Carpet Bomber
What it is
Carpet Bomber is the bomb + fire legendary. A bomber silhouette sweeps across the screen from one side, follows the ship’s position, and drops a horizontal line of firebombs over a ~2 second run. Each firebomb explodes on impact for a single bomb-tag AoE hit, then leaves a persistent fire patch on the ground that ticks fire-tag damage to anything inside it. A small dedicated flame zone is also seeded at every impact (Bomb Pyre).
The bomb hit is one large up-front spike; the fire patch and Bomb Pyre flame zone are area-denial gravy that benefits from any fire-zone modifiers.
Merge recipe
| Primary parent tag | Secondary parent tag |
|---|---|
| bomb | fire |
Family: explosive. Primary damage tag: bomb. Secondary damage tag: fire. Scaling curve: linear.
Stats
Linear curve: effective level equals raw level, and continuous stats follow base + scaling × (level − 1). Bombs-per-run is a stepped table evaluated at the listed thresholds.
| Stat | Level 1 | Level 10 | Level 20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Damage per bomb | 4800 | 4800 | 4800 |
| Bombs per run | 6 | 10 | 18 |
| Fire rate (runs / sec) | 0.4 | 0.616 | 0.856 |
| Blast radius (px) | 130 | 175 | 225 |
| Acquire range (px) | 600 | 708 | 828 |
| Warmup (sec) | 0.10 | 0.10 | 0.10 |
| Fire-rate jitter | 0.30 | 0.30 | 0.30 |
| Run duration (sec) | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 |
Target mode: closest. Collision mode: first hit. Hits destructibles: yes. Travel-range multiplier: 1.0.
Behavior
- A run is one trigger of the weapon. Each run sends a single bomber across the screen and drops
bombs per runfirebombs evenly along the horizontal sweep over the run duration. - The bomber’s screen entry side is randomized, and it follows the ship so the bomb line lands across the ship’s current position with a random vertical offset (about ±20% of screen height).
- Each firebomb is one bomb-tag AoE hit at its landing point. Damage falls off with distance from the impact: 100% at the center and 50% at the blast radius edge.
- Every impact also spawns a small fixed-size flame zone (Bomb Pyre, fire tag) and a larger persistent fire patch.
| Impact effect | Tag | Radius | Damage | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct bomb blast | bomb | blast radius (see stats) | 4800 with center-to-edge falloff (100% to 50%) | instant |
| Bomb Pyre flame zone | fire | 50 px | 20% of bomb damage, spread over its duration | 0.8 sec |
| Fire patch zone | fire | 70% of blast radius | 6% of bomb damage per tick at 5 ticks / sec | 2.5 sec |
At blast radius 175 (L10), the fire patch covers a 122 px radius and ticks for 288 fire damage 5 times a second across 2.5 seconds for a total ceiling of 3600 per patch on a single target that stays inside. Up to bombs per run patches can overlap from a single run.
Scaling
The damage spike per bomb does not scale: each individual firebomb deals the same 4800 from L1 through L20. Power growth comes from three other axes.
| Axis | L1 → L20 change | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Bombs per run | 6 → 18 (+200%) | Three times as many bomb hits and three times as many fire patches per cast |
| Fire rate | 0.4 → 0.856 runs / sec (+114%) | Runs happen more than twice as often |
| Blast radius | 130 → 225 px (+73%) | Each bomb covers ~3× the area and seeds a larger fire patch |
Combined, raw bomb-damage output at L20 is roughly 0.856 × 18 × 4800 ≈ 74,000 bomb damage per second before falloff, fire-patch ticks, Bomb Pyre, damage-tag modifiers, and any fire-zone or area passives. Persistent fire-patch and Bomb Pyre ticks layer on top and scale with the same blast radius and bomb count.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: stepped-stat lookup mechanic (used by every legendary with a tiered count like bombs-per-run, shells-per-run, projectile-count) — promote to a shared concept-stepped-stats page.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: AoE falloff curve (100% center → 50% edge, linear in distance) — used by every blast-radius weapon; promote to concept-aoe-falloff.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: Bomb Pyre / per-weapon “echo” effects (small extra zone or pulse spawned alongside the main hit) — pattern recurs across legendaries; promote to concept-legendary-echoes.