What you are training
Something fails at every load-in: a fixture does not respond, a whole run flickers, one unit does the wrong thing on the right channel. The engineer who finds it fast has a diagnosis order and follows it: power first because it is cheapest to check, then data, then patch, then the unit itself. Half-splitting the chain, testing at the midpoint and moving toward the fault, finds a bad cable in three checks instead of thirty. This drill presents a symptom on a live rig and asks you to isolate it with the fewest tests, scoring the path rather than just the answer. Five rounds cover the failures that account for most show-day problems: a missing terminator, a mode mismatch, an address overlap, a dead cable, a fixture that needs a reset. Each reveal shows the professional sequence beside yours.
After this drill, the plan: The daily plan drills the diagnosis order as a fixed routine, so the next dark fixture is a procedure rather than a panic.