The match plays fair: deeper pool, no regicide, serves from the line

"the player is too weak in this mode. also the killing by smashing occurs too
often. i cant really control it. maybe obsolete? also the serving after the
first serve does not happen from behind the groundline".

matchPlayerHp 8 — the match brings its own pool. The gore mode's 4 was an
inheritance, not a decision, and a real game has rallies you deserve to lose
without the run ending.

Regicide is out of the match (kept in the duel, where any-weapon-counts is
the point of sudden death). In a full game every hard serve that happened to
meet the body was a free kill nobody aimed. A match ball never damages the
opponent — it passes through like a soft ball and racketAI plays it — so the
wound stages are exactly the scoreboard. That also made hp-per-opponent
meaningless, so the ladder escalates in racketAI instead: +12% speed per body
felled, whiff chance x0.82 per rung.

And serving resets to behind the baseline with real deuce/ad mirroring:
setupPoint's "serve from wherever you're standing" branch now excludes the
match, which falls through to the tennis positioning. Verified live: second
serve from z 24.3, x mirrored to the ad side, opponent unwounded by anything
but the score.

38 tests, 15 seeds clean.

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

src/beats.js

@@ -219,6 +219,9 @@ export function watchdog(dt) {
 export function startMatch() {
   if (G.interlude || G.horde || G.bossFight || G.drill || G.match) return false;
   G.match = { opp: 1, ending: false };
+  G.hp = G.hpMax = TUNE.matchPlayerHp;  // a real match is longer than four mistakes — the gore
+                                        // mode's 4 was "too weak" here, felt not calculated
+  score.server = 'P';                   // you serve every point (the corpse never learned to toss)
   G.weapon = 0; G.mgT = 0; endBurst(); pellets.length = 0; extras.length = 0; shots.length = 0;
   zombies.length = 0;
   G.boy = null;
@@ -239,7 +242,10 @@ function matchOpponent() {
   spawnRacketZombie();
   const zb = zombies.find(z => z.variant === 'r');
   zb.dueled = true;                                   // wakes racketAI, same as a fresh duel
-  zb.hp = zb.hpMax = TUNE.matchOppHp + (G.match.opp - 1) * TUNE.matchOppHpPer;
+  zb.hp = zb.hpMax = TUNE.matchOppHp;   // a FLAT pool: with regicide gone the body is pure
+                                        // scoreboard (a quarter per point), so a deeper pool would
+                                        // change nothing — the ladder escalates in racketAI instead
+                                        // (matchSpeedPer / matchFlubKeep)
   G.interlude = { introT: 1.6 };                      // the duel machinery IS the match machinery
 }
 

src/config.js

@@ -383,9 +383,12 @@ export const TUNE = {
   matchOppHp: 4,    // the first opponent's pool. FOUR, deliberately: a quarter comes off per point
                     // won, so a love game walks it through every wound stage and the game point
                     // fells it — the scoreboard and the body agree all the way down
-  matchOppHpPer: 2, // extra pool per opponent felled — later corpses soak more regicide punishment
-  matchHeal: 2,     // hp back for a game won (the duel's healPerDuel rate) — a clean game is how
-                    // you last; their every point costs 1 of your playerHp 4
+  matchPlayerHp: 8, // your pool for the MATCH — richer than the gore mode's 4, because a real game
+                    // has rallies you deserve to lose without the run ending ("the player is too
+                    // weak in this mode"). Their point still costs 1; matchHeal is how you last
+  matchSpeedPer: 0.12, // racketAI speed grows this much per opponent felled...
+  matchFlubKeep: 0.82, // ...and its whiff chance keeps only this much — the ladder now that hp is flat
+  matchHeal: 2,     // hp back for a game won (the duel's healPerDuel rate)
   // The timing windows, DRAWN (the match's whole ask: "what is the possible tap window, what is the
   // sweet spot"). Numbers shared with the mechanics they visualise, so the picture cannot lie:
   matchRingFar: 9,  // m — the approach ring fades in once the incoming ball is this close

src/gameplay.js

@@ -949,7 +949,10 @@ function racketAI(rz, dt) {
   const tz = Math.max(1.5, Math.min(COURT.svcFar, ball.z)); // chase laterally, hold deep on the far court
   const dx = ball.x - rz.x, dz = tz - rz.z, d = Math.hypot(dx, dz);
   if (d > 0.15) {
-    const step = Math.min(TUNE.racketSpeed * dt, d);
+    // THE MATCH LADDER ESCALATES HERE, not in hp: with regicide gone the pool is pure scoreboard,
+    // so a harder opponent is a FASTER one that flubs less — the same knobs, scaled per body felled.
+    const spd = TUNE.racketSpeed * (G.match ? 1 + (G.match.opp - 1) * TUNE.matchSpeedPer : 1);
+    const step = Math.min(spd * dt, d);
     rz.dist = (rz.dist || 0) + step; // ground covered — his walk cycle steps off this, not the clock
     rz.x += dx / d * step; rz.z += dz / d * step; rz.runT += dt;
     if (rz.pose !== 'swing') rz.pose = 'run';
@@ -958,7 +961,8 @@ function racketAI(rz, dt) {
   if (rz.swingCool <= 0 && rz.swingT < 0
       && Math.hypot(ball.x - rz.x, (ball.z - rz.z) * 0.8) < TUNE.aiReach
       && ball.y < CONTACT.maxY && ball.y > CONTACT.minY) {
-    if (Math.random() < TUNE.racketFlub) rz.swingCool = 0.5; // whiff — it hesitates
+    const flub = TUNE.racketFlub * (G.match ? Math.pow(TUNE.matchFlubKeep, G.match.opp - 1) : 1);
+    if (Math.random() < flub) rz.swingCool = 0.5; // whiff — it hesitates (rarer per rung of the ladder)
     else { rz.swingT = TUNE.swingWindup + TUNE.swingWindow / 2; trySwing(rz, true, TUNE.racketQMax); rz.swingT = -1; rz.swingCool = 0.3; }
   }
 }

src/state.js

@@ -161,7 +161,11 @@ export const deuceSide = () => (score.pts[0] + score.pts[1]) % 2 === 0; // even
 export function setupPoint() {
   G.phase = 'pretoss'; ball.active = false; ball.bounces = 0;
   G.swingSnaps = null; G.rallyNear = null; G.swung = false;
-  if (G.mode === 'splatter') { // always your serve, from wherever you're standing
+  if (G.mode === 'splatter' && !G.match) { // always your serve, from wherever you're standing
+                                           // (the MATCH falls through to the tennis branch below:
+                                           // real tennis serves from behind the baseline, deuce side
+                                           // mirroring and all — serving from mid-court where the
+                                           // last rally left you read as a bug, because it was one)
     score.server = 'P';
     P.pose = 'idle'; P.swingT = -1; P.facing = 1;
     return;

src/zombies.js

@@ -1139,7 +1139,13 @@ export function updateZombies(dt) {
           continue;
         }
         if (isBoss(zb)) { // boss: splat-quality wounds it; soft balls the racket one rallies (racketAI)
-          if ((ball.pow || 0) >= TUNE.zSplatQ) {
+          // NOT IN THE MATCH. Regicide made sense in the duel (one sudden-death point, any weapon
+          // counts) but in a full game every hard serve that happened to meet the body was a free
+          // kill nobody aimed — Oliver: "the killing by smashing occurs too often. i cant really
+          // control it". A match ball NEVER damages the opponent; it passes through like any soft
+          // ball and racketAI plays it. The score is the only way through — which also makes the
+          // wound stages exactly the scoreboard, with no side-channel smearing them.
+          if ((ball.pow || 0) >= TUNE.zSplatQ && !G.match) {
             zb.hitT = TUNE.bossHitCool; // belt-and-braces: this ball is spent below, but the cooldown
             const dead = wound(zb, TUNE.dmgBall); // is what stops ANY lingering contact multi-wounding
             pock(0.6, 300);