Staging Area

## Level description

A staging area to test out new ships and weapons.

## Enemies appearing on this level

* Cargo
* Hunter Drone Dummy [tentative name]
* Large Hunter Drone Dummy [tentative name]

## Notes

### Level Mechanics

* This space level, accessed from the Garage, has several unique mechanics which are not (usually) seen in levels accessed outside of the Garage:
	+ The player is not given an opportunity to change their ship's attachment loadout prior to entering the Staging Area. In exchange, the player is granted full attachment selection screen functionality in the pause menu.
	+ Cargo containers spawn endlessly from the right side of the screen which drop weapon upgrade powerups (Q40) and ultimate ability powerups (Q41) on destruction.
	+ On initial entrance, an indestructible Large Hunter Drone Dummy holds position on the right side of the screen which will attempt to destroy the player ship on contact.
		- The initial lone dummy can be switched out for a horizontal line of 5 Hunter Drone Dummies, a chevron formation of 12 Hunter Drone Dummies, or an enclosing box formation of 14 Large Hunter Drone Dummies using the Change Pattern option in the pause menu.
		- Regardless of which pattern is active, all damage dealt to dummies in the current session will increment the on-screen Total Damage stat, while damage and stun inflicted within the last few seconds will influence the on-screen DPS and Stun stats, respectively.
	+ The player is granted infinite lives for this level. In exchange, all attachment unlock mechanics are disabled.
	+ The player can remove all stat upgrades purchased with Quantium at any time via the Reset Powerups option in the pause menu.
		- Note, however, that Reset Powerups does *not* remove maximum stat upgrades from Add on purchases.
	+ It is not possible to complete this level. The player can either restart it using Change Ship or exit to the main menu using Quit Game.

### Player Ship Stats

While in the Staging Area, a large number of frequently-modified player ship stats are displayed in the lower-left corner which update dynamically as changes are made to the player ship, its stats, and its attachments:

#### Group 1

* Speed: The player ship's current rate of traversal, in terms of distance units per second, prior to the application of speed aura.
* Evasion: The player ship's net chance to evade collisions with enemies, projectiles and beam attacks. Includes evasion aura.
* Critical: The player ship's net chance to deal a critical strike on hit with eligible weapon types. Includes critical aura.
* Critical Damage: The damage multiplier applied when an attack deals a critical strike.
* Firerate: The default refire delay between consecutive shots while auto-firing in overheat, prior to the application of firerate aura.
	+ Increases to rate of fire reduce the delay while increases to reload time make it larger.

#### Group 2

* Damage Modifier: The player ship's global damage multiplier, prior to the application of damage aura.
	+ This is typically what is increased when attachments add damage without restricting it to a specific weapon type or effect.
* Power Modifier: The player ship's Spread damage multiplier.
* Side Modifier: The player ship's Side damage multiplier.
* Missile Modifier: The player ship's Missile damage multiplier.
* Beam Modifier: The player ship's Beam damage multiplier.
* Plasma Modifier: The player ship's Plasma damage multiplier.

#### Group 3

* Specials Per Ult: The number of Q41 powerups which are consumed whenever the player manually activates an ultimate ability.
* Projectile Speed Mod: Movement speed multiplier for all projectile attacks.
* Projectile Lifetime Mod: Duration multiplier for all projectile attacks.
* Spread Lifetime Mod: Duration multiplier for Spread shots only.
* Spread Speed Mod: Movement speed multiplier for Spread shots only.
* Plasma Speed Mod: Movement speed multiplier for Plasma shots only.

#### Group 4

* Bonus Point Mod: Multiplier used to generate Bonus Points based on damage dealt.
* Ship Size: Multiplier used to change the ship's size.
* Weapon Types: The number of unique weapon tags present on the player ship's equipped Weapon Conversions (important for computing Synergizing Diversity's damage bonus).

#### Groups 5/6

* Action Reload Time: The refire delay after Action 1 before it can be used again.
	+ Defaults to 0.05 seconds when no actions are available to activate with Action 1.
* Timescale: Multiplier used to scale the in-game passage of time relative to the default rate used for defining time-dependent values.

#### Group 7

* Attachment Unlock Modifier: Multiplier which modifies the likelihood of unlocking attachments.
	+ Includes game type and game difficulty multipliers from the last non-Staging Area level playthrough in the current session.
		- Defaults to Casual/Easy multipliers if no non-Staging Area levels have been played in the current session.
* Attachment Combine Modifier: Multiplier which modifies the likelihood of unlocking attachment combinations and upgrades based on the currently-equipped set of attachments (applied on top of Attachment Unlock Modifier).

#### Group 8

* Quantium Drop Modifier: Multiplier which modifies the frequency of powerup drops from enemies.
* Speed Aura: Movement speed multiplier which originates from an aura attachment.
* Damage Aura: Global damage multiplier which originates from an aura attachment.
* Firerate Aura: Global rate-of-fire multiplier which originates from an aura attachment.
* Critical Aura: Critical stat which originates from an aura attachment.
	+ Bonus critical from aura is automatically included in the Critical stat using diminishing multiplicative scaling.

### Other Notes

* This level was formerly accessible from the Campaign map as a standalone Special level.