Rune (Ancients)

What it is

An epic-rarity Ancients hovercraft hull — non-rotating, omnidirectional thrust, locked near face-down (181°) at mission start. A glass-cannon shield carrier (75 HP wrapped in a 250 shield, the largest ★1 shield in the roster) paired with the maximum 4-weapon-slot loadout, starting with the sweep weapon. Heat curve is zeroed out — no overheat-boost loop available — so the ship sits at a steady acceleration profile and trades survivability through shield bulk and 4-mod weapon density instead of speed surges.

★1 stats

StatValue
HP75
Shield250
Armor2
Speed100
Acceleration200
Drag0.50
Turn rate0.39
Weapon slots4
Upgrade slots3
Weapon damage %10
Fire rate %5
Heat buildup0
Heat cooldown0
Heat curvelinear
Burnout severity0.35
Shield regen rate6
Shield regen delay4
HP regen0
Melee mult1.0
Luck8
Magnet range130
Currency bonus6
Ship scale1.0
Starting weaponsweep L1

★5 endpoints (only fields that differ from ★1)

Stat★1★5
HP7594
Shield250313
Weapon damage %1012.5
Shield regen rate67.5

All other ★5 fields match ★1 — the per-hull ★5 override only delta-pins the four numerics above. No ★2/★3/★4 pins exist for Rune, so intermediate stars lerp linearly between the four endpoints; every other stat is constant across all five stars.

Drive feel

FieldValue
Rotatesfalse
Fixed angle (deg)181
Accel curvelinear
Drag curveexponential
Stop shake intensity0
Heat shake intensity0
Heat shake threshold0.85
Stop spring amount0

Hovercraft behavior — the ship does not rotate to face the input direction and stays pinned at 181° (effectively face-down) for the entire run. Thrust applies along the input vector directly (omnidirectional). Linear thrust ramp into an exponential space-drag coast. The 0/0 heat buildup and cooldown disable the overheat-boost loop entirely — Rune has no boost surge and no overheat burnout to manage, so the only feel inputs are the input vector and the stock 0.50 drag.

Hitbox

Custom convex polygon (no octagon fallback). Normalized to the sprite content box on a ±0.95 / ±0.66 envelope; physics applies it at the rendered sprite size (scale 1.0). The longer Y envelope vs. Glyph (±0.66 vs ±0.57) reflects a taller silhouette.

PropertyValue
Vertex count19
X range-0.950 to 0.950
Y range-0.660 to 0.660

Vertices (x, y):

#XY
1-0.3430.660
2-0.6330.528
3-0.7650.422
4-0.9240.264
5-0.9500.079
6-0.950-0.106
7-0.924-0.290
8-0.765-0.449
9-0.633-0.554
10-0.343-0.660
11-0.290-0.660
120.765-0.185
130.818-0.158
140.924-0.079
150.950-0.053
160.9500.026
170.9240.053
180.7920.158
19-0.1580.581

Passive

FieldValue
Passive IDjack_of_all
Passive nameJack of All Trades
Effect+{value}% to all stats
Stat targetall
Is percenttrue
Values per rank (1–5)3, 6, 10, 15, 22

The default baseline passive (no per-hull override). Resolved at the hull’s rarity tier — Rune is epic, so it applies +15% to all stats at run start. Tier scaling moves with the star roll, not with stars on the same copy.

Faction and rarity

FieldValue
Factionsolaris (baseline fallback)
Rarityepic
Display gradeS
Outline colorcc66ff
Accent coloraa44dd
Ship classmedium

The Faction type in code is the four-faction set (angel_corp, crystal_casino, solaris, wrongsiders) and Ancients hulls have no per-hull faction override, so the baseline solaris faction value is carried through. The Ancients label here describes the hull-family prefix used in the sprite filename and rarity table, not a runtime Faction enum value. Rune is one of two Ancients hulls and the only one at epic tier — the family’s other entry (Glyph) is uncommon.

Star progression notes

StarXP required (cumulative dupes)Mod backpack gridGrid cells
★103 × 39
★214 × 312
★334 × 416
★475 × 420
★5175 × 525

Lerped per-star values for the four endpoints that differ between ★1 and ★5 (lerp factor t = (star − 1) / 4):

StarHPShieldWeapon damage %Shield regen rate
★175250106
★279.75265.7510.6256.375
★384.5281.511.256.75
★489.25297.2511.8757.125
★59431312.57.5

Rune has no per-hull ★2/★3/★4 pin entries, so the lerp runs straight from ★1 to ★5 with no breakpoints. Star tier never changes the starting weapon (always sweep L1), faction, rarity, hitbox, drive feel, hovercraft non-rotation, fixed 181° facing, ship scale, weapon-slot count (4), armor, speed, acceleration, drag, turn rate, or zeroed heat curve — only the four lerped numerics above and the mod backpack grid size.


EXTRACT-CANDIDATE flags

  • Hovercraft drive pattern (rotates: false + fixedAngleDeg). Glyph, Rune, Crystal, Pearl, Ruby (and possibly more) all share the non-rotating omnidirectional thrust pattern with a hard-coded fixed facing angle. The behavior contract (input vector → thrust direction, ship angle frozen at fixedAngleDeg, bridge converts degrees → radians at mission start) is documented inline in the ShipDef interface but no canonical “hovercraft hulls” section exists on ships.md or physics.md. Worth a single canonical paragraph + a list of which hulls use it.
  • fixedAngleDeg: 181 quirk on Rune. Rune uses 181° instead of 180°. Reads like a typo / off-by-one but renders effectively identically to 180° at the pixel grid. Flag for designer confirmation; if intentional, document why; if not, normalize to 180°.
  • Zeroed heat curve on a 4-slot epic. Rune sits at heatBuildup 0 / heatCooldown 0, disabling the overheat-boost loop entirely. Several non-rotating Prism hulls (Crystal, Pearl, Ruby, Shard) and most Junkrats / Industria hulls also zero it out, while Glyph (5/8), Backwater line (12/10), Industria Bigbot (10/4), Industria Digbot (10/4), and the late Solaris hulls (14/48) keep it live. Worth a canonical roster table on ships.md showing which hulls have active heat curves vs. zeroed.
  • Sweep starting weapon. Both Ancients hulls (Glyph + Rune) start with the sweep weapon — the only two hulls in the roster to do so. Worth a one-line note on ships.md or the weapons page about which starting weapons map to which hull families.
  • Faction label vs Faction enum mismatch. The hull prefix “Ancients_” suggests a fifth faction, but the Faction enum only has four values (angel_corp, crystal_casino, solaris, wrongsiders) and every Ancients hull inherits the baseline solaris faction. Either the enum needs an ancients value or the prefix is purely a sprite-grouping convention. Either way, ships.md should explain the 4-faction enum vs N-prefix-family distinction in one canonical paragraph.
  • Shield-tank archetype @ 4 weapon slots. Rune carries the highest ★1 shield in the entire roster (250) on the smallest ★1 HP pool (75) at the maximum weapon-slot count (4). No other epic hull pairs those three extremes. Could anchor a “shield-tank vs HP-tank vs balanced” archetype roll-up on ships.md.
  • Sprite envelope ±0.66 Y. Rune’s hitbox stretches farther in Y (±0.660) than Glyph’s (±0.570) despite both hulls living at shipScale 1.0. The pattern of normalized sprite envelopes varies meaningfully by hull and isn’t documented anywhere centralized — a per-hull envelope table on ships.md or physics.md would let designers reason about hull collision footprints without opening hull-hitboxes.ts.