Boosted Rage has no price and no grey: an unaffordable boosted Rage is refused with no warning

[mtklein]

From the #219 implementation. Ruling 2 of that design says a boost the caster's current MP cannot pay is greyed and refused like any unaffordable row. Rage escalates in price (8 / 20 / 50 / 99) and is charged correctly — battle_rage measures tier3: MP 99 -> 0 after the boosted rage START (price 99) — but Gau's battle Rage window draws no price and no MP grey, so an unaffordable boosted Rage is refused by the universal insufficient-MP fizzle with no warning at all. The player boosts, picks a Rage, and the turn evaporates.

That is the one place the #219 rulings are not honoured on screen.

The obstacle is structural, not a matter of taste: adding a price/grey surface to the Rage window means a new shim in bank C1, which the nomp-baseline invariant forbids. It is the same situation Steal's command row was in before it got a submenu, so the Steal submenu is the precedent for how to solve it.

Until then, boosting Rage is a trap for a player with a thin pool. Worth deciding between:

1. Give Rage a window with a price drawer (the Steal-submenu shape).
2. Refuse the boost earlier, where there IS a surface — at the boost press rather than at the Rage pick.
3. Exempt Rage from the escalation, on the grounds that a verb whose price cannot be shown should not have one that moves.

Related: #219 (the design), and the same "the window draws no price" shape as Slot, which is unpriced entirely.

[mtklein]

Severity collapsed when Rage became exempt (4e12cf9). Re-checked rather than assumed:

• Rage is now flat 8 MP at every boost level (boost Possess Rage 8 8 8 8 (flat), read out of the built ROM).
• GAU joins with 95/111 MP (build/states/gau_joined.log).

The trap this issue described was a boost-3 Rage at 99 MP against a pool that could not pay it. That price no longer exists. What remains is the narrow case of a player at under 8 MP, which is the same situation as any other cheap ability and not specific to boosting.

The residual gap is real but cosmetic: GAU's Rage window still draws no price and no grey, so at under 8 MP the turn is refused with no warning. Fixing it still means a new shim in bank C1, which the nomp-baseline invariant forbids, so it still wants the Steal-submenu treatment — but it is no longer worth doing before a release.

Moving out of v0.19. Not closing: the window genuinely shows no price where every other priced verb does.

[mtklein]

Owner ruling (2026-09-21): yes -- grey the Rage command when the caster has fewer than 8 MP (Rage's flat price, 0ba4265) and refuse it at the confirm, like every other unaffordable row. ROM fixes are in scope for this release; maximum polish. In progress on wt/rage-grey.

[mtklein]

Merged in 046e1df (branch wt/rage-grey). The Rage window now greys every beast when Gau cannot pay the flat 8 and the confirm refuses the pick -- the dance window's shape, since the command row's only colour is vanilla's cursor-skip bit. No number drawn (flat price). battle_ragerefuse PASS frame 956; negative control (confirm gate NOP'd) red 'got false, want true'; 8/8 sweep, distinct first-battle keys; the refused beast then commits at the real pool and pays 8 -- a gate, not a wall. All behind OT6_MP_COSTS; nomp ROM byte-identical.