ADR-0002 — Scoring: turns survived, lexicographic doom-integral tiebreak, flows only

• Status: ACCEPTED (Pip, in-session)
• Date: 2026-07-04

Context

The implemented score formula — (100−doom)×1000 + papers×5000 + researchers×2000 + turn×500 + money×0.1 + 50,000 victory bonus (doom<20) — was scaffolding built to test the end-game screen, never a design statement (Pip, this session). It existed in three copies (godot/scripts/ui/game_over_screen.gd, godot/scripts/core/baseline_simulator.gd, pdoom1-website/scripts/verification_logic.py), a standing sync hazard the code comments already worried about. It also contradicted the design philosophy twice: the money term paid players to hoard (an anti-sink, directly worsening the source-rich/sink-poor disease), and the victory bonus implied a win condition in a game whose thesis is that you cannot win, only buy time.

Decision

1. The composite formula is dead in all three locations, including the victory bonus. There is no victory condition.
2. Score is lexicographic: turns survived strictly dominant; doom-integral tiebreak. Each turn survived, the engine accrues 100 − doom into the tiebreaker (area under the survival curve, "doom-years averted"). No blended constant — no stewardship total can ever outrank a survived turn. Display: "Turn 14 · 862".
3. Flows only, never stocks. Score may never value anything the player holds at death (money, papers, researchers, reputation). Any end-state stock term is an anti-sink. Future score terms must be per-turn or per-event flows through world state; if a proposed term is a stock at death, it is rejected on sight.
4. The engine is the sole scoring authority. Score accrues per-turn inside the sim, so headless replay recomputes it for free. Other repos treat score as opaque — the website formula in verification_logic.py is deleted, not synced.
5. Boards are keyed by (seed, game_version). Balance patches naturally rotate the meta; old scores never lie about the current game. Score-formula changes are patch content.
6. Post-mortem reveal only. No live score ticker; the run is played on the world's terms (doom, instruments), and the death screen is where accounting happens.

Requirement created: the mortality guarantee

With no victory condition, nothing formally ends a stabilized game, and lexicographic turns-scoring with immortal runs is a broken leaderboard. Some pressure must grow without bound so every run ends and turn counts stay finite and meaningful. Natural candidate: compounding Liability Ledger interest (ADR-0003); escalating wave amplitude and rising base doom are alternates. The mechanism is open; the requirement is not.

Beacons served

• Rams #10: the formula is two integers and a comparison rule.
• Rams #6: the tiebreaker is literally the area under the doom trend graph the game already ships — the score display and the instrument are the same object.
• MaRo Interaction: every sink becomes a score pump routed through the sim (money only becomes score by being spent on things that change the world), so scoring powers the sink architecture instead of fighting it.
• Philosophy fit: survival time is the score and must be skill-legible; turn counts as PoE-style badges with community milestone semantics ("I got to turn 20").

Rejected alternatives

• Composite/weighted formula — anti-sink, illegible, sync-hazardous (see Context).
• Pure doom-integral (K=0) — undervalues wretched late-game survival; Pip's ruling: the reward for early prep is holding off the pivotal crunch longer, so desperate turns at doom 97 must pay full turn value.
• Blended per-turn constant (score += (100−doom) + K) — subsumed by lexicographic, which removes the tuning dial entirely.
• Humans-alive-at-end as a score term — double-counts the integral; retained as presentation of the integral only (see WORLD_AND_LORE).