#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

vessels/VesselWeaponComponent.gd

@@ -10,16 +10,31 @@ extends Node
 # to aim, and nothing to decide. Firing is now an action like any other, and
 # the right-hand stick is what performs it.
 #
-# `fire_direction` is set every frame by FireStickController from the stick's
-# own reading, and cleared the moment it is released. Zero means "not firing",
-# which is the resting state.
+# #172: it is aimed at a POINT, not along a heading.
+#
+# Every gun in the fleet used to be 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 ever hit. Handed a point instead, each hull
+# works out its own heading to that point, and the fleet's fire converges
+# where the player is actually pointing - which is what having several ships
+# should be worth.
+#
+# The point is set every frame by FireStickController, from the mouse's own
+# world position or from where the fire stick is pushed, and cleared the
+# moment the trigger is let go. No point means not firing, which is the
+# resting state.
 
 var capability_id: String = "weapon"
 var fire_range: float
 var fire_cooldown: float
 var projectile_damage: int
 var fire_timer: float = 0.0
-var fire_direction: Vector2 = Vector2.ZERO
+# Where this gun is pointed, in WORLD space, and whether it is pointed at all.
+# A point rather than a Vector2.ZERO sentinel: the origin is a perfectly
+# ordinary place to aim at, and a fleet that happened to be near it would
+# stop firing.
+var fire_target: Vector2 = Vector2.ZERO
+var has_fire_target: bool = false
 var projectile_scene: PackedScene = preload("res://vessels/Projectile.tscn")
 # By path, not by class name - see the note at the top of MuzzleSparkVFX.
 const MUZZLE_SPARK = preload("res://vfx/MuzzleSparkVFX.gd")
@@ -77,13 +92,48 @@ static func assisted_heading(tree: SceneTree, origin: Vector2, direction: Vector
 	return heading if nearest == Vector2.ZERO else nearest.normalized()
 
 
-# Called by FireStickController. A zero vector stops the gun.
+# Where this gun is firing FROM. The hull it is bolted to.
+func muzzle() -> Vector2:
+	var ship: Node2D = get_parent() as Node2D
+	return ship.global_position if ship != null else Vector2.ZERO
+
+
+# Called by FireStickController every frame the trigger is held.
+func aim_at(point: Vector2) -> void:
+	fire_target = point
+	has_fire_target = true
+
+
+func hold_fire() -> void:
+	has_fire_target = false
+
+
+# For anything that knows a DISPLACEMENT rather than a place: an outpost
+# garrison has already measured the vector to the enemy it picked (see
+# VesselGarrisonComponent._shoot), and a lone stationed vessel has no fleet
+# to converge with anyway. Zero still means stop.
 func set_fire_direction(direction: Vector2) -> void:
-	fire_direction = direction if direction.length() > 0.001 else Vector2.ZERO
+	if direction.length() <= 0.001:
+		hold_fire()
+		return
+	aim_at(muzzle() + direction)
 
 
 func is_firing() -> bool:
-	return fire_direction != Vector2.ZERO
+	return has_fire_target
+
+
+# The heading a shot from THIS hull will actually take: from the muzzle to the
+# aimed point, bent onto an enemy sitting inside the assist cone. Zero when the
+# gun is not firing, or when the point is on top of the ship - there is no
+# heading to a place you are already at.
+func firing_heading() -> Vector2:
+	if not has_fire_target:
+		return Vector2.ZERO
+	var to_point: Vector2 = fire_target - muzzle()
+	if to_point.length() <= 0.001:
+		return Vector2.ZERO
+	return assisted_heading(get_tree(), muzzle(), to_point, fire_range)
 
 
 func tick(delta: float) -> void:
@@ -91,7 +141,12 @@ func tick(delta: float) -> void:
 	# the stick in a new direction is not punished by a timer that only
 	# started when the stick moved.
 	fire_timer -= delta
-	if fire_direction == Vector2.ZERO or fire_timer > 0.0:
+	if not has_fire_target or fire_timer > 0.0:
+		return
+	# #172: worked out per HULL, from this ship to the aimed point, which is
+	# what makes the fleet's fire converge rather than run parallel.
+	var heading: Vector2 = firing_heading()
+	if heading == Vector2.ZERO:
 		return
 	var ship: Node2D = get_parent()
 	var projectile: Node2D = projectile_scene.instantiate()
@@ -101,10 +156,10 @@ func tick(delta: float) -> void:
 	# same range - one number, one meaning.
 	projectile.set_range(fire_range)
 	ship.get_tree().root.add_child(projectile)
-	# Aimed by DIRECTION, not at a target: launch() takes a displacement, so
-	# the gun's own range decides how far the shot is sent.
-	var heading: Vector2 = assisted_heading(ship.get_tree(), ship.global_position,
-		fire_direction, fire_range)
+	# The bolt is sent the gun's own range along that heading, whether the
+	# aimed point is nearer or further: range is a property of the gun, not of
+	# where the player pointed. A point beyond reach is fired toward and falls
+	# short; a point inside it is flown through.
 	projectile.launch(heading * fire_range)
 	# #87: sparks off the hull that fired, so a shot is visibly attached to
 	# the vessel it came from.