Balance corridor found: walk back Stream overshoot halfway (scraper 16, drmwalker 820)

Match ledger: 3x MRP blowouts (structural, fixed earlier) -> buffs -> 2x Stream
blowouts (49v0, 44v0) -> half-step walk-back -> close 12-min MRP win with zero
balance_report flags. Outcome now flips with small knob changes, i.e. the
matchup sits near the boundary. bufferbot HP 5000 kept (identity buff; hit-count
math shows it was not the runaway driver — the compounding scraper economy was).

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

MEGAPLAN.md

@@ -193,6 +193,16 @@ faction, or it reads as clip-art soup. Fix the Blender camera rig once, reuse.
    John says go (repo must carry COPYING = GPL v3, credit OpenRA engine).
 3. itch.io page + dmg/AppImage/exe via `packaging/package-all.sh <tag>`.
 
+## 5b. Balance state (2026-07-26)
+
+Six instrumented arena matches so far: 3x MRP blowouts (structural AI bugs,
+fixed), 2x Stream blowouts (buff overshoot: scraper 18 / drmwalker 750),
+then 1x close 12-min MRP win with zero verdict flags after the half-step
+walk-back (scraper 16, drmwalker 820, bufferbot 5000 kept). The matchup now
+flips with small knob changes = we are near the boundary. Acceptance test for
+any future balance change: a 5-match arena series via balance_report.py, not
+a single game. Human playtesting is the real referee from here.
+
 ## 6. Known traps
 
 **The game needs a live display.** OpenRA is SDL2/OpenGL only — there is no null

mods/vinylgod/rules/stream.yaml

@@ -153,7 +153,7 @@ scraper:
 		SearchFromProcRadius: 15
 		SearchFromHarvesterRadius: 8
 	StoresResources:
-		Capacity: 18
+		Capacity: 16
 		Resources: Wax
 	DockClientManager:
 
@@ -190,7 +190,7 @@ drmwalker:
 		BuildPaletteOrder: 51
 		Prerequisites: printfarm
 	Valued:
-		Cost: 750
+		Cost: 820
 	Tooltip:
 		Name: actor-drmwalker.name
 	Health: