Telegraphed Attack Pattern

What this is

A four-phase attack state machine shared by melee-lunge enemies. The enemy approaches normally, freezes and broadcasts a visible commit (windup), executes a locked dash on the windup-time direction (lunge), sits inert and vulnerable (recovery), then waits a cooldown before being able to commit again. Lunge direction is locked at the moment windup ends — the enemy does not re-aim during windup or lunge, which is the player’s dodge window.

The canonical implementation lives in the charger behavior. Other enemies that route through this same state machine: Brute (slow, tanky melee — same behavior, different stats).

The same windup → commit → recovery → cooldown shape recurs across other archetypes (orb dash-sploot, sniper aim-fire-cooldown), but those use their own phase names and timings; this page covers only the shared melee-lunge variant.

The four phases

Phase	State id	Movement	Contact damage	Visual / forecast	Exit condition
Approach	_chargerPhase = 0	Normal seek toward player along straight line	Off (generic contact damage skipped for charger archetype)	None	Distance to player < windup range AND cooldown elapsed
Windup	_chargerPhase = 1	Frozen (velocity zeroed on entry)	Off	charger_bar loading forecast spawned at enemy position, oriented along locked aim angle, duration = full windup	Windup timer reaches windup duration
Lunge	_chargerPhase = 2	Committed dash along locked aim direction at lunge-speed multiplier of base speed	On — single hit per lunge (_lungeHit flag), body overlap triggers it	Damage flash held at maximum	Travelled distance reaches bar length
Recovery	_chargerPhase = 3	Frozen, inert	Off (explicitly cleared so player can punish freely)	Damage flash cleared	Recovery timer reaches recovery duration

On recovery exit, phase resets to 0 (approach), and the per-enemy cooldown timer is set; the enemy cannot enter windup again until cooldown ticks to zero, even if the player is in range.

Hit resolution during lunge:

• Damage = lunge-damage constant × worldKnobs.rarityScale.
• Knockback velocity applied to ship in the enemy’s exact movement direction.
• Hit-freeze pause applied via _hitFreezeTimer for impact feel.
• _lungeHit flag set on first connect, preventing repeated damage during the same lunge.

Per-enemy timings

All numerics below are the shared charger-behavior constants from behaviors.ts. Brute uses identical timings because it routes through the same charger behavior; only the base stats from its archetype data differ.

Constant	Value	Unit
Windup trigger range	250	px
Windup duration	3.2	s
Lunge speed multiplier	6.3	× base speed
Lunge / bar length	300	px
Recovery duration	1.5	s
Cooldown between commits	10.0	s
Knockback velocity on hit	220	px/s
Lunge damage (pre-rarity scale)	50	flat
Hit-freeze on impact	0.12	s wall-time

Per-enemy base stats that feed into the shared timings:

Enemy	Behavior	Base speed	Lunge speed (× 6.3)	HP	Radius	Melee	XP
Charger	charger	110	693	44	10	yes	12
Brute	charger	60	378	100	14	yes	25

Visual / audio telegraphs

Cue	When	Source
charger_bar forecast	Spawned at windup entry, fills along the locked aim direction for the full windup duration	Forecast object pushed in combat() on windup entry
Locked facing	Enemy angle snaps to the aim angle on windup entry and stays locked through windup, lunge, and recovery — does not re-aim mid-attack	Phase-based angle assignment
Damage flash	Held at maximum (_dmgFlash = 1, _dmgActive = true) during the lunge phase only	Lunge-phase block in behavior tick
Recovery inertness	Damage flash explicitly cleared on recovery entry to signal the punish window	Recovery-phase block in behavior tick
Forecast cleanup on death	All charger_bar forecasts owned by this enemy removed on death so the targeting bar does not linger after a mid-windup or mid-lunge kill	onDeath handler
Kill SFX	enemy_kill_charger plays a thud + crackle layered impact on death	micro-sfx.ts enemy_kill_charger sample