Drifter (Junkrats)

What it is

An uncommon-rarity Junkrats two-slot hull built around a disc starting weapon and the highest baseline drag of any Junkrats hull (0.42 — versus 0.40 on Bomber, Marco, Pierre, Skewer, and Stinger; 0.34 on Tank; 0.28 on Orca). Pairs the lightweight Junkrats two-slot stat block — 110 HP, 120 shield, armor 2, 170 acceleration, 130 speed — with a 1.4× sprite scale that puts it in the “big silhouette” tier alongside Bomber and Towncar, the exponential drag profile shared by every Junkrats hull outside Tank and Orca, and a sprite-traced 14-vertex hitbox. Heat curve is fully disabled (0 buildup / 0 cooldown), so the overheat-boost loop never engages and all damage comes from raw weapon-damage percentage, fire-rate percentage, and the starting disc.

Identity

FieldValue
Factionsolaris
Hull faction tagJunkrats
Rarityuncommon
Display gradeB
Outline color50ff78
Accent color38cc58
Ship classmedium
Starting weapondisc L1

Drifter’s faction data field reads solaris because every hull inherits the baseline-default faction; the Junkrats prefix on the hull key is the visual/sprite faction grouping used by the rarity table and the sprite folder. Rarity color is the uncommon green outline baked into the v5 sprite asset. Drifter sits in the uncommon tier of the eight-hull Junkrats faction alongside Marco and Skewer.

Star-1 stats

StatValue
HP110
Shield120
Armor2
Speed130
Acceleration170
Drag0.42
Turn rate0.14
Weapon slots2
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 scale1.4
Starting weapondisc L1

Star deltas

Four fields differ between the ★1 and ★5 overrides:

Stat★1★5
HP110138
Shield120150
Weapon damage %1012.5
Fire rate %56.3

All other ★5 fields re-assert the ★1 values — armor 2, acceleration 170, speed 130, drag 0.42, turn rate 0.14, weapon slots 2, ship scale 1.4, heat fields, regen fields, and every meta stat. The ★4 override pins ship scale 1.4 — which already matches both endpoints, making the override inert. No per-hull ★2/★3 pin entries exist, so intermediate stars lerp linearly between the four delta endpoints above with no breakpoints. Star tier never changes the starting weapon (always disc L1), faction, rarity, hitbox, drive feel, ship scale, weapon-slot count, or any meta stat — only the four lerped numerics above and the mod backpack grid size.

Per-star lerp values (lerp factor t = (star − 1) / 4):

StarHPShieldWeapon damage %Fire rate %
★1110120105
★2117127.510.6255.325
★312413511.255.65
★4131142.511.8755.975
★513815012.56.3

Star progression XP and grid sizing:

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

Drive feel

FieldValue
Rotatestrue
Fixed angle (deg)0
Accel curvelinear
Drag curveexponential
Stop shake intensity0
Heat shake intensity0
Heat shake threshold0.85
Stop spring amount0

Free-rotating spaceship with a linear thrust ramp and an exponential drag profile — release thrust and velocity multiplies by a constant factor per frame, producing the “space drag” coast that bleeds top-end speed quickly and approaches zero asymptotically. Drifter’s 0.42 drag is the highest in the Junkrats faction — slightly above Bomber, Marco, Pierre, Skewer, and Stinger at 0.40; above Tank at 0.34; and well above Orca at 0.28. The 170 acceleration ties Marco and undercuts Pierre (235), Bomber (200), and Skewer (175). Top speed (130) sits in the middle of the Junkrats pack — slower than Pierre (145) and Skewer (135), faster than Tank (81) and Orca (100), tied with Bomber, Marco, and Stinger at 130. Heat curve is fully disabled (0 buildup / 0 cooldown), so the overheat-boost loop never engages and all damage scaling comes from raw fire-rate and weapon-damage percentage.

Hitbox

Custom 14-vertex polygon traced from the v5 sprite alpha channel by the auto-generator (convex hull from boundary pixels, simplified via Visvalingam-Whyatt, then shrunk 5% and rotated −90° CW from sprite-south to engine-right convention). Normalized against the sprite content bounding box.

PropertyValue
SourceHULL_HITBOXES (sprite-traced)
Vertex count14
X range−0.95 to 0.95
Y range−0.603 to 0.603

Polygon vertices (x, y) in source order:

#XY
1−0.5390.603
2−0.9500.321
3−0.950−0.347
4−0.745−0.603
5−0.693−0.603
60.180−0.552
70.873−0.347
80.924−0.295
90.950−0.244
100.9500.244
110.9240.295
120.8730.321
130.2050.526
14−0.5140.603

Shape is a forward-pointed wedge — the X axis spans the full normalized range (−0.95 to 0.95) while the Y axis is compressed (−0.603 to 0.603), with vertices 9 and 10 forming a narrow nose at the +X end and the rear flat-edge formed by vertices 2 and 3 on the −0.95 X line. The 1.4× ship scale is applied multiplicatively on top of the normalized polygon at physics time and is held constant across all five stars, so Drifter’s hitbox does not change size as it stars up.

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 — Drifter has no per-hull override, so it inherits Jack of All Trades like every other current-roster hull. Applies a percent buff to all stats at run start, scaling with passive rank.


EXTRACT-CANDIDATE

  • Drifter has the highest drag in the Junkrats faction. At 0.42, Drifter sits above the 0.40 cluster shared by Bomber, Marco, Pierre, Skewer, and Stinger; above Tank’s 0.34; and well above Orca’s 0.28. Whether the 0.02 spread between Drifter and the rest of the faction is intentional (Drifter is the “more drag-heavy” two-slot variant) or a typo/leftover from tuning is a design decision. Worth a single drag-by-faction roll-up table on ships.md to make the 0.40/0.42 pairing visible and forceable to a designer review.
  • Drifter and Marco are near-clones with three small deltas. Drifter and Marco share weapon slots (2), HP (110), shield (120), armor (2), acceleration (170), speed (130), turn rate (0.14), heat fields, regen fields, and every meta stat. They differ in exactly three places at ★1: drag (0.42 vs 0.40), ship scale (1.4 vs 1.5), and starting weapon (disc vs railgun). Across stars Marco’s ship scale lerps to 1.0× while Drifter’s stays pinned at 1.4×. Worth a cross-page diff callout — either these are intentionally near-clones and the tuning lock is by design, or one was scaffolded from the other and one of the three differences is an oversight. Same-faction near-clones are a strong signal for both factions/ships.md and authoring-guide pages.
  • ★4 override block is fully inert. The Junkrats ★4 entry for Drifter pins ship scale 1.4 — already matching both ★1 and ★5 endpoints, so the override does literally nothing. This is the fourth Junkrats hull with an inert ★4 (Bomber 1.4 inert, Pierre 1.3 inert, Tank multi-field with three inert fields, now Drifter 1.4 inert). Worth a single cleanup pass deleting all five inert Junkrats ★4 entries (Bomber, Drifter, Orca, Pierre, Skewer, Stinger — Tank’s whole block is also inert) and any cross-faction equivalents.
  • ★5 override re-asserts ★1 values for no-change fields. The Drifter ★5 entry explicitly re-states weapon slots 2, armor 2, acceleration 170, speed 130, drag 0.42, turn rate 0.14, ship scale 1.4, heat fields, regen fields, and every meta stat — none of which differ from ★1. The s5Val ?? s1Val lerp default in getShipDef already handles missing fields, so all this redundant data could be pruned mechanically. Same pattern flagged on Bomber, Pierre, Tank, Cargo, and Marco — strong candidate for an authoring-guide rule and a one-shot cleanup pass.
  • Faction confusion — faction field vs. hull-key prefix. Drifter’s data faction reads solaris because every hull inherits the baseline default. Sixth entity-page confirmation (Cargo, Bomber, Pierre, Tank, Marco, Drifter) of dead config; the cleanup or canonical-page note is increasingly justified.
  • jack_of_all baseline passive on an uncommon hull. Drifter inherits the baseline jack_of_all passive (no per-hull override). Same as every other documented hull — the +3/6/10/15/22% all-stats curve isn’t currently documented on passives.md or ships.md and would benefit from a single canonical block. Two uncommon Junkrats hulls (Marco, Drifter) now confirmed sharing the baseline passive — whether any non-baseline passive will ever ship for an uncommon hull is a design question.
  • Disc starting weapon on a two-slot hull. Drifter starts with disc L1 — the only documented Junkrats two-slot hull starting with a disc (Marco starts with railgun, Skewer with flame, Stinger with lightning, Tank with mortar). Whether disc + two slots makes Drifter a distinct early-game archetype or whether the starting-weapon roster needs roll-up coverage on weapons.md/ships.md is worth surfacing.
  • HP and shield deltas match Marco exactly. Drifter’s ★1→★5 numeric deltas (HP 110→138, shield 120→150, weapon damage 10→12.5, fire rate 5→6.3) are identical to Marco’s. The two share the same base block AND the same star-scaling block — only ship scale lerp differs (Drifter held flat, Marco shrinks). Strong signal that the two-slot Junkrats uncommon tier was scaffolded together and only the visual + starting-weapon were differentiated.
  • Hitbox stays the same size across stars. Unlike Marco (where ship scale lerps 1.5 → 1.0 across stars and the hitbox shrinks with it), Drifter’s ship scale is pinned at 1.4 from ★1 to ★5, so the hitbox is identical in physical size at every star. Worth flagging on ships.md that the shipScale-lerp pattern is per-hull, not a faction or rarity rule.
  • Hitbox vertex listing. Per the wiki rule (numeric tables may duplicate), listing all 14 vertices on the entity page is allowed. A centralized “Hitbox format” explainer on physics.md or ships.md would let entity pages reference the normalization, shrink, and rotation rules instead of re-stating them in prose each time. Drifter is the third Junkrats hull to record a sprite-traced polygon (Marco 11, Drifter 14, vs. Bomber/Tank falling back to the 8-vertex octagon).