distance-penalty/--ball-touch-reward
flags needed to forward that retune to Godot's existing SHIP_AI_OVERRIDES.
curriculum_state.json and TRAINING.md are corrected/annotated in place
rather than silently rewritten, so the regression stays visible in history.
CosmicClash Training Bot