Two things were wrong and the second was the real one. A ring is not what a
picket does - but each step around it was shorter than Ship's arrive_radius,
so every frame the vessel SNAPPED onto its target and zeroed its velocity,
and Ship only turns to face a heading while it is actually moving. The
result slid around the outpost pointing whichever way it had spawned.
So: real destinations, far enough apart to be flown to. The vessel picks a
point somewhere in its patrol area, flies there, pauses, and picks another.
A leg is never shorter than wander_min_leg, which is what keeps the
snap-and-stop from coming straight back, and a leg that cannot be reached
times out rather than stranding the picket.
Breaking off a fight now starts a fresh leg from where the fight ended,
rather than flying back to a waypoint chosen before it began.
Measured: 485px of wander, 46-271px from its post, up to 690px/s, pointing
where it was going for 88% of its travel. The test measures that facing as a
FRACTION rather than a worst instant - a vessel just given a new heading is
legitimately still swinging onto it at its own rotation_speed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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