The leagues: the meta-progression plan of record — five leagues, XP by play, tin-tier gore coupling

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

PROJECT.md

@@ -491,6 +491,85 @@ zombie (now an occasional opponent, `TUNE.racketEvery`, not the every-game fixtu
   `RETURNED`, `DOUBLE KILL`) is a footnote to something you already watched happen. Sharing the loud
   FACE with the milestone cards is right; sharing their SIZE made every footnote read as a milestone.
 
+## THE LEAGUES — the meta-progression plan (2026-08-29, AGREED, NOT YET BUILT)
+
+Worked out with Oliver in discussion, decisions settled below. The goal in his words: an incentive
+to keep opening the game beyond beating the next opponent — levelling through play, with a clearly
+FELT improvement in gameplay. This is the plan of record for the feature; build it phase by phase
+and record verdicts here like any other session.
+
+### The two axes, and the one rule that protects the shipped game
+
+- **The LEAGUE determines the world**: pace tier (ball pace + opponent speed), opponent band, court.
+- **The LEVEL determines you**: small honest buffs through existing TUNE dials — serve pace cap,
+  hard-serve scatter, parry window, melee cooldown floor, `hurtGrace`. Never new gestures, never
+  gesture removal.
+- **THE SHIPPED GAME IS LEAGUE 1** (settled explicitly): today's tuning is the floor, progression
+  extends UPWARD. No deliberately-degraded start, and nothing that exists today gets locked behind
+  a level — carving the current game into locked pieces is a silent regression of a tuned build.
+  League 1's opponents are tuned a notch ahead of a fresh player; the level grinds you into range.
+- **The tournament gate is a skill check, not a timer**: winning the league's cup promotes you.
+  The level makes the cup EASIER, never POSSIBLE — a genuinely good player may climb early.
+
+### Decisions, all settled with Oliver 2026-08-29
+
+1. **Leagues are BANDS of the existing 18-rung LADDER** — no new rosters. The league cup is the
+   existing cup machinery drawing from the league's band (CUP_ROUNDS already draws from bands).
+   Five leagues; THE CHAMPION is the final of league 5. Exact band edges are Phase 2 tuning.
+2. **XP comes from ACTIVE PLAY EVENTS** (points played, kills, games — practically playtime, but
+   idle-proof), never wall-clock. **Losing pays too** — a hard league must be a grind, not a wall.
+   The training court pays nothing ("NOTHING AT STAKE" is its settled motto; otherwise it is the
+   AFK farm). Level curve: fast early (the hook), slow late (Oliver: levelling must not be easy).
+   Iron rule: every session ends with a visible delta — bar moved, badge, milestone.
+3. **Courts ride the leagues, and the bounce table already agrees**: 1 TERRE ROUGE (slow clay),
+   2 THE SLAB (true hard), 3 CENTRE COURT (fast grass), 4 THE NIGHT COURT, 5 **THE MEMBERS'
+   GROUND** — new court, the Dead Club's decayed place of honour: dead grey-green lawn, cracked
+   lines, ivy over marble, faded gold on the boards. Brightly decayed, distinct from gloom's dark.
+   Built like gloom was: a COURTS row + tile + palettes, borrowing a stands sheet with dim/grading
+   before we roll a fourth crowd grade. League matches play the league's court; **free court pick
+   stays in classic/netplay/training**, and **finishing a league unlocks its court for all modes**
+   (settled — the unlock is the reward formula).
+4. **Gore coupling is TIN-TIER, no starting loadout** (settled): the level/league determines the
+   POOL the duel's tin pays from (placeholder ladder: lasers join at league 3, rockets 4, double
+   tins 5 — numbers are Phase 4 tuning). "Weapons are only ever won" stays literally intact and
+   the world board is not devalued by starting inventory. **The duel gets fixed FIRST**: at
+   `duelFirst 2 / duelEvery 3` with hp-only stiffening (`racketHpPerGame` 0.12) it is a weapon
+   dispenser, not a gate — the same inflation class as the old barrel income. The racket zombie
+   gets the ladder's tennis brain (pace, chase, flub, THE READ scaling), so a duel can be LOST
+   and a won tin is worth something. While in there: establish what losing a duel actually costs;
+   if the answer is "nothing but the tin", that is half the diagnosis. Gore's own difficulty
+   director stays keyed on `G.runGames` — the league buffs YOU, it does not rekey the director.
+   Defensive level buffs (melee floor, parry, hurtGrace) apply in gore; **board rows carry the
+   league badge** — context instead of score normalization, and an upset is visible.
+5. **No full-body aura** — that is the painted-layer pattern the player-blood veto already killed.
+   The skill colour lives in: a TINT on the existing sprint trail/dust register, the character
+   card, and the walk-on/scoreboard presentation ("CHALLENGER · LIGA 3").
+6. **The character card**: big sprite, level bar, league badge, trophy icons (rolled through the
+   sprite pipeline), totals from stats.js (the data already exists). Reachable from the menu AND
+   the death screen — the death screen is where meta-progress absorbs permadeath ("run over, but
+   +340 XP, level 7 → 8"). First-class typography per the polish rule.
+7. **The profile is backed up SERVER-SIDE before the grind clock counts.** Hours of investment on
+   localStorage alone dies with cleared browser data. Client ID, name ownership and the /data
+   volume all exist; a profile blob beside scores.json is the small addition.
+8. **Deferred, on purpose**: skill matchmaking (a queue at our playerbase is empty, and an empty
+   queue is worse than none — show the league badge in netplay instead; revisit with players),
+   and a daily bonus (first-win-of-the-day; smells of mobile dark patterns — Oliver's call later).
+
+### The phases
+
+- **Phase 1 — profile + XP + bar.** One profile (localStorage + server backup), events pay in,
+  level bar in the menu and on the death screen. NO gameplay effect yet: the clock must visibly
+  tick first.
+- **Phase 2 — leagues.** Ladder bands, pace tiers, court per league, league cup as promotion gate,
+  court unlock. The roster fine-tuning lives here; phone-verdict heavy.
+- **Phase 3 — character card + badges + trail tint.** The presentation.
+- **Phase 4 — gore coupling.** Duel fix first, then tin tiers, defensive buffs, board badge.
+- **Phase 5 — later.** Matchmaking, daily incentive (both deliberately parked, see 8).
+
+Open tuning questions for the build (not decisions): what a pace tier IS mechanically (one global
+pace multiplier vs per-dial), the XP amounts and curve numbers, the five band edges over 18 rungs,
+the tin-tier ladder, and the duel-loss cost.
+
 ## Session log: THE READ, the walk-on modal, the training court, movement reads (2026-08-28)
 
 Four items from one phone report. PHONE VERDICT PENDING on 2-4; item 1 got its first verdict the