The opponent shows up, and the death loop dies

"still very weak and slow opponent. it also spawns at places where it is
impossible to react to my serve. so i win like always. in the cases i dont
win there is a bug. when trying to serve after i got hurt i get hurt again
and again until i die".

The death loop was G.serveNum. Tennis's pointTo is the only thing that ever
reset it, and the match bypasses pointTo entirely — so the first fault of the
match armed "second serve" permanently, and every missed serve after it was a
double fault, a point, and blood, repeating to death. Exactly the spiral a
rattled player serves into. matchReady(), the match's own point boundary,
resets it now; a regression pins it.

The receiver starts every point on its mark: matchReady drops it onto the
exact receiver position the tennis branch computes for O, deuce/ad mirrored,
instead of a random spawn x or wherever the last rally left it. An opponent
that cannot reach the serve is not weak, it is absent.

And the base opponent is a player now: matchSpeedBase 1.4 (the duel's 2.8m/s
lumber was tuned for one sudden-death point), matchFlub 0.08 (0.2 gives away
a fifth of all returns). Measured with the same autopilot that previously won
seven straight games: it now loses the match. Possibly too hot — the two
dials are named, Oliver's thumb decides.

40 tests, 15 seeds clean.

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

src/gameplay.js

@@ -950,8 +950,10 @@ function racketAI(rz, dt) {
   const dx = ball.x - rz.x, dz = tz - rz.z, d = Math.hypot(dx, dz);
   if (d > 0.15) {
     // 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);
+    // so a harder opponent is a FASTER one that flubs less. The BASE is boosted too — the duel's
+    // 2.8 m/s lumber was tuned for one sudden-death point against a fresh player, and across a
+    // whole game it read as "very weak and slow": opponent one already moves at matchSpeedBase.
+    const spd = TUNE.racketSpeed * (G.match ? TUNE.matchSpeedBase + (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;
@@ -961,7 +963,9 @@ 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) {
-    const flub = TUNE.racketFlub * (G.match ? Math.pow(TUNE.matchFlubKeep, G.match.opp - 1) : 1);
+    // ...and the match has its OWN flub base: the duel's 0.2 hands a fifth of all returns away,
+    // which across a game is an opponent that beats itself.
+    const flub = G.match ? TUNE.matchFlub * Math.pow(TUNE.matchFlubKeep, G.match.opp - 1) : TUNE.racketFlub;
     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; }
   }