Comet Fragment
What it is
The one-shot “light snack” tier of the world-prop catalog. A fragile ice-blue destructible that joins the off-screen spawn pool, breaks easily on ship contact or under brief bullet fire, and bursts into a streak of many small XP orbs. Designed to read as fast, momentary, and never blocking — a player just passing through scoops it up without slowing. Sits between Scrap Pile (workhorse) and Drone Wreck (workhorse alt) in spawn frequency, but with the lowest HP of any prop in the catalog. Sprite is rendered as a baked emoji sticker with a pale blue-white rim halo. No edge-arrow telegraph — Comet Fragments are common-ish enough that the player will run into them naturally, and their signature is in the streak feel of the orb cluster, not the hunt.
Identity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Max HP | 8 |
| Visible silhouette radius | 26 px |
| Density multiplier (vs crate slider) | 0.4 |
| Orb drop count on break | 7 |
| XP per orb (fraction of current level bar) | 0.015 |
| Total drop value (level-bar fraction) | ~10.5% |
| Sticker emoji | comet streak |
| Rim halo color | pale blue-white (#c8ddff) |
| Edge-arrow telegraph | no |
Spawn behavior
Comet Fragments share the typed prop pool with every other prop kind (pool cap 48, max simultaneous active 10 at slider=100). Type selection uses a weighted roll where each prop’s density multiplier is its weight in the bag. With Comet Fragment at 0.4, it lands roughly mid-frequency — less common than Scrap Pile (1.0) or Drone Wreck (0.6), but more common than Volatile Crystal (0.35), Mineral Vein (0.25), Magnetar Pulse (0.20), or Supply Pod (0.15). Spawns are gated to be off-screen (never visible-spawn), pushed roughly 500-1400 px from the ship, biased 70% of the time into the player’s heading cone, and reject when too close (under 160 px) to another active prop.
Per-planet active count is driven by the planet’s destructibles.crates slider mapped onto a 0-10 active prop ceiling.
Comet Fragments also appear off the standard spawn path through two chain-cascade sources:
| Cascade source | Comet Fragments spawned per proc | Spawn ring radius |
|---|---|---|
| Mineral Vein break (30% proc chance) | 1 (paired with 1 Magnetar Pulse) | 70 px around break |
| Supply Pod break (100% proc chance) | 1 (in 5-prop ring) | 110 px around break |
Cascade spawns use a forceSpawnAt primitive that bypasses viewport gating, the density cap, and minimum-gap rejection — they always land where the break point dictates.
Break behavior
On ship contact the runtime applies max-hp damage in a single hit — the ship one-shots regardless of the 8 HP figure. Bullets do their listed damage per overlap with piercing idempotency (a single piercing bullet cannot chip the same slot twice in one tick). Because Comet Fragment HP is the lowest in the catalog, even a single low-damage bullet usually clears it; that is the intended “fragile” feel.
Non-fatal bullet hits play a chip-flash on the rim and emit a small spark cloud; reaching 0 HP triggers the full break sequence.
Break sequence (in order): fire prop_break signal → play the per-type audio cue → telemetry record → spawn XP orbs → spawn break VFX → roll synergy → deactivate slot.
The XP-orb drop is the signature beat for this prop: 7 orbs (the second-highest count in the catalog after Mineral Vein’s 10 and Supply Pod’s 12), each carrying a slightly smaller XP fraction (0.015 — the smallest of any prop). The visual rhythm reads as “lots of small pickups streaming out” rather than “one big bundle.”
| Break VFX layer | Value |
|---|---|
| Spark cloud particle count | 20 |
| Spark RGB | (220, 235, 255) — ice-white |
| Chunky debris count | 5 |
| Chunk RGB | (150, 180, 220) — pale blue |
| Rim shockwave color | #dfeaff |
| Outward ring burst count | 8 |
| Audio cue id | per-type comet-fragment recipe (crystalline tinkle); falls back to generic prop break |
The outward ring burst at 8 particles is intentionally smaller than Volatile Crystal’s 18 and Magnetar Pulse’s 16 — the smaller count gives a quick “shooting-star streak” feel that distinguishes the Comet Fragment break from heavier outward-burst tiers.
Per-type synergy (speed boost on ram)
Comet Fragment is the offensive-mobility cross-system synergy of the props lane. On break, the runtime rolls against the speed-boost chance; on success it multiplies the ship’s current velocity by a fixed factor, capped against a hard ratio of the ship’s max speed. Drag naturally bleeds the boost off over roughly 1 second; no timer state is maintained. The iconic beat reads as “you got swept up by the comet.”
A trailing particle streak fires behind the ship along its current heading (or as a radial puff if the ship is stationary), using the comet’s own ice-blue palette. The cue reuses the existing warp-collect energize audio recipe — already reads as “you got energized.”
The boost is multiplicative on current velocity, so the ship must be moving to feel the kick. At zero velocity the multiply does nothing — the preserved feel is “you have to be moving to be swept up.” The hard cap prevents runaway acceleration at high baseline speeds so the physics layer’s tuning stays intact.
| Synergy field | Value |
|---|---|
| Proc chance per break | 0.35 |
| Velocity multiplier on proc | 1.5× current velocity |
| Hard cap on post-boost speed | 2.0× ship max speed |
| Particle count (trailing streak) | 14 |
| Particle palette | reuses spark RGB (220, 235, 255) |
| Audio cue id | warp-collect (energize) |
| Telemetry recorded | resulting ship speed at proc time |
VFX palette
| Channel | Value |
|---|---|
| Rim halo | pale blue-white (#c8ddff) |
| Spark cloud | ice-white (220, 235, 255) |
| Chunk debris | pale blue (150, 180, 220) |
| Rim shockwave ring | #dfeaff |
| Outward burst | reuses spark RGB |
| Hit-flash duration | 0.18 s |
| Chip spark particle count per non-fatal hit | 6 |
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE flags
- Weighted prop-type roll mechanics — the density-multiplier-as-weight pattern is shared across every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up page. Only the resulting Comet Fragment frequency claim belongs here.
- Shared off-screen spawn pipeline rules (pool cap 48, max density 10, spawn distance 500-1400 px, 160 px minimum gap, 70% velocity-cone bias, off-screen gating, planet destructibles slider mapping) — all common to every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up page.
forceSpawnAtprimitive (bypasses viewport / density cap / min-gap) — the primitive itself belongs on the props roll-up page. This page only documents that Comet Fragment is a cascade-target.- Break sequence ordering (signal → audio → telemetry → orbs → VFX → synergy → deactivate) — applies to every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up page.
- Bullet collision rules (piercing idempotency via per-bullet hit set, non-piercing consumed on hit, chip-flash on non-fatal) — same for every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up or combat page.
- XP-orb drop scheme (fraction-of-level-bar scaling via
xpForLevel, fan-out angles, per-orb speed) — same for every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up page or the XP-orb page. - Mineral Vein cascade composition + chance (30% proc, 1 Comet + 1 Magnetar in 70 px ring) — canonical home is the Mineral Vein page. This page only mentions it as one of the comet’s spawn sources.
- Supply Pod cascade composition + chance (100% proc, 5-prop ring at 110 px) — canonical home is the Supply Pod page. This page only mentions it as one of the comet’s spawn sources.
- Ship velocity / drag model (how drag bleeds the boost off over ~1 s, max-speed source, vx/vy fields) — canonical home is the ship-physics page. This page only documents the multiplier and cap.
- Edge-arrow HUD telegraph system — only relevant to high-value props (Supply Pod, Magnetar Pulse); canonical home is the HUD or props roll-up page. Comet Fragment only needs the “no” flag.