Killer Croc (Backwater)
What it is
A legendary-rarity Backwater apex hull — the heaviest, most heavily-gunned, and most heavily-armored ship in the Backwater family. Sits at the top of the four-hull Backwater roster (Batwing uncommon, Caiman uncommon, Lizard rare, Killer Croc legendary), the only Backwater hull to break four weapon slots and the only one with single-digit armor. Pairs the cannon starting weapon with the family-standard front-loaded heat curve, 0.36 exponential drag, baseline 0.14 turn rate, and the highest acceleration (230) and top speed (150) on the faction roster. Display name carries an embedded space in the hull key — the only space-bearing key in the 44-hull roster, requiring quoted-key lookups everywhere it appears.
★1 stats
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| HP | 290 |
| Shield | 110 |
| Armor | 7 |
| Speed | 150 |
| Acceleration | 230 |
| Drag | 0.36 |
| Turn rate | 0.14 |
| Weapon slots | 4 |
| 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 | cannon L1 |
★5 endpoints (only fields that differ from ★1)
| Stat | ★1 | ★5 |
|---|---|---|
| HP | 290 | 363 |
| Shield | 110 | 138 |
| Armor | 7 | 9 |
| Weapon damage % | 10 | 12.5 |
The ★5 override for this hull is the minimal four-field delta form — only the four numerics above are pinned, and every other field falls back to the ★1 value via the s5Val ?? s1Val defaulting rule. This is the same shape Backwater Caiman, Lizard, and Batwing use, and it differs from the verbose Ancients Rune / Backwater Batwing pattern where the ★5 entry re-asserts dozens of unchanged baseline fields. No ★2/★3/★4 pins exist for Killer Croc, so intermediate stars lerp linearly between the four endpoints; everything else is constant across all five stars.
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 |
Free-rotating spaceship with linear thrust ramp and an exponential drag profile — when thrust is released, velocity multiplies by a constant factor each frame, producing the characteristic “space drag” coast where the ship bleeds speed quickly off the top end and asymptotically approaches zero. All four Backwater hulls share this 0.36 / exponential drag combination, distinguishing the family from the Industria back-loaded brake. Heat curve is active at the Backwater-standard 12 buildup / 10 cooldown with the front-loaded curve shape, so the overheat-boost loop engages reliably under sustained fire and rewards held-trigger play with the front-loaded heat shape (peak boost early in the heat ramp, falling off as heat approaches the burnout threshold).
Hitbox
No custom polygon — the Backwater_Killer Croc hull is absent from the auto-generated HULL_HITBOXES table (the only four Backwater entries are Batwing, Caiman, Lizard, and Toad; Toad is no longer in the rarity roster), so physics applies the shared 8-vertex octagon fallback. This is coarser than a sprite-traced silhouette but keeps the Rapier body alive (without one, the loop force-resets ship position and velocity to zero each frame).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Source | FALLBACK_HULL_OCTAGON |
| Vertex count | 8 |
| X range | -0.90 to 0.90 |
| Y range | -0.90 to 0.90 |
Fallback octagon vertices (x, y):
| # | X | Y |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | -0.90 | 0.37 |
| 2 | -0.90 | -0.37 |
| 3 | -0.37 | -0.90 |
| 4 | 0.37 | -0.90 |
| 5 | 0.90 | -0.37 |
| 6 | 0.90 | 0.37 |
| 7 | 0.37 | 0.90 |
| 8 | -0.37 | 0.90 |
A one-shot regenerate (npx tsx scripts/generate-hull-hitboxes.ts) would replace the octagon with a sprite-traced polygon. The Killer Croc ship scale of 1.0× means the fallback box is applied at sprite-native size with no scaling.
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). Applies a percent buff to all stats at run start, scaling with passive rank.
Faction and rarity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Faction | solaris (baseline fallback) |
| Hull faction prefix | Backwater |
| Rarity | legendary |
| Display grade | L |
| Outline color | ffaa00 |
| Accent color | dd8800 |
| Ship class | medium |
The Killer Croc’s faction data field reads solaris because every hull inherits the BASELINE_STATS.faction value and no per-hull override changes it; the Backwater prefix on the hull key is the sprite/family grouping used by the rarity table and sprite folder. The legendary tier maps to the orange outline color (#ffaa00) baked into the v5 sprite asset and is the only Backwater hull at this tier — the next-best Backwater rarity is Lizard at rare.
Star progression notes
| 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 |
Lerped per-star values for the four endpoints that differ between ★1 and ★5 (lerp factor t = (star − 1) / 4):
| Star | HP | Shield | Armor | Weapon damage % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ★1 | 290 | 110 | 7 | 10 |
| ★2 | 308.25 | 117 | 7.5 | 10.625 |
| ★3 | 326.5 | 124 | 8 | 11.25 |
| ★4 | 344.75 | 131 | 8.5 | 11.875 |
| ★5 | 363 | 138 | 9 | 12.5 |
Killer Croc 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 cannon L1), faction, rarity, hitbox (fallback octagon), drive feel, ship scale, weapon-slot count (4), speed, acceleration, drag, turn rate, heat fields, or any meta stat — only the four lerped numerics above and the mod backpack grid size.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE flags
- Space-in-key hull lookup quirk.
Backwater_Killer Crocis the only hull key in the 44-hull roster that contains a space character. Every map/dictionary access has to use quoted-key form ('Backwater_Killer Croc') instead of the dot/identifier form used for the other 43 keys. This is an ergonomic and grep-friendliness wart — a one-word rename (e.g.Backwater_KillercrocorBackwater_KillerCroc) would let the roster use uniform identifier-style keys everywhere. Worth a brief callout onships.mdand an authoring-guide rule “no spaces in hull keys.” - Minimal-delta ★5 override form. The Killer Croc ★5 entry pins only four fields (hp, shield, weaponDamagePct, armor) and relies on the
s5Val ?? s1Valdefaulting ingetShipDeffor the other ~35 fields. This is the same compact shape Backwater Caiman / Lizard / Batwing use and a strict subset of the verbose pattern used by Ancients Rune (re-asserts 30+ unchanged fields). The minimal form should be the recommended authoring style; existing verbose entries are candidates for mechanical pruning. Already flagged on the Bomber and Cargo pages as a recurring extract candidate — Killer Croc reinforces the case as the legendary-tier example. - Front-loaded heat curve is the Backwater signature. All four Backwater hulls use
heatCurve: 'front_loaded'(the only family to do so consistently — Ancients hulls mostly use linear, Industria all linear, Junkrats all linear, Prism mixed, Solaris all linear). The front-loaded curve shape itself is not documented onships.mdorphysics.md— only the values are tabled. Worth a canonical “Heat curve shapes” paragraph explaining the front_loaded / linear / back_loaded differences (peak-boost-early vs constant vs peak-boost-late) and which families lean which way. - Missing hitbox entries continue. Killer Croc joins Junkrats_Bomber, Junkrats_Skewer, Junkrats_Stinger, Junkrats_Tank, etc. in silently using the octagon fallback while a sprite-traced polygon for an adjacent legacy hull (
Backwater_Toad) is in the file but no longer in the rarity roster. A one-shot regenerate-and-verify pass plus aships.mdreference table of “which hulls currently use the octagon fallback” would close the loop and surface the now-orphanedBackwater_Toadentry for deletion. Backwater_Toadorphan in hitbox table. The hitbox table has a polygon forBackwater_ToadbutBackwater_Toadis absent fromSHIPS_V4_RARITY(the canonical 44-hull roster), so it never resolves throughgetHullHitboxat runtime. Either Toad was renamed (likely → Killer Croc, given Croc is the legendary slot and Toad is gone from the roster) and the hitbox entry is dead config, or Toad is a planned-but-not-shipped hull. Worth one of: deletion of the dead entry; rename toBackwater_Killer Croc; or addition to the rarity table.- Legendary-tier rarity color reference. Killer Croc is the first per-entity page in the wiki at the legendary tier (L grade, ffaa00 outline). The four colors / grades / names tables in
ships.tsare only summarized onships.mdin roll-up form — a canonical “rarity → color / grade / name / sprite-outline” block onships.mdwould let entity pages reference it instead of re-pasting the row. jack_of_allbaseline passive on a legendary hull. Killer Croc is the legendary Backwater hull yet still inherits the +3/6/10/15/22% all-stats baseline passive — there’s no hull-specific passive override despite the legendary tier. Worth a design-question flag: is every legendary hull supposed to roll its own faction-flavored passive (and Killer Croc is missing it), or is the baselinejack_of_allan intentional placeholder until per-faction passives ship? Same shape as Junkrats_Pierre (also legendary, also baseline passive).- Hull faction prefix vs
factionenum field. Repeats the Cargo / Bomber / Glyph flag: thefactiondata field issolarisfor every hull including this Backwater legendary, and the actual faction grouping is the prefix on the hull key. Canonical paragraph onships.mdis now overdue. - Acceleration 230 / speed 150 outlier. Killer Croc has the highest acceleration (230) and speed (150) of any Backwater hull, beating even the next-fastest Backwater_Lizard (180 / 140). Combined with armor 7 (also faction-high), the hull breaks the usual “tank = slow” trade — it’s both the heaviest and fastest in its family. Worth a designer-confirmation flag on
ships.mdthat this asymmetric profile is intentional rather than an unbalanced pin from before per-star tuning was wired up.
Summary: Wrote wiki/gameplay/ships/backwater-killer-croc.md covering the legendary Backwater apex hull. ★1 stats: HP 290 / Shield 110 / Armor 7 / 4 weapon slots / cannon L1 starting weapon / 230 accel / 150 speed / front-loaded heat. ★5 endpoints differ only on HP (363), Shield (138), Armor (9), and Weapon damage % (12.5) via the minimal-delta override form. Drive feel is free-rotating spaceship with exponential drag. Hitbox uses the fallback octagon (no custom polygon in the table). Passive is the baseline jack_of_all (no per-hull override). Faction prefix Backwater, enum field reads solaris. The only space-in-key hull in the 44-hull roster.