#166-#173: plainer words, a point to shoot at, and a catalog that says when it is broken

Eight tickets. The last one is the interesting one.

#166 - PLAINER DIALOG. Every spoken line rewritten: the nine prologue lines and
all twenty quest brief/done pairs. Mostly splitting em-dash subclauses into
sentences and dropping the literary register ("hulls" -> "ships", "That is our
hands back" -> "That frees us for other work"). Same meaning, same voice.

#167 - NOTHING ANNOUNCED TWICE. Quests carry an `important` flag; seven of the
twenty have it, and they are the search for the World Ship. A quest handed out
with its goal ALREADY met is now credited in silence unless it is one of those
- no brief, no answer, both signals still fired and the index still moved, so
it appears ticked in the objectives panel. The chain used to stop the game to
set a task the player had already done, then stop it again to congratulate
them on it.

#168 - THE KEYBOARD CAN ANSWER A DIALOG. The rule the ticket asks for (still
arriving, show it all; already whole, move on) was already the rule for a
click since #149, but a key press reached the banner and did nothing - and
this game is played with WASD and a mouse. Touch, click and key now go through
one door. Modifiers alone and auto-repeat echoes are not presses.

#169 - A LOADING SCREEN. A press raises a cover, and the load happens after it
has been on screen for a frame, so the wait is something the player is
watching. Deliberately still a blocking load: load_threaded_request() comes
back FAILED for these scenes, reporting text-parse errors that load() does not
produce, because the global class names and preloads they reach each other
through are not resolvable off the loading thread. A progress bar is not worth
a menu that sometimes refuses to start the game, and the web build ships with
thread support off anyway. Further presses while loading are ignored - on the
web a button fires on PRESS, so an impatient double tap costs nothing to make
and used to build the world twice.

#170 - THE PICTURE BEFORE THE CAPTION. The prologue's first line was up before
the scene had finished arriving, so the game opened STOPPED (#128) over a
convoy nobody had seen yet. It flies for three seconds first.

#171 - THE CONTROLS FOLLOW WHAT IS BEING HELD. is_touchscreen_available() asks
whether a touch COULD arrive, and in a browser that is yes on any laptop whose
panel reports touch support - so the web build put thumb sticks over a screen
being played with a mouse, and switched mouse aiming off on the machine it
exists for. The reading is now the last input actually used, it lives in
GameState so the sticks and the guns cannot disagree, and it is two-way:
nothing can strand a tablet, because the gesture that needs the controls is
the gesture that brings them back. A touch suppresses mouse evidence for a
second, so the click Godot manufactures out of a tap is not mistaken for a
mouse.

#172 - AIM AT A PLACE. Every gun was handed the same direction, so a fleet
firing at something threw a sheet of parallel bolts past either side of it and
only the middle hull could hit - worse the wider the formation. Guns now take
a POINT and each hull works out its own heading to it, so the fleet's fire
converges. The mouse already had a place and was flattening it into a bearing;
a pushed stick names the point at the guns' reach along it, so touch loses
nothing. The assist (#89) still bends a shot onto an enemy, now per hull and
around that hull's own heading. The aim guide stops at the point and marks it.

#173 - AND THE ONE THAT EXPLAINS ITSELF. "In the web export version the fleet
can not store any resources" is not a web bug. It is the third time the Godot
editor's .tres writer has quietly dropped a property it thought was
default-valued: InterceptorVesselDefinition losing `capabilities` leaves
cargo_capacity at 20 and takes away the "cargo" claim that
fleet_cargo_capacity() actually gates on, so the hold is zero and nothing can
be mined or carried. That is the symptom, word for word.

test_definitions_intact caught it in the suite. What it could not do is catch
it in a BUILD - an export is taken from the working tree at whatever moment
the editor last touched it, which is exactly when the damage is done and
exactly where nobody is running tests. The checks move to core/CatalogCheck.gd
and now run at startup in every build as well as in the test, from the same
function. On the web push_error lands in the on-page log web_shell.html
mirrors, which is the only error a phone can read.

The tree is intact today, so a fresh export should restore the hold. The point
of the change is that the next time it is not, the build says so.

Full suite green at 154/154.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0139MmxRAJSUe1j77kftAWv3

core/GameState.gd

@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ const PLANET_DEFINITIONS = preload("res://planets/PlanetDefinitions.gd")
 # works around.
 const WORLD_GEN = preload("res://world/WorldGen.gd")
 const QUESTS = preload("res://core/Quests.gd")
+const CATALOG_CHECK = preload("res://core/CatalogCheck.gd")
 
 
 # Autoload singleton - the one thing that survives change_scene_to_file()
@@ -38,6 +39,10 @@ var fleet_position: Vector2 = Vector2.ZERO
 # is also what makes "then the game starts" cost nothing - the director stops
 # steering and there is nothing left to load.
 var intro_active: bool = false
+# #173: what the startup catalog check found, if anything. Empty in a healthy
+# build; see CatalogCheck for why a build can be unhealthy without anything
+# else noticing.
+var catalog_faults: PackedStringArray = PackedStringArray()
 # #124: the breach takes the wheel. Movement input is ignored while this is
 # set, so the fleet goes where the script sends it rather than fighting the
 # player for the last few seconds of the prologue.
@@ -47,6 +52,57 @@ var intro_locks_movement: bool = false
 # explicit override rather than a fake doctrine, so nothing about the
 # player's own progression has to be bent to fit a cutscene.
 var intro_fleet_size: int = 0
+
+# --- what the player is actually holding (#171) -----------------------------
+#
+# "The web export should auto detect keyboard mouse or screen and remove the
+# touch screen controls if not needed."
+#
+# DisplayServer.is_touchscreen_available() is the wrong question in a browser
+# and always was. It answers "could a touch arrive", and a desktop browser on
+# a laptop with a touch-capable panel - or one that merely reports
+# navigator.maxTouchPoints - says yes. So the thumb sticks and the pivot pair
+# sat over a screen being played with a mouse, and mouse aiming, which the
+# same query gates, was switched off on the machine it exists for.
+#
+# The right question is what the player LAST actually used, which is a fact
+# rather than a capability, and it is asked here rather than in a controller
+# because two of them need the same answer: GameController shows or hides the
+# on-screen controls, and MouseCombatController decides whether a click fires.
+# One answer, so they can never disagree.
+#
+# The catch is that Godot can manufacture the other kind of event from each
+# one - the pointing/emulate_* settings in project.godot turn taps into clicks
+# and clicks into taps. Taken at face value a phone would look like it had a
+# mouse the instant a finger touched the glass. So a touch SUPPRESSES mouse
+# evidence for a moment afterwards: a manufactured click always follows its
+# touch within the same frame, well inside the window, while a player who
+# genuinely puts a finger down and then reaches for the mouse takes far longer
+# than this to do it. Correct whether that emulation is on or off - with it
+# off there is simply nothing for the window to suppress.
+const POINTER_TOUCH_GRACE_MSEC: int = 1000
+# Seeded from the display's own answer so the very first frame is sensible on
+# a phone, and immediately overwritten by the first real input either way.
+var pointer_is_touch: bool = DisplayServer.is_touchscreen_available()
+# When a touch was last seen, in engine milliseconds. -1 for never. Public so
+# a test can age it out rather than sleeping for a second.
+var last_touch_msec: int = -1
+
+
+func note_touch_input() -> void:
+	last_touch_msec = Time.get_ticks_msec()
+	pointer_is_touch = true
+
+
+# A mouse or a key. Ignored while a touch is still recent, because that is
+# what a manufactured event looks like.
+func note_pointer_input() -> void:
+	if last_touch_msec >= 0 \
+			and Time.get_ticks_msec() - last_touch_msec < POINTER_TOUCH_GRACE_MSEC:
+		return
+	pointer_is_touch = false
+
+
 var return_world_position: Vector2 = Vector2.ZERO
 var return_camera_zoom: float = 1.0
 
@@ -3084,6 +3140,23 @@ var visited_planets: Dictionary = {}
 var visited_planet_kinds: Dictionary = {}
 
 
+# #173: the catalog is checked once, here, in every build - not only in the
+# test suite. The editor can quietly strip a property out of a .tres between
+# the last test run and the export, and the shipped result is a game that
+# looks fine and cannot mine. push_error rather than a crash: the game is
+# still playable in whatever way survived, and on the web these lines reach
+# the on-page log web_shell.html mirrors from the console, which is the only
+# error a phone can read.
+func _ready() -> void:
+	catalog_faults = CATALOG_CHECK.faults()
+	if catalog_faults.is_empty():
+		return
+	push_error("The definition catalog is damaged - see core/CatalogCheck.gd. %d fault(s):" \
+		% catalog_faults.size())
+	for fault in catalog_faults:
+		push_error("  catalog: %s" % fault)
+
+
 func reset_quests(armed: bool = false) -> void:
 	quests_armed = armed
 	quest_index = 0
@@ -3194,17 +3267,37 @@ func take_quest_messages() -> Array:
 
 # Ends the current quest whether or not its goal was met. The chain's only
 # way forward, used by _advance_quests below and by the tests.
-func complete_active_quest() -> bool:
+#
+# #167: `announce` is what a SKIPPED quest turns off. The index still moves
+# and quest_completed still fires - the quest is credited exactly as if it
+# had been played - but nothing is queued for the banner to read out.
+func complete_active_quest(announce: bool = true) -> bool:
 	var quest: Dictionary = active_quest()
 	if quest.is_empty():
 		return false
-	say_quest_line(String(quest.get("done", "")))
+	if announce:
+		say_quest_line(String(quest.get("done", "")))
 	quest_index += 1
 	quest_announced = false
 	quest_completed.emit(String(quest.id))
 	return true
 
 
+# #167: a quest handed out with its goal already met, credited in silence.
+#
+# Both signals still fire, in the order they would have fired in had it been
+# played, so anything watching the chain sees an ordinary start-then-finish
+# rather than a quest that was never begun. What it does NOT do is speak:
+# neither the brief nor the answer reaches quest_messages, so the game is
+# never stopped twice to be told about something already done.
+func skip_active_quest() -> bool:
+	var quest: Dictionary = active_quest()
+	if quest.is_empty():
+		return false
+	quest_started.emit(String(quest.id))
+	return complete_active_quest(false)
+
+
 func _advance_quests() -> void:
 	# The prologue is already talking, and the fleet in it is not the
 	# player's. The chain starts when the prologue hands over.
@@ -3212,6 +3305,21 @@ func _advance_quests() -> void:
 		return
 	var quest: Dictionary = active_quest()
 	if not quest_announced:
+		# #167: the chain hands out teaching quests, and by the time some of
+		# them come up the player has already done the thing - the extractor
+		# is down, the hangar is crewed. Announcing one of those stops the
+		# game to explain a task, then stops it again to congratulate them
+		# on a task they never did. So an unimportant quest whose goal is
+		# already met is banked without a word (see Quests.is_important);
+		# it still shows up as done in the objectives panel, which is where
+		# the player looks for what they have been credited with.
+		if quest_goal_met(quest) and not QUESTS.is_important(quest):
+			skip_active_quest()
+			# One a frame. Several already-met quests in a row are cleared
+			# over the next few frames rather than in a loop here, which
+			# keeps this function's shape - one step per call - and keeps a
+			# malformed chain from spinning inside a single tick.
+			return
 		quest_announced = true
 		say_quest_line(String(quest.get("brief", "")))
 		quest_started.emit(String(quest.id))