Combat

Combat

Use this as the default fight workflow for STS2 turns.

Required Reading

Read these before acting:

• /home/igorw/Work/STS2/.agents/skills/combat/references/heuristics.md
• /home/igorw/Work/STS2/.agents/skills/combat/references/mechanics.md
• the current run log under /home/igorw/Work/STS2/vault/runs

If the run is Ironclad, also read:

• /home/igorw/Work/STS2/.agents/skills/ironclad/SKILL.md

If the fight is an elite or boss, also read:

• /home/igorw/Work/STS2/.agents/skills/boss-and-elite-fights/SKILL.md

Workflow

1. Read the settled combat state only:
   • energy
   • hand
   • costs
   • intents
   • powers and debuffs
   • potions
   • relics and any end-of-turn or passive combat text that changes damage or block math
2. Classify the turn:
   • setup turn
   • survival turn
   • damage race
   • cleanup turn
3. Identify what matters most over the next cycle:
   • incoming damage
   • draw pile pollution
   • scaling
   • body count
   • breakpoints for lethal or a safer next shuffle
   • whether a drafted power is currently acting as a recurring dead draw and should instead be converted into live board text
   • whether card draw, hand size, or a cheap repeatable card is functioning as real survivability rather than optional value text
   • passive block or damage that will happen at end of turn from relics or powers
4. Commit the line that improves position, not just current-turn efficiency.
5. After any draw burst, cost mutation, free-card effect, or state-changing power:
   • stop
   • re-read with --hard
   • only then spend the rest of the turn

View Modes: Easy Turn vs Hard Turn

• --easy: use this when the next decision is genuinely simple and the turn is mostly execution. Treat this as a compressed execution surface: it should be biased toward immediate choices, obvious follow-through, and low-ambiguity state.
• --hard: use this when the turn is genuinely strategic, branching, dangerous, or information-dense. Treat this as the planning surface: it should be biased toward preserving the context needed for meaningful combat reasoning.
• --full: raw debug dump. Use this only when the structured surfaces are insufficient or a surface/export bug is suspected.

Default posture:

• prefer --easy for obvious follow-through, cleanup turns, routine confirmation after safe plays, and any turn where the correct line is already known
• switch to --hard before meaningful planning, potion decisions, unusual mechanics, elites, bosses, or any uncertain lethal/survival math
• if an --easy read leads into new draw, generated cards, cost changes, a prompt, changed targeting, or any branch you did not already understand, stop and re-read with --hard
• switch to --full only for debugging or surface validation

Another way to phrase it:

• --easy answers: "What are my immediate choices, and is this turn already solved?"
• --hard answers: "What do I need to know to plan this turn correctly?"

Do not expect --easy to carry every stable detail. It is intentionally more filtered. If the line depends on richer context, that is a sign to switch to --hard, not a reason to force --easy to behave like a planning read.

The important distinction is not just combat vs non-combat, but easy turn vs hard turn. A combat turn can start easy and become hard mid-turn.

The inverse is also true: a turn in an elite or boss fight can start hard, become solved, and then become easy execution. Once the meaningful planning is done, stop rereading like it is still a hard turn.

Thinking Mode vs Business-as-Usual

• Default to thinking mode: send one combat action at a time.
• Use business-as-usual when the rest of the line is truly stable and obvious.
• --batch is the opt-in for business-as-usual sequencing. It is allowed to include combat.end_turn as the tail action.

Important clarification:

• --batch is not a rare special case.
• If the whole turn is solved and nothing in the line can create new information, you SHOULD batch the whole turn.
• Do not keep single-stepping an already-solved turn just because the fight is labeled elite or boss.

Use --batch only when all of the following are true:

• no queued card will draw, discover, create, transform, exhaust-return, or otherwise change the hand
• no queued card or trigger will change costs, refunds, energy, or targeting rules mid-line
• no later queued action depends on a target that an earlier queued action might kill, split, remove, or otherwise invalidate
• no choice prompt, card select, potion use, or other interactive branch can appear before the batch finishes
• the post-play state is already understood well enough that you would make the same sequence if you sent the actions one by one

Examples:

• Safe enough: an obvious cleanup tail where target survival is already known and combat.end_turn is just closing the turn.
• Safe enough: after one --hard read in an elite, the rest of the turn is just executing a known line with no draw, no prompts, no cost changes, and no target uncertainty. Batch it.
• Safe enough: hallway or elite turns where you already know the exact kill order, the attacks are deterministic, and the last action is combat.end_turn.
• Not safe: anything involving draw, kill uncertainty, cost changes, new target exposure, generated cards, or on-kill / on-hit triggers you still need to inspect.

Practical rule:

• If you can say, before the first click, "I would make the exact same sequence if I sent these one by one," that is a strong sign the turn should be batched.
• If you need to see the result of card 1 before deciding card 2, do not batch.
• One hard read followed by one batch execution is often the right rhythm.

Guardrails

• STS1 parallels are heuristics, not proof.
• Do not spend all energy just because it is available.
• Do not use --batch past temporary free cards, cost changes, draw effects, or uncertain kill math.
• Do not confuse "elite fight" with "every action must be single-stepped." The hard part is the planning boundary, not the room label.
• Do not do manual combat math as if cards were the whole board. Always include surfaced relic and power text that adds end-of-turn block, damage, or other passive combat value.
• Do not treat card draw as decorative upside. In many fights it is part of your real HP total because it preserves better defensive and offensive choices.
• Do not assume avoiding every small hit is correct. Some chip damage is worth taking if it preserves draw quality, hand size, or a materially stronger next-cycle position.
• Do not use potions just to smooth an average turn; use them when they change setup, survival, or lethal math.
• If combat state is not concretely exposed, stop and fix the surface before acting.

Maintenance

Keep this skill short. Move durable lessons into the owned references, then refine this workflow when repeated combat mistakes or better patterns appear.