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Backblasts and fire spread


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So I watched a YouTube video on FarCry 2 and one of the features discussed was how you rocket launcher had a backblast which could even start fires, which in turn could spread and be unpredictable.

Both would suit Xenonauts 2 in my eyes; first because I like the concept of powerful weapons having dangerous drawbacks that you have to work around (this could also be considered for some other weapons and mechanics), and secondly the idea that flames and smoke are these unpredictable, uncontrollable things that you have to respect as a threat, and not just a static road block. It would also make you put some thought into how you used incendiary weapons. It might be tempting to kill two aliens with an incendiary grenade, but if they are standing on a lawn or in a forest rather than on an asphalt street, the fire might become an issue two or three turns down the road. I'm not asking for Minecraft-level wildfires that engulf the whole map, but accidentally burning down a house you were considering using as a fire base would spice things up nicely.

Perhaps there could be different levels of fire, too. Embers, flames that you can try running though at some risk like those in X-Com, and large flames that block all movement.

I get that there is the predictable/unpredictable scale to consider, though. As in, I like ideas such as fire (and thus smoke) spreading and even having floors or ceilings suddenly collapsing from damage or fire, but I understand that players may not enjoy having to work around these things, not knowing if a building is going to collapse, or when. So for gameplay's sake, you would probably have to communicate somehow that "okay, this house will collapse in four turns unless fire is contained".

Also, the fire idea especially might be tricky with regards to AI, especially if they have fire weapons.

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X-Com Apocalypse had an oversimplified system for building collapse (If there was ANY connection to ground, the building would stand, even if it was a sheet of drywall holding up an apartment building). Having a more sophisticated building collapse system could be interesting, but giving enough information to players to predict what was likely to happen from a given action seems excessively complicated, and a system that cares about how much load each structural piece is holding up would add a lot of complexity to terrain design for only a modest benefit.

I wonder if making each structural tile do a configurable amount of 'stability damage' to connected structural tiles when destroyed might work; if an exterior wall of a tall building has 10 structure and deals 5 to a wall directly above it and 3 to walls adjacent to that one when it is destroyed, sustained fire that destroyed one side of the ground floor wall would cause reasonable damage to the walls above it. If that damage also spreads to floors, it would propagate in a believable way into the building as well. Fire can be included in that system just by having fire do some amount of structure damage to each tile (maybe variable based on the tile; steel and concrete hold up better than wood to fire, a wood frame with drywall over it might withstand concussive blast better than a hallow cinder block)

 

In any case, at the very least anything that doesn't have any connection to ground (or something that can fly) should fall down, even if it still had structure.

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