Oh, never thought of that. I'll probably take this kata down by the end of the day anyway.

The solution can be hardcoded based on function arguments instead of test order.

Yeah I don't think this kata will last but it was mainly to see how the kata-making process worked and hopefully getting something out there. Thanks again for all the comments and I hope that my next idea is a better fit.

Getting it out of beta is not your most immediate problem. Keeping it in Beta is.

You are heading for retirement fast.

H*ll, I wouldn't know how to usefully implement this as a kata, and I've done quite a few. Alex's comment up top may capture the essence of the problem: you want a journey, not a destination. Kata, as done on CodeWars, are really about the destination, and how you get there is up to you. Testing is designed for specifications and results, not implementations. The task is just not a very good fit for a kata. If you somehow want to shoehorn it in anyway, you'll then have to come up with a beta kata that does most everything right when published, or it will get downvoted straight into retirement. It's certainly not ideal, but it's the way it is. Solving problems while already in Beta is an iffy proposition - people look at the current state and rank accordingly, and they may or may not come back if and when you might have solved any problems. And as soon as you collect enough downvotes - retirement. There's not a whole lot of time to improve a bad kata while in Beta.

I have made some revisions (I may have stopped the one-line solutions from passing), please let me know if they were beneficial in any way. The main issue with this kata still stands with the random nature of the solution so it seems I will probably have to take this kata down if this isn't solved.

Thank you so much for the feedback, this has been very informative and I hope to do better next time :)

I see what you mean, this program is very restricted and I will work on making it more open to different approaches (or take it down and try something else).
Thank you for the feedback.

Whatever you're trying to do here is not a good idea at all. A kata is a problem that can be solved using one or more different approaches; you may enforce something by introducing some fancy requirements but you can never say "use this specific algorithm because I want so". What you're asking for here is exactly that - to use a concrete approach under the premise that we're trying to solve some (irrelevant) task for which this approach is applicable (even though it's overkill for something so simple). You should either restructure this thing into something more sensible and author a new kata, or drop the idea completely.

Thanks for the constructive feedback, I really appreciate it. I realize that may not be an easy kata to make (especially as a first), but I wanted to challenge myself. I'll see what I can do to improve the tests and the descriptions, hopefully this can come out of beta after much community review.

Yes, the number of generations required to meet the target string does vary (within a fairly consistent range).
This is my first Kata and I knew that this would be very difficult to test and I came up with a generous range of values for each test based off of values from my own solution. I am still contemplating new ways to test this exercise and would be open to suggestions on improving this.

I'm sorry for all of the inconsistencies, this is my first Kata and I should have payed more attention to them. Thank you for your comments and suggestions. I hope that (with the help of this community) I can manage to refine this Kata.

You picked quite the subject for your first kata. A kata is not the easiest form to fit this task into. Possibly not the best either.

Back on topic: writing good descriptions is hard. writing good tests is hard. paying attention to detail is not optional. and there is no sandbox to practice in. Welcome to authoring kata! :]

Yes I should add an exception like: "unless the character is locked".

Again, I should clarify that in the description as having the most correct characters out of all the other strings in its generation.

Yes, I'm sorry this is my first try at making a Kata, I should clarify that the input string may change to verify that the program is correct.

a) sounds about right. The goal is to take a bunch of random characters and converge them into target string based on RNG. You could get lucky and do it in the first iteration and fail the tests.
b) very. It gets reduced by 1) the fact that once you find correct character, it stays there, and 2) many attempted mutations, but still too random IMO.

I haven't read the Submit tests, because I obviously haven't solved it. What you have to remark on them may help the author!

Am I reading correctly that the kata is effectively asking for a value, determined in a random way, from a random value? (a) That is almost impossible to test, and (b) isn't that random?