Caiman (Backwater)
What it is
An uncommon-rarity Backwater hull — rotating chassis, fixed default 0° facing at spawn, 2-weapon-slot loadout starting with the rifle weapon at level 1. Mid-HP (180) body with a thin shield (60), front_loaded heat curve, and a live boost loop (heat buildup 12 / heat cooldown 10). Renders at the baseline 1.0× sprite scale at every star — the smallest on-screen footprint of the four Backwater hulls.
Identity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Faction | solaris (baseline fallback) |
| Rarity | uncommon |
| Display grade | B |
| Display name | Uncommon |
| Outline color | 50ff78 |
| Accent color | 38cc58 |
| Ship class | medium |
| Passive ID | jack_of_all |
The Faction type in code is the four-faction set (angel_corp, crystal_casino, solaris, wrongsiders) and Backwater hulls have no per-hull faction override, so the baseline solaris faction is carried through. The Backwater label here describes the hull-family prefix used in the sprite filename and rarity table, not a runtime Faction enum value.
Star-1 stats
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| HP | 180 |
| Shield | 60 |
| Armor | 4 |
| Speed | 135 |
| Acceleration | 175 |
| Drag | 0.36 |
| Turn rate | 0.14 |
| Weapon slots | 2 |
| Upgrade slots | 3 |
| Weapon damage % | 10 |
| Fire rate % | 5 |
| Heat buildup | 12 |
| Heat cooldown | 10 |
| Heat curve | front_loaded |
| Burnout severity | 0.35 |
| Shield regen rate | 6 |
| Shield regen delay | 4 |
| HP regen | 0 |
| Melee mult | 1.0 |
| Luck | 8 |
| Magnet range | 130 |
| Currency bonus | 6 |
| Ship scale | 1.0 |
| Starting weapon | rifle L1 |
Star deltas
Only four fields differ between ★1 and ★5 — the per-hull ★5 entry sets exactly these:
| Stat | ★1 | ★5 |
|---|---|---|
| HP | 180 | 225 |
| Shield | 60 | 75 |
| Armor | 4 | 5 |
| Weapon damage % | 10 | 12.5 |
Lerped per-star values (lerp factor t = (star − 1) / 4):
| Star | HP | Shield | Armor | Weapon damage % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ★1 | 180 | 60 | 4 | 10 |
| ★2 | 191.25 | 63.75 | 4.25 | 10.625 |
| ★3 | 202.5 | 67.5 | 4.5 | 11.25 |
| ★4 | 213.75 | 71.25 | 4.75 | 11.875 |
| ★5 | 225 | 75 | 5 | 12.5 |
No per-hull ★2/★3/★4 pins, no redundant ★5 re-pinning of baseline-equivalent fields. Star tier never changes the starting weapon (always rifle L1), faction, rarity, hitbox, drive feel, rotation, fixed angle, ship scale, weapon-slot count, speed, acceleration, drag, turn rate, heat curve, heat buildup, or heat cooldown — only the four lerped numerics above and the mod backpack grid size.
| Star | XP required (cumulative dupes) | Mod backpack grid | Grid cells |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★1 | 0 | 3 × 3 | 9 |
| ★2 | 1 | 4 × 3 | 12 |
| ★3 | 3 | 4 × 4 | 16 |
| ★4 | 7 | 5 × 4 | 20 |
| ★5 | 17 | 5 × 5 | 25 |
Drive feel
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Rotates | true |
| Fixed angle (deg) | 0 |
| Accel curve | linear |
| Drag curve | exponential |
| Stop shake intensity | 0 |
| Heat shake intensity | 0 |
| Heat shake threshold | 0.85 |
| Stop spring amount | 0 |
Standard rotating-ship behavior — angle lerps toward the input direction, thrust applies along the ship’s facing. The fixedAngleDeg field only matters for non-rotating hulls, so Caiman reads it as inert metadata. Acceleration is constant (linear ramp); deceleration follows the exponential space-drag default. No camera shake on hard stop or on heat-shake (heat shake threshold 0.85 is set but heat shake intensity is 0, so the cue never fires regardless of the live boost loop).
Hitbox
Custom convex polygon (no octagon fallback). Normalized to the sprite content box on a ±0.95 × ±0.578 envelope — wider than tall — and applied at the rendered sprite size (scale 1.0).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Vertex count | 13 |
| X range | -0.950 to 0.950 |
| Y range | -0.578 to 0.578 |
Vertices (x, y):
| # | X | Y |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | -0.647 | 0.578 |
| 2 | -0.950 | 0.275 |
| 3 | -0.950 | -0.303 |
| 4 | -0.675 | -0.578 |
| 5 | -0.344 | -0.578 |
| 6 | 0.592 | -0.358 |
| 7 | 0.922 | -0.275 |
| 8 | 0.950 | -0.248 |
| 9 | 0.950 | 0.220 |
| 10 | 0.922 | 0.248 |
| 11 | 0.592 | 0.330 |
| 12 | -0.344 | 0.551 |
| 13 | -0.592 | 0.578 |
Passive
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Passive ID | jack_of_all |
| Passive name | Jack of All Trades |
| Effect | +{value}% to all stats |
| Stat target | all |
| Is percent | true |
| 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 — Caiman is uncommon, so it applies +6% to all stats at run start. Tier scaling moves with the rarity roll, not with stars on the same copy.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE
- Live Backwater heat loop with no shake cue. Caiman ships the standard Backwater heat loop (buildup 12 / cooldown 10 / curve front_loaded) but pairs it with
heatShakeIntensity: 0— so the boost ramp produces no camera-shake feedback even thoughheatShakeThreshold: 0.85is declared. Same pattern across Killer Croc and Lizard. The threshold field is dead data on all rotating Backwater hulls. Worth a single note ongameplay/ships.mdabout the Backwater hull-family heat/shake pattern rather than repeating it on every per-hull page. - Backwater heat-curve asymmetry. Caiman, Killer Croc, and Lizard all pair
front_loadedheat curve with non-zero buildup/cooldown (12/10), while Batwing alone zeros both. Either an intentional “off-by-default boost loop” Batwing has to unlock through mods, or an oversight relative to the rest of the family. Already flagged on the Batwing page — single roll-up note ongameplay/ships.mdwould resolve it once. - Faction label vs Faction enum mismatch. The hull prefix “Backwater_” suggests a Backwater faction, but the Faction enum only has four values (angel_corp, crystal_casino, solaris, wrongsiders) and every Backwater hull inherits the baseline solaris faction. Same issue called out on the Ancients and Batwing pages — single canonical paragraph on
gameplay/ships.mdwould resolve it for all hull-family prefixes that aren’t real factions. - Clean ★5 override (no redundant re-pinning). Unlike Batwing and most of the roster, Caiman’s ★5 entry contains only the four fields that actually differ from ★1 (hp, shield, weaponDamagePct, armor) — no boilerplate restating baseline-equivalent values. This is the format the rest of the data should converge on. Worth flagging on
gameplay/ships.mdas the canonical clean-override exemplar. - Wide hitbox at full ±0.95 X envelope. Caiman’s hitbox spans the entire ±0.95 sprite-content envelope on the X axis but only ±0.578 on Y — a long, narrow footprint that contrasts sharply with Batwing’s near-square ±0.79 × ±0.95 shape. Combined with the 1.0× scale, Caiman has the smallest collision footprint of the four Backwater hulls. Worth a sanity-check on the canonical hitbox catalog (
physics.mdor equivalent) against the per-faction silhouette.