Search & Destroy

Round-based bomb and defuse, ported from Warsow Bomb. One team carries a bomb to one of two sites and arms it; the other team stops them, or defuses it.

No respawns inside a round. When you die you stay dead until the round ends. That single rule is what makes the mode play differently from everything else in the game: positioning, information and trades matter more than aim.

Match Shape

Setting	Value
Round length	90 s
Freeze before each round	10 s
Round-end intermission	5 s
Rounds to win	10
Lead required	2
Rounds per half	9
Team spawn protection	3 s

The lead requirement means 10–9 is not a win — the match continues until one team is two rounds clear. Sides swap at halftime, so both teams attack and defend the same number of rounds.

Warsow ships 60-second rounds and a limit of 16. Washiki Washoi uses 90 and 10: the round length was chosen against traversal times measured on the real bomb maps, and a shorter match suits a game with no economy to carry across a half.

The Bomb

Timings are Warsow's shipped defaults (g_bomb_armtime, g_bomb_defusetime, g_bomb_bombtimer), converted to the 125 Hz tick:

Action	Time	Radius
Arm (attackers)	4 s	100 u
Defuse (defenders)	7 s	100 u
Fuse (armed → detonation)	30 s	—
Pick up a dropped bomb	instant	64 u

Other rules that decide rounds:

• You cannot plant while moving fast. Above 400 u/s the plant is refused. Land, slow down, then plant.
• You must be on flat ground. The surface under you needs a normal within ~26° of vertical. This deliberately removes ramp plants — wbomb1's B ramp is not a plant spot.
• Arming and defusing share one radius. Anyone inside 100 u of the planted bomb can work on it; the plant zone (the site area) is much larger and only decides where you may plant at all.
• The beep accelerates. Interval is a twelfth of the time remaining, clamped between 5 s and 200 ms. It is a shared clock — both teams hear the same beep at the same time.

Once the bomb is armed, the round no longer ends on the round timer. The fuse takes over: defenders must defuse or lose, whatever the clock says.

Attackers and Defenders

Teams are the usual udon and soba. Which one attacks is decided per half and swaps at halftime.

Attackers spawn in the map's beta area and defenders in the alpha area, whichever team is currently attacking — this follows Warsow, whose INITIAL_ATTACKERS = TEAM_ALPHA names the alpha team as attackers but spawns them on team_CTF_betaspawn. The map data agrees: on wbomb2 the alpha spawns average ~3400 units from the two sites and beta's ~3800, so alpha is the side that starts nearer.

The bomb starts each round where the attackers spawn, dropped to the floor.

Loadouts

Search & Destroy is a loadout mode. You pick a kit; it applies from the next round, so the 10-second freeze is long enough for what you chose to be in your hands.

Every kit is blade + one primary + one secondary:

Slot	Choices
Primary (heavy)	Rocket Launcher, Voltaic, Electrobolt
Secondary (utility)	Riotgun, Plasma Gun, Grenade Launcher, Machinegun

Default for a player who has never chosen: Rocket Launcher + Machinegun.

Spawn ammo comes from Warsow's player.as — RL 15, EB 15, Voltaic 180, Riotgun 15, Plasma 140, GL 10, MG 150 — plus full spawn armor. Enough to fight a round with, not enough to stop caring about the map: an empty rocket launcher is a reason to go somewhere dangerous.

Unlike Warsow Bomb, map items still spawn. The kit decides what you can do from spawn; the map decides what you can do if you take ground.

Pick a kit from the HUD's loadout picker during the freeze, or from the console:

loadout rlauncher machinegun
loadout voltaic riotgun

Friendly Fire

Friendly fire is on. That is why there are three seconds of team spawn protection at the start of each round — a mistimed rocket at the spawn would otherwise end a teammate's whole round before they had moved.

Maps

Bomb maps are the wbomb* set. A map qualifies if it has bomb sites and team spawns; some maps carry site markers but no team spawns and are not playable in this mode. Site geometry is read from the BSP: authored trigger_capture_area volumes where they exist (wbomb1/5/6), and a radius around the site indicator where they do not (wbomb2/3/4).

HUD

Search & Destroy adds its own HUD elements:

• Bomb objective — bomb state (carried / dropped / planted / armed), in its own corner, left-aligned.
• Arm/defuse bar — belongs to whoever is currently on the bomb, attacker or defender.
• Round timer and team scores — the round clock, not a match clock.
• Site markers — the two sites are marked in the world.
• Phase messages — freeze, round start, round result.

There is no countdown number during the freeze; the beep is the clock.

Bots

Bots play Search & Destroy, but they contain no S&D code. The mode steers them through agent directives — plain data the server publishes each snapshot saying "fetch the bomb", "arm at site B", "defuse", "escort the carrier", "hold a site", each with a priority. The Bot Intelligence Server acts on whatever it is handed without knowing what a bomb is.

Selecting the Gametype

Through the lobby, queue for a Search & Destroy match. For developer flows:

map wbomb1 snd

Or run a dedicated server directly:

npm run net:server -- --map wbomb1 --gametype SnD

See Also

• Gametypes overview
• Weapons — what each loadout choice does
• HUD — reading the bomb objective and arm bar
• The design notes, map survey and Warsow source this was ported from: docs/research/Search_And_Destroy.md in the engine repo