got it!!! all systems go for utexas!:) onward to more sophisticated robots now:)

[statespacedev]

not just a 'one liner' - literally a !!!'one character-er'!!!
missed one of the 10 -> 18 changes, back a month or two ago with the return to eighteen ships - yep, am an idiot, hahaha
here's the commit 9741b51
and a copypasta

came back after a few days with fresh eyes and spotted the problem. had already notice a crucial clue weeks ago but didn't understand it at first. strange 'tell messages' arriving with information about phaser and torpedo hits, blank lines, or occasionally even garbage. today noticed that with tell command bypassed these strange messages still arrive. this raised the question, could hit linked list entries be getting written into memory meant for the msg linked list? this is exactly what was happening. for the hit linked list, memory for ten ships was allocated, not for eighteen ships. the msg link list memory followed, and hit entries were getting written into it. simply needed to change the warmac line 'knhit==knhshp*^d10' to 'knhit==knhshp*^d18'. so now our outstanding topics are reduced to one - raspi pidp10 'temporary brain damage' - along with a note to keep in mind about locking unlocking.

[statespacedev]

ten robots, five hours of mayhem - 38 ships lost:)