Lesson 22

A boss of your own

A pack can now spawn bosses. A boss is a record in the Bosses tab that wraps one of your tanks: a size, a health bar, a brain, a behaviour, a spawn ring. Here is one, and what the game does with it.

What you see

A grey three-horned tank with a drone spawner at the back and a big gun in front. On its own it is a tank nobody can pick: it is not in the class tree. In a lobby with this pack loaded, the arena announces "The Warden wakes!" and the same tank appears at two and a half times the size, with 6000 health, drifting about the inner map until a player comes within range.

The trick

The editor update of 6 October 2026 added a Bosses tab. A boss is two things:

A tank like any other, usually a boss copy: select a tank and press Make a boss copy. The copy is marked boss-only, so the editor drops it from the class tree and the starters. Its stats panel becomes Boss stats: eight sliders, 0 to 12, for the level the boss plays each stat at (the update of 9 October 2026; before it every boss played at 7). Stock levels puts them back to 7 everywhere and 0 Health Regen, the stock bosses' way; Max all sets twelve everywhere. The tank's own stat caps do not apply to a boss. You can still edit its parts and barrels, and that is where its guns, drones and hitboxes come from.
A boss record in the Bosses tab (New boss, or New boss from copy) that picks the tank and sets everything else: Name, Spawn message, Size, Health, the score it is worth, its Brain, what it does when it spots a player, where and how often it spawns.

The demo tank is the boss copy; the record is shown under the body in the mock inspector.

The record, field by field

Field	Warden	Notes
Size	2.5	Scales the tank and everything on it; 4 is the most. The stock bosses: Guardian 1.55, Summoner and Defender 1.72, the two Fallen 2.09, Decade 2.87
Health	6000	Does not grow with Size. Stock bosses 3000, Decade 10000. A Size 4 boss at 3000 is a big soft target
Score for killing it	50000	Stock 30000, Decade 100000
Brain	Simple	Simple drifts, rams and shoots: the stock bosses' brain. Bot plays the body like a sandbox bot, with a skill and a retreat threshold; in our one test it mostly wandered
When it spots a player	Charge and ram	Also Stop and shoot, Keep distance and strafe, Wander and shoot at them, or Ignore them (only its turrets and drones fight, the way Decade and four of the five stock bosses are built)
Spot range	2000	The most. The default form writes 1500. A simple-brain boss fights what comes inside this range and does not hunt across the map (seen in play, 6 October 2026), so place it where players must pass
When no one is near	Wander around	Or Circle the map centre, like the Guardian
Ignores players below level	15	The stock bosses' value; 0 attacks everyone
On the shapes' team	on	Bases ignore it. Off makes a Fallen-style enemy tank; a necromancer boss needs off to raise shapes
Spawn ring, How often	0 to 0.4, weight 1	The same bands as custom shapes. Weight 0 keeps it out of the rotation: it then comes only by console

Spawning it

Boss Auto-Spawn must be on in the lobby's admin panel, or no boss ever spawns on its own. The editor warns "Boss auto-spawn is off" with a Turn on button when it is off.
The lobby's boss rotation runs while the pack is loaded: by default one boss every 45 minutes, the first after 45, at most one alive. The pack can set the gap, the first delay, how many may be alive at once, and how many players must be online; it can also hide the lobby's five stock bosses or change how often each spawns, so a themed arena stays themed.
From the console: spawn_boss warden (the name, lower-case, spaces removed). set_boss <playerId> warden turns a player into it. In the editor, Play can play any boss.
A player can press H to take over a boss where the lobby allows it; untick Players can take control to keep it AI-driven.

Gotchas

One tank per boss record. The export renames every record after its tank, so two records on one tank come back with one name and spawn_boss cannot tell them apart. A variant boss gets its own boss copy.
Tune the guns in the tank, the levels in the record. The record sets Size, Health, body damage on touch and, since 9 October 2026, the Boss stats (the level each stat plays at, 0 to 12; the stock bosses play 7 with no regen). Damage multipliers, reload and drone counts are the tank's. A boss copy of a maxed-out tank at stock levels is already brutal: our test bosses had to have their guns turned down before anyone could study them. We tested the levels on 18 October 2026 with three copies of one boss. At 12 everywhere it fired fastest and its bullets flew fastest. At 0 everywhere it fired and shot slowest. But it moved fastest at 0 and slowest at 12: high levels make a boss slower, so a boss that must chase keeps its levels low. Movement Speed 12 does not win the pace back, and one stat at 12 costs no pace you can see: raise the one or two stats your boss is known for and leave the rest. Health Regen above 0 makes a boss heal after a hit.
Big parts, strong contrast and few colours survive the scale. Fine line art does not.
A boss uses the same budget as any tank (lesson 15), rated at the higher of its tank's Reload cap and its Boss stats Reload level: a boss at Reload 12 is rated 1.5 times the rate of one at 7.
There is one number the Bosses tab does not show: a damage floor the game writes on its own bosses (4, and 6 on Fallen Booster). A pack file can carry it (minDamageMultiplier), and 6 bit clearly harder in play. The form keeps it when you edit the pack.