Let’s have a look here:
Fire is cool (or hot, as the case may be), but I have to question its implementation.
If we watch the BOBs video we see all kinds of problems arise. These are:
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Fires start ‘on’ a ship’s hull.
Fires need oxygen, so should ideally start ‘in’ or underneath a ship’s hull. This has to be coupled with the fact that fires are set on a ship on areas without any damage. Surely for oxygen to escape from a ship there should be a giant hole in the hull? -
Fires burn languidly.
This gives the impression of a nice bonfire the kids can come and toast marshmallows around. Space combat is violent, nasty business and fires should reflect that with more directed fires commencing with a blue flame that progresses to orange. You know, like when you had a bunsen burner in school and you twisted the air inlet to make the fire roar in directed jet? -
Fires are orange.
Yes, this seems logical, but in a sci-fi setting, shouldn’t fire have specific fuels that burn different colours? An oxygen fire would be orange, but combusting items using different gasses should have different colours. -
Fires are a symptom.
If you think of a fire in a corridor being vented into space, you’d expect to see the effect of those fires further afield. The entire corridor would be superheated, glowing as it went. Maybe move the light source to reflect this? -
Different types of fire.
Combining 2 and 4 a bit here. A ruptured oxygen line would emit a jet with a blue base. Just something being on fire would be a lazy, uncontrolled orange blaze. -
This isn’t about fire, it’s about damage.
Damaged ships do all kinds of things you don’t want them to do. And strangely we already have the effects for these available in game. Right now!
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Existing effects.
If you run the cinematic reveal for any ship you’ll see all kinds of animations. For the Arbitrator you see green plasma being purged out of the ship along specific vents. Other ships have other animations. These can be stopped and started while a ship is in a damaged state to show that all is not well on the inside of the ship, too. Exploding ships have secondary explosions, sparks and such. Applying these to damaged ships on a smaller scale would really give the impression that your ship is afflicted by all kinds of carnage. -
BOBs are… drunk.
Repair BOBs do their things on random bits of the hull - some of those hull bits seem undamaged. I get the technical limitations here - the hull damage decals are distributed along a separate system than that which governs BOB placement. It just seems a little counterintuitive to have BOBs firing little lasers at bits of the ship that don’t need a laser fired at them.
With any luck these are cheap and easy fixes that can be implmented into the fire and smoke system at a later date that will pass a sanity check.