Burner
What it is
A stationary “lava-patch” area-denial enemy. Variant of the field archetype with the same four-phase plant-and-zap behavior, but tuned for a tight, lingering hazard instead of a wide, brief shock arena. Tagged mechanical and electric.
Compared with the base field emitter, the burner’s hot zone is smaller (140 px vs 250 px) but lasts twice as long (6.0 s vs 3.0 s) and ticks roughly 1.9× the damage per pulse (28 vs 15). The player can dance around a planted burner zone, but parking on it eats hard damage quickly.
Appears as a rare-slot elite on Network Station, where it threads alongside the base field emitter from the first minute onward. Network Station’s elite candidate roster is charger, field, and burner.
Base stats
These are the raw archetype values before rarity multipliers and per-mission scaling.
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| HP | 80 |
| Speed | 50 |
| Collision radius | 6 px |
| XP on death | 26 |
| Weapon | enemy field emitter |
| Behavior | field (plant-and-zap) |
| Field radius (hot zone) | 140 px |
| Field fade-in | 0.8 s |
| Field active duration | 6.0 s |
| Field damage per tick | 28 |
| Field tick interval | 0.3 s |
Stats by rarity tier
Rarity multipliers apply to HP, speed, radius, XP, and field damage. Field radius scales separately at a flat +15 % per tier. Field duration is unchanged across the first four tiers and gains a 1.5× bonus only at legendary. Field fade-in is the same across all tiers.
| Tier | Tint | HP | Speed | Radius | XP | Field damage | Field radius | Field duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common | grey | 216 | 70 | 6 px | 78 | 84 | 140 px | 6.0 s |
| Uncommon | green | 396 | 74 | 7 px | 156 | 126 | 161 px | 6.0 s |
| Rare | blue | 554 | 79 | 8 px | 312 | 185 | 182 px | 6.0 s |
| Epic | purple | 792 | 84 | 8 px | 468 | 235 | 203 px | 6.0 s |
| Legendary | orange | 950 | 91 | 9 px | 624 | 294 | 224 px | 9.0 s |
Field fade-in is 0.8 s and field tick interval is 0.3 s at every tier.
Behavior
State machine: moving → planting → active → cooldown → moving. Identical to the base field emitter.
| Phase | What happens |
|---|---|
| Moving | Drives toward a target position 60-100 px from the player, picked at random and re-rolled if the player drifts more than 150 px from the original spot. A preview rounded-rectangle outline appears at the chosen spot, oriented vertical or horizontal at random, fading in over 0.4 s so the player sees where the zone will land. Movement uses the shared car-steer with a 1.3× speed multiplier so the emitter can catch a moving target. Cannot be stunned out of moving (stunnable, but separation and FSM continue when not stunned). |
| Planting | Triggered when the burner reaches its target spot (within 20 px) or when it gets within 120 px of the player. The targeting preview is cleared. Burner freezes in place with a small jitter shake for 0.3 s and cannot be interrupted. |
| Active | A rounded-rectangle damage zone replaces the preview at the burner’s position. The zone fades in over 0.8 s (no damage during fade-in), then ticks damage every 0.3 s for the remaining 6.0 s active window (9.0 s at legendary). Total zone lifetime including fade-in is 6.8 s (10.8 s at legendary). |
| Cooldown | 0.5 s pause, then the burner picks a new target and starts moving again. |
Damage application during the active phase
While the rounded-rect zone is past its fade-in, the burner checks the player’s distance from the zone center on every 0.3 s tick. The hit check uses a circular distance of fieldRadius rather than the visual rounded-rect outline.
- Damage per tick: scaled field damage from the rarity table (84 common → 294 legendary), multiplied by the enemy’s damage multiplier.
- On hit, the player’s horizontal and vertical velocity are multiplied by 0.1 — the electric shock kills momentum and pins the player in place for the remainder of the tick.
- Damage is routed through the standard player-damage pipeline (invulnerability check, electric-hit flash, etc.).
The 0.3 s tick means a player who stays inside the full 6.0 s active window absorbs up to 20 pulses (30 at legendary).
Other behavior notes
- Burner is
stunnableandknockbackable. Stuns halt all movement and combat; the active zone is owned by the burner, so killing the burner during the active phase clears the forecast and ends damage immediately. - Uses shared separation against other enemies (push-apart) but does not use the shared attack FSM or the shared aggro pathway.
- Smart-range (the distance at which the AI activates) is 350 px.
- If the burner is not aggroed (player far away or not yet engaged), it idles with friction-decay instead of seeking a plant spot.
- When the burner dies, any preview or active zone forecast it owns is removed from the world.
Tier scaling — relationship to the base field emitter
The burner shares the field behavior verbatim and shares the rarity-scaling rules with the base field emitter. The only differences are the per-tier numbers (driven by the burner’s lower hp/speed/xp and its tighter, longer, harder-hitting field tuning). Concretely, at every rarity tier:
- Burner field radius is 56 % of the base field emitter’s at the same tier (140 vs 250 base).
- Burner field active duration is 2× the base field emitter’s at common-epic, and stays 2× at legendary (both get the 1.5× legendary bonus).
- Burner field damage is roughly 1.87× the base field emitter’s at the same tier (28 vs 15 base, scaled by the shared damage multiplier).
- Burner fade-in is 0.8 s vs base 1.0 s — the burner arms slightly faster than the base field emitter.
Burner HP is lower than base field (80 vs 120) and speed is lower (50 vs 69), so it is easier to kill and slower to reposition between plants.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: The shared four-phase field behavior FSM (moving → planting → active → cooldown), the rounded-rect zone primitive with fade-in + 0.3 s tick, the preview targeting outline, the 1.3× seek speed multiplier, the 120 px plant range, the 0.3 s plant duration, the 0.5 s cycle pause, the 150 px re-target distance, the 350 px smart-range, and the on-hit vx *= 0.1, vy *= 0.1 momentum-kill all live on the field archetype and are shared between the field emitter and the burner. Belongs on the enemies concept page or a behavior-internals page so per-entity pages can just state the tuning numbers.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: The rarity multiplier table (HP / XP / speed / radius / damage per tier) and the special field-archetype scaling rules (fieldRadius × (1 + index × 0.15), fieldDuration legendary-only × 1.5, fieldFadeIn flat across tiers) are shared across every field-family enemy. Belongs on the central enemies concept page.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: Player damage application (invulnerability check, damageMult, electric-hit flash, momentum dampening) is a shared player-damage pipeline used by orb, charger, gunner, field, burner, etc. Belongs on combat.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: The forecast/preview primitive (field_zone type, _preview flag, fade-in, owner cleanup on death) is shared by orb, mortar, field, burner. Belongs on combat or a forecast/telegraph page.
Summary
The burner is a stationary area-denial elite that plants a small (140 px base), long-lived (6.0 s base) rounded-rectangle damage zone and ticks 28-base electric damage every 0.3 s for the full active window. It is the lava-patch counterpart to the base field emitter — narrower, longer, and harder-hitting per tick. The active zone snaps to the burner’s position and is shown by a preview outline during the moving phase, so the player can see where the next zone will land. The burner itself is squishier and slower than the base field emitter (80 HP vs 120, 50 speed vs 69), trading durability for repeat plant cycles. It appears as a rare-slot elite on Network Station from the very first band onward, scaling from common (84 dmg / 140 px / 6.0 s) to legendary (294 dmg / 224 px / 9.0 s).