Playing With Fire?

[Shotgunner]

I just came form the ufopedia.org website and they say that with patience and practice, you could control the path of a fire. This has led me to wonder if you couldn't just unload a ****load of incindary rockets during ground assaults(as most crash sites are farmland) you could, in theroy, win the mission just by setting the enviornment on fire, and controlling it's path.

 

granted this is a VERY expensive way to do a round assault, and even more dangerous once you've fired off a pair of said rockets, as you now have to leave the ship.

 

I was wondering what you guys n girls think about this idea?

[[Blehm 98]]

fire doesn't spread in the first two xcoms, only in Xcom 3 does it spread

[Zombie]

Wanna bet? Of course fire spreads in the original. Depends on the tile though.

 

Shotgunner: I made that remark on the wiki about controlling the path of flames. Problem is that it hasn't been proven yet. You could probably affect the path flames spread by using high explosive ammo to destroy flammables on a tile. This way, the fire would burn longer on the tiles with organic material present. This should work. However, you would need a lot of explosives to control the flames effectively. You would be better off using the HE shells against the aliens.

 

I have used incendiary rounds with good results on farm, forest and jungle missions as there is enough flammable material present to let the flames spread unchecked. Get a raging firestorm going on the map with a couple well-placed Incendiary Rockets, and then let the flames spread to the unseen parts of the map where the aliens are hiding. Basically, they have nowhere to run and usually end up wounded which makes killing them even easier. Fire is most effective when your men are wearing some type of manufactured armor as that gives you 100% protection. Be warned though, tanks can still catch fire and die from flames.

 

- Zombie

[[Blehm 98]]

i thought fire couldn't spread, it just burnt until it died...

 

i guess i learned something new today, thanks zombie

[Robo Dojo 58]

Fire does spread. It doesn't spread much, but it can move a few tiles at least.

 

X-Com has a game engine limit on how much fire can be on the field. It's only enough for maybe two or three big fires unfortunately, so it'll be hard to set the world on fire.

[Shotgunner]

Yeah but if you could heard all of the sectoids into, say, a barn and burn the bottom out from under them, they no longer have a way to get down without taking damage, and you could just switch to HE rockets and blow them to heck at that point.

 

Hmmm....I'm going to try it. Right after I re-install the CE . And zombie - thanks again for the help with the mods in my other topic.

[Snakeman]

A less expensive way to control fires instead of using HE packs (if I read Z's meaning right here) are smoke grenades. You could probably channel the paths a little easier with these, plus they weigh less. All you have to be sure of really is that the tiles you want the fire to be on can burn. Edited December 2, 2006 by Snakeman

[Zombie]

Smoke works to extinguish flames, but it spreads faster than fire. That makes it hard to control. There can only be so many tiles on a map that can be occupied by smoke and fire (they share this limit), so if you clog it up with lots of smoke you will not get anymore fire to appear on the map. That's a big problem in trying to control stuff.

 

HE packs are fine, but I was more after using explosive ammunition to control the rate of spread. In this case, the smaller the explosive effect, the better. With this way you can create some fire-immune "paths" where your men can seek protection in case the fire grows too big. It also allows you to leave more areas of the map untouched by fire - great for when aliens venture into them to keep away from the flames.

 

For the case of barns, yes fire is good to scorch aliens. I tried this with Sectoids recently and had a good laugh. Upper floors with wooden floors and hay bales are a little bit strange when it comes to fire though. The initial fire stays lit for quite a while which is good. It spreads to the hay bales and they catch fire too. Hay bales are considered objects and when you destroy them on upper floors there isn't a floor below it yet. This creates "skylights" into the upper floor.

 

Here is where it becomes interesting. Using MapEdit, we can see that wooden floors are actually more flammable than hay bales (12 or 16 vs 5). Also, the # of turns a fire will remain lit on a wooden floor is 3 turns vs 4 turns for a hay bale. Now hay bales have very low armor (4) - so fire can destroy it. Also, hay bales do not have a death tile, meaning that when they are destroyed, nothing is left (hence the "skylight" effect). Wooden floors also have low armor (6) so they will be destroyed by fire too. However, wooden floors have death tiles (charred wood floors) which have an armor of 25. This means that any subsequent fires cannot destroy the charred floor. Also, the charred floor tile is slated to burn for 1 turn vs 3 for an uninjured wood floor. (In reality, if MapEdit lists the number of turns a tile will burn as 1, the fire will burn for 3 for some reason). So there's your little bit of trivia for today.

 

- Zombie

Edited December 2, 2006 by Zombie

[Snakeman]

Ah ok, forgot about the smoke factor. Well, there's always pistol, rifle, lasers or plasma shots to help do things more surgically.

[Shotgunner]

Earlier today, I used laser pistols(to save up my meger supply of plasma rifle ammo) to semi-direct the flames where I wanted them to go. Of course, I had some difficulty from a small group of sectoids, so I just scrapped the idea and use some XCOMUTIL-modified high explosives packs and well - can anyone say sectoid soup?

 

Point is, you CAN semi-direct where you want fire to go, but the smoke byproducts can foil the pyro, which increases the amout of patience you need to use this tatic effectivly.

 

Heh - had a small mishap earlier today with incindary rockets too - accidently set the second floor of a barn on fire - heh now we know how the great fire of Chicago got started ROFL

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

If you want to control where the fire spreads with explosives, isn't it easier to use all this explosives to kill the aliens? Easier and cheaper. Edited December 5, 2006 by Bullet-Tooth Tony

[[NKF]]

Or, just place the source of the fire a lot closer to where you want it to go? I mean, I often only just want it to go around a corner, or in TFTD to set fire to everything on the top floor of that large storage building in the port missions

 

- NKF

[Shotgunner]

Well, the XCOMUTIL modified HE packs DO let me make a "back door" to the UFOs, and I usually get an alien or two in the process. So, all I need to do is learn how to corral the aliens into the UFO with fire....