Search and Destroy
Search and Destroy is a team minigame played in its own world on The Storm.
It is a port of the 2013–2014 Red Warfare game. Type /rwf join to queue
for the next round and /rwf leave to go back to survival.
The lobby
Section titled “The lobby”Joining takes you to the lobby, a stone room where everyone waits for the round to start. Nothing can hurt you there, and if you fall out of it you are put back on the gold spawn pad.
- The rules hang on the north wall.
- The match board on the south wall shows the map, how many players and bots have joined, and how long until the round starts.
- Each kit alcove along the east wall shows a kit’s icon, name and what it carries, with the command to pick it.
- The balcony on the west side looks out of a window towards the maps.
Your hotbar holds two lobby items. Right-click the nether star to open the kit menu and click a kit to pick it; your current kit glints. Right-click the red dye to leave and go back to survival. Both disappear when the round starts.
A bar at the top of your screen says how many more players the round is waiting for, then counts down to the start. The last five seconds and the start appear in the middle of your screen.
Your survival inventory, XP, health and effects are saved when you enter and restored when you leave. If the server crashes mid-round, they are restored the next time you log in.
How a round works
Section titled “How a round works”- You get one life per round. Dying puts you in spectator until the round ends.
- The last team with a living player wins. If the last teams are eliminated at the same moment, the round is a draw.
- Each team owns one or more TNT bombs. Arming an enemy bomb and letting it explode kills that whole team.
Every kit puts a Blaze Powder called Bomb Fuse in hotbar slot 1. Hold it and right-click a bomb:
- Right-click an enemy bomb to arm it.
- Right-click your own armed bomb to defuse it.
Arming or defusing takes 10 seconds. Each distinct teammate also clicking the same bomb takes one second off, and some kits carry a fuse bonus. Stop clicking for more than three quarters of a second and the progress resets. The last living player on a team arms instantly.
An armed bomb explodes after 60 seconds and kills everyone on the team that owns it. The crater turns nearby blocks to coal.
Some maps also have unowned nukes. Anyone can arm a nuke, and when it goes off it kills everyone except the team that armed it.
Poison
Section titled “Poison”Rounds do not last forever. About ten minutes in, or sooner if nobody has died for 90 seconds, the server gives a one-minute warning. Then your food is stripped and everyone takes rising damage that cannot be blocked. Standing within 15 blocks of your own bomb hurts more, so camping your bomb is not a way to wait it out.
Pick a kit from the kit menu (right-click the nether star in the lobby) or
with /rwf kit <name> before the round starts. If you pick nothing you play
Trooper. All launch kits are free.
| Kit | Loadout |
|---|---|
| Trooper | Iron sword, 3 golden apples, iron armor |
| Longbow | Bow with Punch III, stone sword |
| Shortbow | Bow with Power II, wood sword |
| Rewind | Clock: teleport to where you were 30 seconds ago (30 s cooldown) |
More kits and killstreaks will arrive later.
Combat
Section titled “Combat”This world uses old-style combat: there is no attack cooldown, knockback is the classic kind, and shields and sweep attacks do nothing. Survival keeps the normal rules.
Rounds are filled with AI players, so a round can start with a single human.
Bots have persistent names, skins and play styles, so you will come to
recognise them. They are marked with a dim ✦ after their name in the tab
list and on their nametag, and /rwf who lists which players in the round
are bots and the kit everyone has picked. They are tuned to be beatable, not
perfect.
Bots arrive in the lobby a few at a time during the countdown, like players do. While they wait they wander about, come over to say hello (often by crouching at you a few times), look at the kit alcoves, hop around and try a kit or two before settling on the one they play.
Bots also talk. Each one has its own voice and might greet the round, brag
about a kill, complain about a death, cheer a bomb it armed or say gg at the
end. In the lobby they say hi as they walk in, chat a little while they wait
and comment on the countdown; say hi in the lobby and one of them may say hi
back. Their lines appear in chat with the same ✦ after the name, for example
[Gravel_Fox ✦]: nice try, Alice, so you can always tell a bot from a
person. Bot chat stays in the Search and Destroy world: only players in the
round and people watching it see it, never survival chat or Discord. Bots
only answer a greeting or a remark in the lobby; they do not read your
messages during the round, and each bot waits a while between lines so chat
never floods.
Rewards
Section titled “Rewards”A win pays 3 Crystals and a loss pays 1. The payout shrinks as the share of bots in the round rises, and there is a daily cap on what Search and Destroy can pay you.
Recordings
Section titled “Recordings”Matches are recorded to train the bots. A recording holds positions, actions and pseudonymous ids. It does not include chat, player names or IP addresses. You are told this when you join.
Watching
Section titled “Watching”Type /rwf spectate to watch a round without playing. Your inventory, XP,
health and effects are saved the same way as when you join, and you watch in
spectator mode from above the arena with the round’s scoreboard. Use
/rwf spectate next to follow each living player in turn. You keep watching
from one round to the next until you type /rwf leave, which returns you to
where you were with everything you had. You cannot watch while you are in the
round, but you can join the next round’s lobby straight from watching with
/rwf join.
Staff sometimes run a round of bots only. You can watch it, but you cannot join it.
Commands
Section titled “Commands”| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/rwf join |
Queue for the next round |
/rwf leave |
Leave the game or stop watching, back to survival |
/rwf kit <name> |
Choose your kit for the next round |
/rwf who |
List the players in the round and mark bots |
/rwf spectate |
Watch the round in spectator mode without playing |
/rwf spectate next |
While watching, follow the next living player |
Transparency
Section titled “Transparency”Like the rest of the server, the Search and Destroy code lives in the public repository. See Transparency for what else the server shares.