Guests:

  • Leo Vansteenkiste, Principal VFX Programmer
  • Edward Fuller, Senior Principal Systems Designer
  • Guillaume Gardella, Senior VFX Artist I
  • Francesco Litrico, VFX Programmer III

TL;DW:

  • 4.0 will only have fire inside ships.
  • Fires start based on:
    • Damage (when ship item HP reaches 0).
    • When items with high level of wear misfire (random chance).
    • Weapon impact.
    • Warming the ship room to high enough temperature by opening the door on a warm planet for example (technically possible, there’s no planet hot enough for that to happen).
    • Bringing already burning items into a ship.
  • Fire propagation is based on fuel (surface), oxygen and temperature.
  • Every surface material has different properties that affect how quickly it burns.
  • Other objects like cargo or ship components can also catch on fire. Player can’t (but will take damage).
  • Fire will burn the oxygen to a point of asphyxiation.
  • Plenty of footage of using fire extinguisher.
  • Fire can restart if you don’t put it out properly.
  • Fire extinguishers have limited amount of “ammo”, you need to put them back to their storage stations to refill them. Recharge will not work if life support system is down.
  • Fires can be put out by removing oxygen from a burning room (turning of life support, opening doors in space).
  • Visual damage caused by fires has to be fixed at a proper repair location (station), manual repairs can only fix the functionality of destroyed items.