There are more than a few things that can go wrong while piloting a spaceship in Star Citizen, but when alpha 4.0 drops, players are going to have to consider another thing to potentially worry about: the interior of their craft bursting into flames, which is the focus of this week’s episode of Inside Star Citizen.
Alpha 4.0 will finally introduce the long-gestating fire propagation system to the sandbox, which will consider factors like combustibility of material, amount of oxygen, and heat of ignition source to determine what starts fires and how they spread. That means that real-world fire behavior is being simulated, like how certain materials will take longer to catch fire than others and how not fully snuffing the heat of a fire can reignite a blaze.
Fires can currently be started either by players or by ship items receiving damage or through item wear and tear, while putting fires out will involve either cutting off oxygen by turning off life support in the area, opening the ship to the vacuum of space, or utilizing on-board fire extinguishers. The devs at CIG also believe that fires could ignite if a ship’s interior is exposed to a hot enough planetary surface, though no planets in-game exist that could trigger that reaction.
As of right now, fires are only contained to ship interiors, not to exteriors of ships or any other location in order to see how the system works and how players react (or more likely exploit) the new system. Get your fill of visual hot stuff by watching the video below.
