Fire! *Suggestion*

[Ofiach]

To tack on, the tar would have to have maybe a few seconds of "sticky" time after someone leaves a tar cloud.

5 seconds of increased fire vulnerability, like you say it wouldn't matter much on components, but for a hull or balloon that could be painful. It would add a new aspect to teamplay.

[RearAdmiralZill]

To tack on, the tar would have to have maybe a few seconds of "sticky" time after someone leaves a tar cloud.

5 seconds of increased fire vulnerability, like you say it wouldn't matter much on components, but for a hull or balloon that could be painful. It would add a new aspect to teamplay.

Would be pretty tricky to pull off, especially so close to tar clouds. I swear they suck you in sometimes. 5 seconds doesn't sound long enough to make it worthwhile. 10 seconds at least.

I say all this, but I'm still under the opinion that tar barrel needs no kind of buffing right now. It does its job very well. Instead of buffing tar to help fire, why not just stick to the spreading idea that buffs fire directly?

[Gunny RP]

I say all this, but I'm still under the opinion that tar barrel needs no kind of buffing right now. It does its job very well. Instead of buffing tar to help fire, why not just stick to the spreading idea that buffs fire directly?

I agree, it seems that making tar to be more likely cause more damage to a ship would change quite a bit in the game. It leaves the question of what if someone had their engines on fire and then they release tar? does the ship releasing that tar suddenly have worse fire? In a way it makes a lot of small different situations that could come up that have to be added into the games working if it was done.

[Gambrill]

The fire adding stacks sounds great to me.. but with the air being thinner the higher you get what if maybe if you get high enough it will lower stacks.. and the more stacks the higher you need to be to lower..


 so say I have 9 stacks, if I'm high enough it will lower to 8 then a few seconds later 7 etc. Etc. But I can see why muse won't put this in.. this game is meant to be fun. If its made too realistic, muse will just have to change the game name to 'airship simulator'

[-Muse- Cullen]

While the tar is an addictive tool to use, it is still just a tool. Adding flammability as an extra effect would make it less of a tool and more of a weapon. As of now, briefly flying through tar will cause a mess of trouble as a punishment for chasing a ship. Making the tar cause even more trouble by adding fire may make it a go-to strategy- if you take tar, you have to take the banshee, flare, or flamethrower (Or incendiary ammo, I suppose), as well, in order to maximize its effects. As of now, the tar acts like a defensive tool well enough- use it to disappear, or to shake off a pursuer. I believe that the tar should not be changed, so the pilot must rely on the ship's gunners to do the real damage, not simply use them as an ignition spark.

As for the fire spreading mechanic, that could be interesting. Fire, currently, seems underwhelming because stacks of fire are only problematic at higher amounts, and fire mostly relies on DoT. Giving fire some extra power would be nice... but the spreading mechanic doesn't seem to me like it would fit in with the game. If a fire's charges grew over time, that would, in my opinion, feel like it would belong.

[Ofiach]

Cul isn't that kind of the point? Opening up a whole new playstyle by adding a single change? Now instead of meta heavy ammo you have gats with incendiary and banshees are brought into play, or you could just stick to basic "kill em kill em hard" tactics.

The tar would probably be a pain in the nalgas to implement but as for fire spread at half stacks rounded down... that doesn't seem that hard??? Then again I have the programming knowledge of wet toilet paper so I could be totally off base.

@ Zill i was going to say 10 seconds but it seemed so long counting it out in my head....

We aren't going to get the artemis back so why not make disabling like this? scatter the engineers, make em run 20 different directions. The LJ and the hwacha are really the only two guns that make engies have to repair multiple components with a single clip. Well and Tar XD but still! FIRE TAR!

Also Cul why does fire spread feel wrong to you? Honest question there. I think it would be awesome! Fire spreads down the rigging to an engine, the hull, or a gun. That would be awesome! Well IMO anyway.

[Gambrill]

I have one problem with the spreading tbh... How do they decide where it spreads to next? Because if  fire spreads the closest things will ALWAYS be the hull. Meaning engineers will have to prioritize extinguishing... Say a rear turret that's on fire because it'll ruin the hull even if the balloon is down

[Machiavelliest]

I do like the idea of spreading fires.  It definately makes the engineering triage game more interesting.  I -do- fear it will make the gunner that much more marginalized as a class.  It's a great suggestion, though.

The tar in the air is not tar, per-se.  Tar is fed with the fuel into the engine, combusted, and ejected, like what happens when your car burns oil and you get that nasty blue cloud.  The tar would't just suddenly ignite even if you shot flames into it.  It's all already been ignited.  So now we can move on from that 'realism' bit about the tar.

[TehPao]

The tar in the air is not tar, per-se.  Tar is fed with the fuel into the engine, combusted, and ejected, like what happens when your car burns oil and you get that nasty blue cloud.  The tar wouldn't just suddenly ignite even if you shot flames into it.  It's all already been ignited.  So now we can move on from that 'realism' bit about the tar.

Ah.. Now that that's mentioned, I understand.

I have one problem with the spreading tbh... How do they decide where it spreads to next? Because if  fire spreads the closest things will ALWAYS be the hull. Meaning engineers will have to prioritize extinguishing... Say a rear turret that's on fire because it'll ruin the hull even if the balloon is down

I was thinking maybe program it to start a new fire in a vicinity of X amount of meters.
*Crap Pseudocode*
If Fire canReach # Meters
TransferFire at /2 stacks

[Honeybadger]

DEAR GOD NO!

[TehPao]

DEAR GOD NO!

Well why not? Can you give an explanation as to why not?

[Ofiach]

Hes an engie and fire spreading makes his clicker hurt

[-Muse- Cullen]

If fire started visually spreading around the ship, that would put some stress on the game, so some people would lower graphical settings... which is rough.

How would you be able to extinguish it if its creeping around the ship? Simply extinguishing the source wouldn't take care of flames that are moving up riggings and such.

If a crew didn't bring an extinguisher, then the entire ship would be completely destroyed over time. Having fire spread would mean that a ship without extinguishers would have to hope that the system breaks before the fire spreads, lest it creeps into something else. While it is a small gripe, there is strategy to not bringing fire resistance, so don't say that 'Everyone should bring extinguishers anyway'. The point is that each class gets a bonus to their specific tools- making fire creep would make being an engineer an even more attractive option. It would also mean that everyone would take incendiary rounds... so it would basically mean that the Chemical Spray and Extinguisher would always be required just in case. I'm against removing choices from people.

As for the tar, I will have to agree with Machiavelliest. The ingame description of the Tar Barrel is that you are putting tar into the engines in order to make smog clouds behind you. Smoke is the result of combustion, and the engines make it into a fog, so... Yeah. The mechanic would have to change. If we were to ignore the minor details and assume that the potential is there for flammable smog,  I still wouldn't be for it, simply because the Tar Barrel is problematic enough right now. It does a lot of damage, currently, and the only trade off is that the ship's engines take a little damage. The OP's reasoning for why tar should be flammable was simply that -Tar is flammable-, so I'm not sure what else to say. When Zill said that tar was strong enough right now, OP replied that 'It'll remove tar effects, but light the thing on fire anyway. That's not really a counterpoint to the argument, in my opinion. Its really strong right now. Making it even more strong would make it an almost uncounterable full disable.

[Ofiach]

Well the fire would spread every ten seconds or so as TehPao said. If you chem/extinguish the fire before the time limit it means it's no longer spreading. also the fire will eventually die out on its own. It reduces by half every component jump.

Example a flare, 15 stacks balloon-> 7 stacks main engine -> 3 stacks secondary engine -> 1 stack side gun-> burns out

It is another example of how a single change brings new tools and strategies to the forefront of the game.

[-Muse- Cullen]

I'm not sure how this would bring new tools to the game, but I feel that the only strategy that spreading fire would add to the game is that more people would use fire-starting equipment, and that people will simply bring chem/extinguisher all of the time. While there is nothing wrong with making incendiary ammo more attractive, your example seems to only work with flares. A flamethrower has a small chance to ignite a system once, but it fires so quickly that it seems like the chance is higher than it is. Systems that are targeted by the flamethrower usually will ignite with one - three charges of fire before they are dealt with, so the spreading fire mechanic wouverldn't even take place due to that. Incendiary ammo weapons only add one charge per shot if they ignite something, so... spreading wouldn't kick in until it hit two stacks, and by that time, more than 10 seconds would have passed... so the mechanic wouldn't even get seen.

My only other problem off the top of my head is that every system is reachable within a few seconds of running, so... lighting one thing on fire would just light everything else on fire after that X seconds. Engines are all grouped together, same with guns.