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L1: hive creation draws inside BeginProcessTurn -- lane Z's zero was the workload

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Lane SV recovered the script-object subsystem statically and predicted that
SVSOSwarmQueen::RegisterHives takes one strategic-generator word per new hive
inside StrategyServer::BeginProcessTurn, which runs inside lane Z's autosave
bracket and outside both turn drivers. Nothing had ever been hooked in that
interval. Measured on VM140, and it is right.

  turn 1 -> 2 (hives created)   BeginProcessTurn 2   ProcessTurn 20   residual 2
  turn 2 -> 3 (hives exist)     BeginProcessTurn 0   ProcessTurn 19   residual 0

Two instruments that share no code path agree: the region ledger reads
170 -> 172 across RegisterHives, and the return-address draw-site table gains a
row at 0x00527714 (NextInt, 2 calls / 2 words) which is absent on the next turn.
The draws produce NextQ 30/28, TickHives' slip takes them to 31/29 -- exactly
turn2-state.sav -- and the next turn's slip gives 32/30, exactly turn3-state.sav.

So tail-rng-ledger.md's "all of it inside ProcessTurn, residual exactly zero" is
correct for every turn it measured and false as a statement about the code. The
interval a standalone must reproduce starts at BeginProcessTurn.

Also closed or corrected:
* LO/HI read live rather than fitted: NextQ = frame + 20 + NextInt(10),
  inclusive; the TickHives gates are 10 (a frame floor), 5 and 3, so no queen can
  spawn before frame 11 on any save.
* CDiff's threshold scan re-read independently: the tier can only ever be 0 or 1,
  and "entered and stored nothing" was observed live and distinguished from
  "did not run" (method rule 20).
* SnLv measured for the first time: Spica reads AFlags 0 with SnLv 0x200, so the
  sensor branch is what refreshes it -- nvo-tshn-visible-owner.md §6 goes [H] to
  [V]. ComputeContactLevel's documented "else 1" names one of four return tails;
  the observed non-visible level is 2.
* Rule 19: the oracle reproduced byte for byte with all five new detours live,
  and again with four watchpoints armed on top.
* turn1-state -> turn2 is not deterministic (lane L5 owns this). Two more runs
  here make it four distinct outcomes over six runs, including two DIFFERENT
  hooks=off results, and the strategic generator is provably not what varies.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01ARBgSooAfokKUy6wKUKEyZ
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91
findings/control-flow/hive-creation-rng.md
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@ -279,37 +279,78 @@ buried, because it is the kind of thing that looks like instrument perturbation
`NumOwn` and every other field checked. The two `TechTree/St` bytes that also move are that choice's
consequence, and `Summary/Checksum` follows.
The `hooks=off` control was then run from the same input, and it is the reason this section is worth
reading. **It produced a third answer.**
The `hooks=off` control was then run from the same input, and it produced a **third** answer.
| run | instrument | `(Autosave).sav` | size | player 3's `ResTNm` |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| the original 2026-09-07 session (live game, never loaded) | phase-2 shim, `hooks=trace` | `ab4ac2d7e2977260` | 66,739 | `BIO_GnMod` |
| this lane | full L1 hook set | `62061918176e3441` | 66,739 | `XNC_TrnsLir2` |
| this lane, control | **`hooks=off` — nothing installed at all** | `e43ec1d2b443c101` | **66,740** | `XNC_TrnsMorr2` |
**Lane L5 found the same thing independently on VM146 the same day**, from the other direction — as a
by-product of its own rule-19 control — and owns the write-up:
`findings/subsystems/turn1-to-turn2-nondeterminism.md`. This lane's two runs are corroboration and
they widen its spread, so the union is recorded here and the analysis is not repeated.
Players 0, 1 and 2 pick identically in all three (`""`, `IND_Waldo`, `DRV_PlsFiss`). Only player 3
moves, and it moves **with the instrument removed as well**.
| run | instrument | `(Autosave).sav` | that player's `ResTNm` |
|---|---|---|---|
| the original 2026-09-07 session (live game, never loaded) | phase-2 shim, `hooks=trace` | `ab4ac2d7e2977260` | `BIO_GnMod` |
| lane L5 run B | `ComputeBudget=compare` | `ab4ac2d7e2977260` | `BIO_GnMod` |
| lane L5 run A | same hooks, different constant in `ours` only | `7fc9e6ab46b47794` | `XNC_TrnsHvr2` |
| lane L5 control | `hooks=off` | `62061918176e3441` | `XNC_TrnsLir2` |
| **L1** | full L1 hook set | `62061918176e3441` | `XNC_TrnsLir2` |
| **L1 control** | **`hooks=off`** | **`e43ec1d2b443c101`** | **`XNC_TrnsMorr2`** |
**So the turn-1 → turn-2 transition of this game is not deterministic across processes, and no hook
is responsible.** The three picks are three different tech ids, two of them species-tagged variants
of the same node (`XNC_TrnsLir2` / `XNC_TrnsMorr2`), which is the signature of a selection over a
container whose order is not fixed — a pointer-keyed map or an unstable tie-break — rather than of a
generator draw. The strategic generator's trajectory was **identical to the historical game's** in
the instrumented run, so whatever chooses here does not draw from it.
**The two rows in bold are what this lane adds, and the second one sharpens lane L5's conclusion.**
L5 argued from "the `hooks=off` control is a *third* value, not one of the other two". This lane ran
`hooks=off` again and got a **fourth** value — so **`hooks=off` is not self-consistent with itself
across processes**, which is a stronger statement than "no hook is responsible" and rules out the
whole class of explanations in which some particular instrument configuration selects the pick.
Four distinct outcomes over six runs, and this lane's instrumented run happens to coincide with
L5's uninstrumented one, which is the clearest possible demonstration that the hooks are not the
variable.
Two consequences, both of which matter more than this lane:
Players 0, 1 and 2 pick identically in every run (`""`, `IND_Waldo`, `DRV_PlsFiss`). Only the
shadow-empire player moves. In this lane's instrumented run the strategic generator's trajectory was
**identical to the historical game's** — same word positions, and the hive draws produced the
historical `NextQ` values — so whatever chooses here does not draw from it.
* **`turn1-state.sav` must not be used as a determinism-oracle input.** `determinism-oracle.md`
establishes byte-identity for `ref-turn2 → turn 3` and was never run on turn 1; that claim is
intact and this is a different pair.
* **The standalone milestone has a target that the original itself does not always hit.** A
reimplementation cannot be held to a byte match on a turn where the original disagrees with itself.
Which turns those are is now an open question with one known member.
### 6.2 It is bounded, and the strategic generator is not what varies
None of this touches §0–§5: the RNG numbers were taken on a run whose generator trajectory matches
the historical game word for word, and the same hook set reproduces the oracle exactly on the
adjacent turn.
**No claim in §0–§5 rests on an autosave diff.** The hive result is a *generator word position*
measured by two instruments that share no code path — a region ledger reading `left` around a phase
boundary, and a set of detours keyed on return address — plus the entry-side prediction those
numbers were checked against. Diffing `turn1-state → turn2` bytes is not part of it, and would not
have been able to answer the question either way.
The variation is small and exactly located. Every pairwise leaf comparison over the three post-turn
saves this lane holds gives **4 differing leaves out of 35,032**, with the leaf count and the whole
tree structure identical:
```
/Summary/Checksum (derived)
/Sim/Player/TechTree/St 2 <-> 3 (the node it stopped researching)
/Sim/Player/TechTree/St 3 <-> 2 (the node it started researching)
/Sim/Player/ResTNm BIO_GnMod | XNC_TrnsLir2 | XNC_TrnsMorr2 | XNC_TrnsHvr2
```
so the reference pair remains usable for everything except one shadow empire's research selection.
This matches lane L5's characterisation exactly, on a fourth sample.
**And it is not the strategic generator.** This is the part this lane can add that a save diff
cannot: in the instrumented run the strategic generator's trajectory was **identical to the
historical game's** — the two hive draws produced the historical `NextQ` 31 / 29, the next turn's
slip produced 32 / 30, and the absolute word positions 192 and 211 are the ones
`tail-rng-ledger.md` §2.1 records for the same game. A pick drawn from `S+0x16c` would have moved
that trajectory. It did not.
There is an obvious next place to look, and this lane's own draw-site table points at it: **8 words
per turn are drawn from a *different* `Mars::RNG` in the same process** — the `StrategyClient`'s at
`client+0x134`, from `0x00578cf0`, `0x005798e0` and `0x0069dbb0` (`tail-rng-ledger.md` §11.2 first
identified these and correctly excluded them). That object is **not serialised**, so if the AI's
pick draws from it, its seed is not in the save and a per-process variation is exactly what one
would expect — which is lane AI1's "seeded from an unseeded global" reading, arriving from a
different direction. Two rows of that table appear on every turn of both saves measured here:
`draw_site_words_other_rng = 8`, `draw_site_calls_other_rng = 8`.
**The experiment that would settle it** is a boundary hook on the AI research-selection site with a
region over `client+0x134` rather than `S+0x16c`, on two fresh processes: if the two runs enter it
with different generator state, the cause is found. That is one hook and one afternoon, and it is
the difference between "the reference pair has four unstable leaves" and "we know why".
## 7. What this does NOT settle (rule 15)

27
findings/subsystems/determinism-oracle.md
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@ -5,21 +5,20 @@ Question: "load the same save, press End Turn, and the resulting autosave is byt
game processes, with and without an intervening manual save, and also identical to the autosave the
*original* (non-loaded, freshly created) game wrote in the earlier session.
> **SCOPED BY LANE L1, 2026-09-08 — the oracle is a property of THIS PAIR, not of End Turns.**
> (`findings/control-flow/hive-creation-rng.md` §6.1.) Every run below starts from the **turn-2**
> state. Lane L1 ran the same experiment one turn earlier — load `turn1-state.sav`
> (`a3f9dc4b…`, which is this game's turn-1 pre-turn autosave), one End Turn — three times, and got
> **three different post-turn autosaves**: `ab4ac2d7…` (the original live session), `62061918…` (full
> hook set) and `e43ec1d2…` (**`hooks=off`, nothing installed at all**). The whole difference is one
> field: player 3's research target `ResTNm`, which reads `BIO_GnMod` / `XNC_TrnsLir2` /
> `XNC_TrnsMorr2` across the three. Players 0–2 pick identically every time, and in the instrumented
> run the strategic generator's trajectory matched the historical game word for word.
> **SCOPED, 2026-09-08 — the oracle is a property of THIS PAIR, not of End Turns.** Every run below
> starts from the **turn-2** state. Lanes L5 and L1 independently ran the same experiment one turn
> earlier — load `turn1-state.sav` (`a3f9dc4b…`, this game's turn-1 pre-turn autosave), one End Turn
> — and across six runs got **four different post-turn autosaves**, including **two different results
> from `hooks=off` with nothing installed at all**. The whole difference is one shadow-empire
> player's research target `ResTNm` plus its two tech-status words and the derived `Checksum`;
> players 0–2 pick identically every time and the strategic generator's trajectory is unchanged.
>
> So: **the turn-1 → turn-2 transition of this game is not deterministic across processes, and no
> hook is responsible.** Nothing below is wrong — but "load the same save, press End Turn, and the
> autosave is byte-identical" is verified for `ref-turn2 → turn 3` and **falsified for
> `turn1-state → turn 2`**. Anyone building a byte oracle must pick the pair deliberately, and the
> pairs in this document plus `verify/results/shim/tailrng/` are the ones that hold.
> Nothing below is wrong. But "load the same save, press End Turn, and the autosave is
> byte-identical" is verified for `ref-turn2 → turn 3` and **falsified for `turn1-state → turn 2`**.
> Pick the pair deliberately: this document's pair and the two in
> `verify/results/shim/tailrng/` are the ones that hold. Full account:
> `findings/subsystems/turn1-to-turn2-nondeterminism.md` (lane L5, owner) and
> `findings/control-flow/hive-creation-rng.md` §6.1 (lane L1, the two extra runs).
## Verdict