Critical facts documented permanently:
- throttle_min=0.5 bakes into action space (too fast for corners)
- throttle_min=0.2 + v5 reward CAN learn hill (proved Exp 9, mountain only 90k)
- Mountain failure in parallel is contamination from grass exploit, not throttle
- Grass exploit root cause: sim determine_episode_over() passes when CTE>16m
- DO NOT confuse mountain rollback with stuck issue
- DO NOT change throttle_min as first response to mountain failure
Exp 11 (v5 reward): aborted at 66k — circular driving returned without efficiency term
Exp 11b (v6 reward): completed 90k — no circles but plateaus at 170-195 steps
All 4 tracks eval: remarkably consistent ~194 steps (including zero-shot)
Parallel DummyVecEnv infrastructure proven stable.
Next: increase training budget (90k may be insufficient for 2 parallel envs).
Paul Huliganga