5 replies to this topic

[Prolong]

Does anybody have any good information, or know where to find it, on fires? Specifically exactly how all of the properties of flammability painting, fire logic nuggets, and structure flammability blocks interact to create fires. Guessing what all of these values do is not a very effective way to balance flammability.

[Ridder Geel]

firelogicsystem.ini?
Or what exactly do you mean?

[Prolong]

I mean information on what the exactly all the fields in FireLogicNuggets (in weapons) and FlammabilityData (in structures) do. I've searched around but I've never found a good source that reliably understands what all the different parameters are. :/

[DeeZire]

The whole system is totally screwed in BFMEII and RoTWK. Mainly because there are a number of maps that do not have flammability painted onto them, and also because not many objects have Flammability defined. So the effects are so varied - between maps and objects - that the net results are totally unexpected and unpredictable, so I guess there is a need for balance.

It works like so - you paint the flammability onto the terrain (in your map file). Eash tile can be one of 4 types - Fire Resistant, Grass, Highly Flammable or Undefined. Each tile painted as one of these types then has parameters attached to it that then define it's degree of flammability - these parameters for each type are globally defined (in FireLogicSystem.INI). If no flammability data is found for a cell (tile) it defaults to Undefined.

For each flammability type, it has Fuel (used to determine how long the fire will persist for with higher values meaning longer burn times), MaxBurnRate (determines the rate at which the fuel burns with higher values meaning the fuel burns more quickly), Resistance (used to determine the level of fire resistance with higher values meaning higher resistance) and Decay (rate at which the fire decays when fuel is spent). Globally, you can also specify MaxCellsBurning (self explanatory) and FuelRegenerationRate (defaults to 0, rate at which the tiles' fuel would naturally regenerate which allows for further fires to be restarted).

When a weapon (warhead) with a FireLogicNugget hits one of the tiles, it interacts like so;-

FireLogicNugget
LogicType = INCREASE_BURN_RATE DECREASE_BURN_RATE INCREASE_FUEL INCREASE_BURN_RATE_ON_EXISTING_FIRE INCREASE_FUEL_ON_EXISTING_FIRE
MaxResistance = integer, override tiles Resistance to the nugget having desired effect
MinDecay = integer, override the tiles' Decay rate
MinMaxBurnRate = integer, random factor to add variability to tiles MaxBurnRate
End

To actually trigger the fire in the cell, the FireLogicNugget simply needs Radius and Damage to be greater than 0. You can have multiple FireLogicNuggets on a weapon, for exmaple one may INCREASE_BURN_RATE to set the fire starting and another may INCREASE_FUEL to prolong the fire and/or make it spread more - the flammability of adjacent cells are checked and the process repeats.

Flammability data can then be set per-object to determine what happens to it when affected (same parameters as FireLogicSystem.INI) but should only be used on structures, other objects should use the FlammableUpdate module.

It's fairly obvious looking through the INI files that the devs got fed up with the complexities of the idea or ran out of time to properly implement it everywhere.

[Prolong]

In other words, pretty much what I thought everything was (except I didn't realize MinMaxBurnRate was a random factor), and a massive mess to balance through so probably something I'll never get around to doing. It's good to hear my suspicions confirmed though, thanks for that.

[DeeZire]

Yep, I'm sure there's a mod out there that just disabled the whole flammability thing, that may be the best way to go (quick and easy way to do it would be to edit FireLogicSystem.INI so all tiles are defined the same as Fire Resistant). As a matter of personal preference I thought the way objects behaved with regards to flammability was just fine in BFMEI, it had tactical use but did not interfere with gameplay too much to upset balance.