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REVIEW 3 major objections 4 minor 1 cited by

Dynamic Sight Range Selection in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

T0 review · 3 major / 4 minor · reviewed 2026-08-15 · deepseek-v4-flash

Pith's one-line read A sliding-window UCB bandit that picks each agent's sight range episode by episode can replace manual range selection in cooperative MARL, lifting performance in LBF, RWARE, and SMAC.

desk verdict A practical drop-in sight-range selector with broad experiments, but the 'consistent improvement' and 'optimal range' claims overreach given the confounded UCB rewards and several counter rows in Table 1. read the letter →

arxiv 2505.12811 v1 pith:EQNVNSI5 submitted 2025-05-19 cs.MA cs.AIcs.LG

classification cs.MAcs.AIcs.LG
keywords multi-agentreinforcementlearningsightrangedilemmaupperconfidenceboundsliding-windowUCBcooperativeMARLpartialobservabilityobservationselection
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

The pith

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The reading

Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning faces a trade-off the paper calls the sight range dilemma: an observation window too small hides the partners and objects an agent needs to coordinate with, while a window too large floods the learner with redundant information that slows or degrades training. This paper tries to show that the dilemma can be resolved without global information or communication, by adding a lightweight meta-controller that picks the sight range at the start of every episode. The meta-controller is a sliding-window upper-confidence-bound bandit (SW-UCB) whose arms are candidate ranges and whose reward is the episode return. The paper reports that this wrapper, called DSR, improves final test scores or win rates across Level-Based Foraging, Multi-Robot Warehouse, and StarCraft Multi-Agent Challenge, works unchanged with QMIX, MAPPO, IQL, VDN, and IPPO, and accelerates early training by starting with narrow views and widening them. If true, DSR turns sight-range selection from a hand-tuned hyperparameter into an automatic by-product of training.

What carries the argument

The load-bearing object is the sliding-window UCB meta-controller of equation (3): each candidate sight range $d_i$ is an arm, the reward is the episode return collected while that range was active, and the controller scores arms by the windowed mean return plus an exploration bonus $c\sqrt{\log\min(e,w)/N_e(d_i,w)}$, with window size $w=5000$ episodes and exploration constant $c=2$. It sits on top of a modified observation function $Z(s,n_i,d)$ that masks the observation to the selected range, cropping grid views in LBF and RWARE and limiting the visibility radius in SMAC, with out-of-range entries set to a default or zero. The meta-controller operates at episode granularity while the underlying MARL algorithm trains on a single replay buffer fed by all ranges, and the paper argues this lets the controller steadily concentrate episodes on whatever range yields the best recent returns.

What would settle it

Take an environment where exhaustive fixed-range training has already identified the best sight range, run DSR with matched total compute, and compare the range DSR converges to against that best range; if the converged range is not the empirically best one, the UCB is selecting the easiest range during policy learning rather than the best range. A sharper version freezes a fully trained policy and runs the meta-controller without further policy updates: DSR's design gives no signal in that regime, which would show that it tracks learning progress under each range, not the range's intrinsic value.

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Extended reading notes

Core claim

The central discovery claimed is that the sight range dilemma can be handled by selection alone: keep the MARL algorithm untouched, modify only the observation function $Z(s,n_i,d)$ to crop each agent's local view to the chosen range $d$, and let a meta-controller decide $d$ at the start of each episode from the recent episode returns of each candidate range. The meta-controller uses the sliding-window UCB rule (equation 3), with a window of 5000 episodes and an exploration constant $c=2$, treating each range as a bandit arm. Across their experiments the authors report that DSR matches or beats the fixed-range baseline in nearly every setting, with the largest improvements exactly where large fixed ranges are known to hurt: for example, LBF 10x10-4p-4f-coop-10s improves from 0.338 to 0.798 and SMAC MMM2-21s from 0.190 to 0.714. They further report that the selected range typically starts small and grows during training, and that a hand-designed fixed expansion schedule underperforms DSR, which they read as evidence that dynamic selection both accelerates learning and reveals how much information the task actually needs.

Load-bearing premise

The load-bearing premise is that the recent episode returns collected under each sight range honestly measure that range's quality, even though those returns come from a single policy that is still learning and is shared across all ranges through one replay buffer.

Editorial extensions

If this is right

  • Practitioners no longer need to sweep sight ranges by hand: DSR wraps an existing MARL algorithm and converges to a range on its own, so the observation width becomes an output of training rather than an input.
  • Training is accelerated because the controller tends to start agents on small, simple observations and widen them as the policy matures; the reported curves rise faster than fixed-range baselines while reaching equal or better final scores.
  • The converged range is an interpretable design signal: it states how much of the environment the agents actually rely on, which the authors propose as guidance for sensor design in applications such as autonomous driving.
  • Because DSR relies only on per-agent observation cropping, it applies where no global state or communication channel exists, which is the regime the authors argue prior communication-based solutions cannot serve.

Reading between the lines

Editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • My read is that a large share of the reported gain may come from a curriculum effect rather than from discovering the truly optimal range: small ranges pay off early in training, so the UCB naturally lingers there before widening, and a well-timed manual schedule might capture part of the same benefit.
  • A testable extension the paper invites but does not pursue: feed the selected range $d$ to the policy as an explicit conditioning input, so the network can specialize per range instead of inferring the range from observation statistics; this would also make the UCB's reward signal cleaner.
  • The authors explicitly leave per-agent, heterogeneous ranges and continuous range spaces to future work, so the current claim is bounded to one shared, discrete range per environment; whether the selection signal survives finer granularity is open.
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Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, and a circularity audit.

Referee Report

3 major / 4 minor

Summary. The paper proposes Dynamic Sight Range Selection (DSR), a meta-controller that uses a sliding-window UCB algorithm to select, at the beginning of each episode, one sight range from a hand-chosen set D. The selected range is applied to all agents' observations, while the underlying MARL algorithm (QMIX, IQL, VDN, IPPO, MAPPO, IM-Qatten) trains as usual on the resulting episodes. The authors evaluate DSR on LBF, RWARE, SMAC, and SMAC-DT, reporting that DSR outperforms fixed-range baselines, accelerates training, and 'automatically discovers the optimal sight range.' The paper includes an extensive appendix with fixed-range comparisons, hyperparameter sensitivity for c and w, and a comparison against the communication-based method CAMA.

Significance. If the claims hold, DSR is an attractive drop-in wrapper: it removes the need to manually select an observation range, requires no global information or communication, and could guide sensor design in real-world applications. The experimental breadth is a genuine strength: three environments, five MARL algorithms, many maps, fixed-range baselines for every setting, five seeds for the main QMIX experiments, and an integration with the CAMA codebase. However, the central claims of 'consistently improves' and 'discovers the optimal sight range' need additional support: several Table 1 rows contradict the consistency claim, no significance testing is reported, and the UCB meta-controller's reward signal is confounded with the shared policy's ongoing learning. The paper's practical value is real but currently overstated.

major comments (3)
  1. [Section 4.2, Table 1] The abstract and §4.2 claim that DSR 'consistently improves performance across three common MARL environments,' but Table 1 contains multiple rows where the DSR mean is below the baseline mean: 10x10-4p-2f-coop-6s (0.957 vs 0.972), 10x10-4p-2f-6s (0.987 vs 0.998), small-2ag-5s (0.050 vs 0.074), small-2ag-3s (0.036 vs 0.182), 3s_vs_5z-9s (0.676 vs 0.716), 3s5z-15s (0.770 vs 0.808), and 3s5z-21s (0.736 vs 0.784). Additionally, the standard deviations are large relative to the differences (e.g., tiny-2ag-5s: 4.762 ± 4.702 vs 1.486 ± 1.361), and no significance tests or confidence intervals are provided. To support the consistency claim, the authors should either weaken the wording to 'often improves' or provide paired significance tests (e.g., bootstrap or Wilcoxon across the five seeds) and report how many of the 22 settings show a statistically significant improvement.
  2. [Section 3.2, Eq. (3) and Algorithm 1] The meta-controller's UCB scores are computed from episode returns that are generated by a single policy shared across all sight ranges and trained on one replay buffer containing data from all ranges. Consequently, the return r_j(d_i) in Eq. (3) is not a sample of a stationary arm quality; it is a function of the current policy, which has itself been shaped by previous sight-range selections and by data collected under other ranges. The paper therefore does not establish that DSR 'automatically discovers the optimal sight range,' because 'optimal' is defined operationally as the argmax of recent episode returns within a hand-chosen set D, with no evaluation of each candidate range under a fixed, converged policy. This confounding is a load-bearing issue: the observed benefits could arise from training on a mixture of sight ranges rather than from UCB's selection mechanism. I recommend adding an ablation that replaces the UCB meta-controller with random selection over the same set D, and an additional evaluation where the final policy is tested under each fixed sight range to check whether the range selected by DSR is actually the best at convergence.
  3. [Section 4.1 and Appendix B.1] The SMAC experiments use a non-standard state construction: the global state is formed by concatenating all agents' observations, rather than using the environment-provided global state. This choice likely accentuates the sight range dilemma and may make the SMAC results not directly comparable to standard SMAC benchmarks. The appendix reports 'w/ Given State' comparisons (Figures 10 and 26–31), but the main text and abstract do not qualify the SMAC claim accordingly. The authors should clearly state in §4.1 and the abstract that the SMAC results use this observation-concatenation variant, or present the standard-state results as the primary SMAC evidence.
minor comments (4)
  1. [Algorithm 1, line 8] Line 8 contains the condition 'if d_{e-t} ≠ d*_e'; the index 'e-t' appears to be a typo (likely 'e-1' or a comparison of the previous selection). The intended semantics for updating N_e(d_i,w) are unclear, especially in relation to the definition in Eq. (3). Please clarify.
  2. [Table 2] The row for '10m_vs_11m' lists '3 Stalkers + 5 Zealots' for both sides, which appears to be a copy-paste error; 10m_vs_11m in SMAC consists of Marines. Please correct the table.
  3. [Section 4.6 and Appendix B.2] The SMAC-DT comparison with CAMA reports no standard deviations, seeds, or number of runs for Figures 9, 36, and 37. Given that the main experiments use five seeds, the dynamic team composition results should report the same level of uncertainty to support the claim that DSR 'outperforms' CAMA.
  4. [Section 4.2, Figure 4] The training acceleration claim is supported only by visual inspection of two LBF curves. Please provide a quantitative summary, such as the number of steps to reach a given return threshold or the area under the training curve, for all settings where final performance is comparable.

Circularity Check

1 steps flagged · score 4.0 of 10

'Optimal sight range' is defined as the windowed-return argmax, so its 'discovery' is the selection rule; empirical gains vs fixed ranges remain independent.

  1. self definitional [Section 3.2 (Meta-Controller) and Abstract; see also Algorithm 1, line 4]
    "After training, the meta-controller converges to an optimal sight range. During execution, we simply choose the sight range d with the maximum average return in the window, arg max(r(d_i)), where r(d_i) is the average return for each sight range d_i. ... DSR provides additional interpretability by indicating the optimal sight range used during training."

    The paper never defines 'optimal sight range' by an external criterion; the only definition supplied is the meta-controller's windowed average-return estimator. DSR's output is exactly that argmax: Algorithm 1 line 4 selects d*_e = argmax(Xhat_e(d_i) + c*U_e(d_i)), and the execution rule in Section 3.2 is the same argmax of recent returns. Thus the claim that DSR 'automatically discovers the optimal sight range' or 'indicates the optimal sight range' is a restatement of the selection rule, not a prediction from independent evidence. The non-circular part is the empirical comparison against fixed-sight-range baselines, which is genuine external evidence and keeps the score below 6.

full rationale

The only clearly circular step is the 'optimal sight range' claim. The meta-controller's policy is to select the sight range with the largest windowed recent return (Eq. 3, Algorithm 1), and the paper's closing claim that DSR 'automatically identifies the optimal sight range' is definitionally the same as running that selection rule. No separate ground-truth 'optimal' range is measured or predicted. This is a self-definitional reduction of the discovery claim. However, the paper's main empirical contribution is not circular: DSR is compared against fixed-sight-range baselines on LBF, RWARE, and SMAC (Table 1, Figures 4-9), and those comparisons are external to the meta-controller's own objective. The fixed-schedule ablation (Figure 6) and the CAMA comparison (Figure 9) also provide independent evidence that the mechanism has value beyond its own definition. There is no load-bearing self-citation: the UCB machinery cites external work [3, 8], and no uniqueness theorem or prior result by the same authors is invoked to force the approach. The UCB confounding with the shared replay buffer is a validity risk rather than a circularity: it concerns whether the selected range reflects true quality or policy-learning feedback, but it is not a case where the paper's output is equivalent to its input by construction. Overall, the circularity is partial and localized to the 'optimal discovery' framing; the headline performance improvements stand independently, so a moderate score of 4 is appropriate.

Assumptions & free parameters 4 free parameters · 4 assumptions · 0 invented entities

All novel quantities in DSR are hyperparameters and an algorithmic meta-controller; no new theoretical entities are introduced. The central claim depends on hand-chosen D, c, w, and on treating training returns as reliable bandit rewards.

free parameters (4)
  • UCB exploration coefficient c = 2.0
    Section 4.5 shows c affects performance, with best values around 1 to 2.5; c=2 is chosen by hand and used across all environments.
  • Sliding window size w = 5000
    Section 4.5 tests w from 2500 to 10000 and reports modest sensitivity; w=5000 is fixed.
  • Candidate sight range set D = Varies per environment, e.g., {2,4,6} or {2,4,6,8,10} in LBF
    The set of available ranges is designed by hand. Section 4.5 shows the choice of D changes performance and that a good D is hard to predict in advance.
  • SMAC return normalization divisor = 20
    Appendix B.1 states SMAC returns are divided by 20 before UCB updates to bring them near the 0 to 1 range; chosen by hand.
assumptions (4)
  • domain assumption Episode return obtained under a concurrently learning shared policy is a valid reward for comparing sight ranges.
    Section 3.2 Equation (3) uses r_j(d_i) directly as UCB reward; no correction for policy non-stationarity or shared replay is proposed.
  • domain assumption SW-UCB non-stationary bandit guarantees transfer to the stratified MARL setting.
    Section 2.4 presents SW-UCB for bandits; Section 3.2 applies it unchanged, but convergence under MARL training is not shown.
  • domain assumption Concatenated agent observations form a valid global state proxy in SMAC.
    Section 4.1 and Appendix A.3 construct states by concatenating observations; Appendix D shows this materially changes results, so conclusions for SMAC depend on this modeling choice.
  • standard math Standard UCB regret bounds hold for stationary bandits.
    Section 2.4 Equation (1) relies on textbook UCB behavior; accepted as background.

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Cite this review

Pith. "Pith review of Dynamic Sight Range Selection in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/EQNVNSI5

@misc{pith2026250512811,
  author       = {Pith},
  title        = {Pith review of: Dynamic Sight Range Selection in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/EQNVNSI5}},
  note         = {Machine review of arXiv:2505.12811}
}
read the original abstract

Multi-agent reinforcement Learning (MARL) is often challenged by the sight range dilemma, where agents either receive insufficient or excessive information from their environment. In this paper, we propose a novel method, called Dynamic Sight Range Selection (DSR), to address this issue. DSR utilizes an Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithm and dynamically adjusts the sight range during training. Experiment results show several advantages of using DSR. First, we demonstrate using DSR achieves better performance in three common MARL environments, including Level-Based Foraging (LBF), Multi-Robot Warehouse (RWARE), and StarCraft Multi-Agent Challenge (SMAC). Second, our results show that DSR consistently improves performance across multiple MARL algorithms, including QMIX and MAPPO. Third, DSR offers suitable sight ranges for different training steps, thereby accelerating the training process. Finally, DSR provides additional interpretability by indicating the optimal sight range used during training. Unlike existing methods that rely on global information or communication mechanisms, our approach operates solely based on the individual sight ranges of agents. This approach offers a practical and efficient solution to the sight range dilemma, making it broadly applicable to real-world complex environments.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2505.12811 by the authors.

Figure 1
Figure 1. An illustration of the sight range dilemma in the [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p001_1.png] view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Overview of the Dynamic Sight Range Selection framework. The meta-controller (left) dynamically selects the current [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p004_2.png] view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. MARL environments used in our experiments. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p005_3.png] view at source ↗
Figures from the paper (33 more)
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Mean test returns on two LBF environment settings. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p005_4.png]
Figure 5
Figure 5. Figure 5: Experiments on three environment settings. For [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p006_5.png]
Figure 6
Figure 6. Figure 6: Comparison between the baseline, DSR, and a fixed [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p007_6.png]
Figure 7
Figure 7. Figure 7: Experiments with four additional MARL algorithms. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p007_7.png]
Figure 8
Figure 8. Figure 8: Experiments for different hyperparameters in the [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p008_8.png]
Figure 9
Figure 9. Figure 9: Comparison between CAMA and DSR in the SMAC [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p008_9.png]
Figure 11
Figure 11. Figure 11: This map contains 8 agents (QMIX), and we com [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p013_11.png]
Figure 10
Figure 10. Figure 10: Mean test returns during training in SMAC [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p013_10.png]
Figure 13
Figure 13. Figure 13: Full results of QMIX in LBF: w/o DSR (original sight range) vs. w/ DSR [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p014_13.png]
Figure 14
Figure 14. Figure 14: Full results of QMIX in LBF: Training with fixed sight ranges vs. DSR. Note that the largest fixed sight range [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p014_14.png]
Figure 15
Figure 15. Figure 15: Full results of QMIX in LBF 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 Steps 1e7 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Test Return tiny-2ag-5s QMIX d= 5 QMIX + DSR (ours) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 Steps 1e7 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Test Return tiny-2ag-3s QMIX d= 3 QMIX + DSR (ours) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 …
Figure 16
Figure 16. Figure 16: Full results of QMIX in RWARE: w/o DSR (original sight range) vs. w/ DSR [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p014_16.png]
Figure 17
Figure 17. Figure 17: Full results of QMIX in RWARE: Training with fixed sight ranges vs. DSR. Note that the largest fixed sight range [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p015_17.png]
Figure 18
Figure 18. Figure 18: Full results of QMIX in RWARE [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p015_18.png]
Figure 19
Figure 19. Figure 19: Test return of w/ and w/o DSR in different maps and original sight ranges in LBF. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p016_19.png]
Figure 20
Figure 20. Figure 20: Test return across different maps and various sight ranges ( [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p017_20.png]
Figure 21
Figure 21. Figure 21: Test selected sights across different maps and various sight ranges in LBF. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p018_21.png]
Figure 22
Figure 22. Figure 22: Test return of with DSR and without DSR in different maps and original sight ranges in RWARE. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p019_22.png]
Figure 23
Figure 23. Figure 23: Test return across different maps and various sight ranges ( [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p020_23.png]
Figure 24
Figure 24. Figure 24: Test selected sights across different maps and various sight ranges in LBF. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p021_24.png]
Figure 25
Figure 25. Figure 25: Test win rate of with DSR and without DSR in different maps and original sight ranges in SMAC. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p022_25.png]
Figure 26
Figure 26. Figure 26: Full results of SMAC 5m_vs_6m. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 Steps 1e6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Test Win Rate 9s w/o Given State QMIX d= 9 QMIX + DSR (ours) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 Steps 1e6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Test Win Rate 15s QMIX d=15 QMIX + DSR (ours) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 St…
Figure 27
Figure 27. Figure 27: Full results of SMAC 8m_vs_9m [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p023_27.png]
Figure 28
Figure 28. Figure 28: Full results of SMAC 10m_vs_11m. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 Steps 1e6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Test Win Rate 9s w/o Given State QMIX d= 9 QMIX + DSR (ours) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 Steps 1e6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Test Win Rate 15s QMIX d=15 QMIX + DSR (ours) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 …
Figure 29
Figure 29. Figure 29: Full results of SMAC 3s_vs_5z [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p024_29.png]
Figure 30
Figure 30. Figure 30: Full results of SMAC 3s5z. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 Steps 1e6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Test Win Rate 9s w/o Given State QMIX d= 9 QMIX + DSR (ours) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 Steps 1e6 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Test Win Rate 15s QMIX d=15 QMIX + DSR (ours) 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 Steps …
Figure 31
Figure 31. Figure 31: Full results of SMAC MMM2 [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p025_31.png]
Figure 32
Figure 32. Figure 32: Test return of with DSR and without DSR in different maps and original sight ranges in SMAC. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p026_32.png]
Figure 33
Figure 33. Figure 33: Test win rate across different maps in SMAC, various sight ranges ( [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p026_33.png]
Figure 34
Figure 34. Figure 34: Test return across different maps in SMAC, various sight ranges ( [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p027_34.png]
Figure 35
Figure 35. Figure 35: Test selected sights across different maps in SMAC, various sight ranges ( [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p027_35.png]
Figure 36
Figure 36. Figure 36: Test return in SMAC-DT. 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Steps 1e7 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Test Selected Sight 3-5sz_symmetric IM-Qatten + DSR (ours) 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Steps 1e7 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Test Selected Sight 3-5csz_symmetric IM-Qatten + DSR (ours) 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Steps…
Figure 37
Figure 37. Figure 37: Test selected sights in SMAC-DT [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p028_37.png]

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Pith tools

Reviewed August 15, 2026 · model on record in the stance chip above.