Charger
What it is
A fast melee enemy that closes to short range, freezes, fills a loading bar telegraphing a straight dash, then lunges along a locked line and deals heavy contact damage with knockback. Whiffs leave it stunned and vulnerable. Spawns in bug-set planets (Landing Site, Voidstar, Eden-5 mixes).
Stats
Base archetype values before rarity multipliers and per-tier world scaling.
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Base HP | 44 |
| Base speed (px/s) | 110 |
| Base radius (px) | 10 |
| Base XP on kill | 12 |
| Base lunge damage | 50 |
| Tags | fast, melee |
| AI behavior | charger |
Per-rarity stats
Rarity multipliers are applied to the base stats above. Lunge damage uses the rarity damage multiplier, not a percentage of base HP.
| Rarity | HP | Speed | Radius | XP | Lunge dmg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 118.8 | 154.0 | 10.0 | 36 | 150 |
| Uncommon | 217.8 | 161.7 | 11.5 | 72 | 225 |
| Rare | 304.9 | 172.7 | 13.0 | 144 | 330 |
| Epic | 435.6 | 184.8 | 14.0 | 216 | 420 |
| Legendary | 522.7 | 200.2 | 15.0 | 288 | 525 |
Stroke tint per rarity
Behavior
Four-phase attack cycle. Aim is locked the moment wind-up begins — the dash direction does not update once the loading bar starts filling, giving the player a dodge window.
| Phase | What happens | Player threat |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Orbits / closes on player at base speed. No telegraph. | Contact damage handled by generic collision. |
| Wind-up | Stops dead, faces locked aim, loading bar fills along the dash line. | Inert. Cannot deal lunge damage. Free hits. |
| Lunge | Dashes at high speed in a straight line for the full bar length. Cannot re-aim. | Contact during this phase = full lunge damage + knockback + hit-freeze. One hit per lunge. |
| Recovery | Frozen in place, velocity zero, contact damage disabled. | Inert, fully vulnerable. Punish window. |
After recovery a cooldown gate must expire before the charger can wind up again. Lunge damage in the table is the flat hit value; world-tier rarityScale is multiplied on top at impact time.
Behavior constants
| Constant | Value |
|---|---|
| Smart-AI activation range (px) | 350 |
| Wind-up trigger range (px) | 250 |
| Wind-up duration (s) | 3.2 |
| Lunge speed (× base speed) | 6.3 |
| Lunge / charge-bar length (px) | 300 |
| Recovery duration (s) | 1.5 |
| Cooldown after recovery (s) | 10.0 |
| Knockback velocity on hit (px/s) | 220 |
| Hit-freeze duration on impact (s) | 0.12 |
| Lunge-hit body overlap padding (px) | 8 |
Hit interaction
On a successful lunge hit the player’s velocity is zeroed, then knockback velocity is applied in the charger’s exact movement direction (not from the charger’s position). Damage is dealt through the standard player-damage path with a brief hit-freeze. A flag also triggers an electric-hit visual effect on the player ship.
Tier scaling
The base stats and per-rarity table above are the archetype values. World-tier scaling applies on top via the global rarityScale knob at lunge-impact time (multiplies the final damage) and via the standard enemy stat ramp shared by all archetypes — see enemies for the per-tier multiplier curve.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE
- The full per-rarity multiplier table (hp / xp / speed / radius / damage) and stroke-tint mapping repeat on every enemy entity page. Candidate for hoisting to
enemies.md(roll-up) as the canonical reference, with per-entity pages keeping only the resolved numbers. Per the wiki rule, numeric tables are allowed to duplicate, so this is optional. - The charger four-phase state machine and constants (wind-up range, durations, lunge speed, bar length, cooldown, knockback, hit-freeze) are gameplay-spec content that could also live in a “telegraphed-attack pattern” concept page if other archetypes adopt the same structure.