The Art of War: Attack by Fire

[Lachrymose]

fire is one of the fundamental weapons of war. it's use should not be relegated to transient attacks that cause a set amount of damage once they hit their enemy, only to immediately vanish into thin air. as such, the arts of war should be taken into account concerning the use of fire.

Sun Tzu said: There are five ways of attacking with fire.

The first is to burn soldiers in their camp;
the second is to burn stores;
the third is to burn baggage trains;
the fourth is to burn arsenals and magazines;
the fifth is to hurl dropping fire amongst the enemy.

the means to create fire should be (but not limited to) fire magic, fire arrows, and torches (can set fire by touch or by being thrown).

Against Soldiers
while there may be some sort of immolation spell, any fire spell should have the potential of starting a fire. a man can survive for a decent period of time while on fire, so it's not the initial flame that kills him. therefore, why should a fireball cause any significant amount of damage if it disappears immediately once it hits its target? isn't the bulk of the damage taken while a man is being swallowed up by the flames?

Against Stores
if stores or buildings within a clan city are destructable, it should be possible to set them aflame. it would be similar to an immolation spell aimed at another player, as it would do damage over time, but the defending army could use water based magic or rely on their wells to quell the flames, thus preventing any further damage. this opens up many different strategies while conducting a siege.

Against Caravans
attacking an enemy trade route can be as crippling as attacking the enemy itself, cutting off the enemy's resources as fatal as cutting of his head. therefore, great care should be taken when conducting trade with allies, or transporting supplies for your army. the means with which to put out fires should be aboard any successfully prepared caravan, perhaps the most effective of which is someone adept in the arts of water based magic.

There is a proper season for making attacks with fire, and special days for starting a conflagration.

The proper season is when the weather is very dry...

as mentioned in my thread discussing seasons, summer is a dangerous time to travel great distances, as the high temperatures post a threat to both the health of the travelers and the safety of the inventory. therefore, travel during arid seasons should be avoided at all costs.

Against a Cache
an army must always be ready for war. thus, the means with which to wage war must always be kept on hand. through espionage, an army can discover the location of an enemy's cache (where the enemy stores their weapons). once the cache has caught on fire, i would imagine it would be of the enemy's utmost priority to protect it. this opens up many new avenues for siege warfare and makes both the strategic placing and the protection of the cache of major concern to any army.

Rain of Fire
dropping fire from atop the enemy with the use of fire arrows can allow an attack to be made without directly confronting the enemy; the fire spreads from within, while the soldiers wait patiently from without the enemy's stronghold. this method of attack provides an army with an arsenal of strategies.

In attacking with fire, one should be prepared to meet five possible developments:

1. When fire breaks out inside to enemy's camp, respond at once with an attack from without.
2. If there is an outbreak of fire, but the enemy's soldiers remain quiet, bide your time and do not attack.
3. When the force of the flames has reached its height, follow it up with an attack, if that is practicable; if not, stay where you are.
4. If it is possible to make an assault with fire from without, do not wait for it to break out within, but deliver your attack at a favorable moment.
5. When you start a fire, be to windward of it. Do not attack from the leeward.

thus, the realm of player versus player combat can be benefited by such means.

__________________________________________

Originally Posted by Necromantic

In my opinion Water is a stupid element for damage, 'cause since when does water harm someone except for drowning or with a really stong force behind it, ice would be more appropriate.

stupid for dealing damage? maybe. useless? not any more!

you could now think of water spells as a sort of "support" magic. almost like healing magic, only designed specifically to counter fire magic. if fire spells immolate you or your building/caravan/mount, you can use water spells to prevent any further damage taken by the fire. if such a fire system was used, water magic would be considered extremely important. (in regards to my farming thread, water magic could also be used to more effectively water crops! and there could be the possibility that someone lights your crops on fire)

perhaps you could also make sacrifices or donations to your god(s) so that if your camp is set ablaze, you can call upon them for rain.

[ccoa]

I really like this idea, though I think you're missing a few things in the equation of when and how fires start.

Nature

For one, lots of fires are caused by nater. Such as volcanoes and lightning that can cause huge wildfires that if left untamed could engulf a whole region. Perhaps when one of these natural disasters occurs guilds would have to drop their current conflicts in order to qwell the flames to save the region.

Seasons/Regions

If fires can easily be started during the summer, and winter is a harsh time to travel that limits the players to only 2 seasons of travel which really limits players and might not appeal to them (though personally I really like the idea). Also some regions should be harder to start fires such as rainforests or regions with a high humidity, aswell as deserts due to the lack of combustable material.

[Lachrymose]

volcanoes and lighting causing fires would be cool too. the only thing is, i'd imagine it would be extremely difficult to implement forest/grass fires, which is why i relegated the uses of fire to people, vehicles, buildings, etc. things that are already designed to take damage.

either way, if grass fires could start, the whole world would likely be riddled with them. there's those that would start them for fun, and then ofc there would be random grass fires when someone launches a fire spell, but it misses its intended target.

i think travel should be much more difficult than, "oh, hey honey, lets take the caravan across the world today. maybe stop for a picnic along the way." it should require much more planning. this isn't to say you can't travel during winter or summer. it would just be slower to travel during winter, and more dangerous to travel during summer (much like in real life). if you wanted to travel during the summer, you would just have to go prepared with enough supplies and protection (like i said, someone would could cast water magic would be best).

it would be cool if the climate of a region made a difference on how likely things were to catch on fire. yea, rainforests should be harder to start fires, but deserts would be a good place to start a fire since hot and dry are perfect conditions for setting a fire.

[Fro]

Good ideas but get back to making vids all the same.

[ccoa]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

deserts would be a good place to start a fire since hot and dry are perfect conditions for setting a fire.

Sure, but what would catch fire? The sand?

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by ccoa

Sure, but what would catch fire? The sand?

people.

also, buildings, caravans, mounts.. basically anything that would normally take damage from a fireball attack. i just think fire should be more realistic, maybe causing some initial damage, but lighting the target on fire and causing damage over time as the bulk of the damage.

[ccoa]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

people.

also, buildings, caravans, mounts.. basically anything that would normally take damage from a fireball attack. i just think fire should be more realistic, maybe causing some initial damage, but lighting the target on fire and causing damage over time as the bulk of the damage.

Touche, guess I wasn't thinking about the people.

Anyway, it was mentioned elsewhere on these forums but what about using fire to heal wounds. Things like cuts or fleshwounds, you know to seal the skin and stop the bleeding possibly causing a small inital damage then activating a heal over time and removing the bleed effect. But be careful not to use it on someone with lower health than the initial damage or you could just as well kill them.

[Hereshk]

Lachrymose, I think theres good ideas in this and I also like the way u are presenting it

Havent much to add to this, except maybe some random situations...

- If u fail casting a fire spell, instead of just dealing no damage, it could affect the caster

- Fire spell could have some radiate effect when cast, meaning that between the caster and the target, the heat could set something in fire

- Fire would have "light radiation" too, (I can already see in legends something saying : "the city was attacked by thousands of fire arrows, it was like daylight was suddenly appearing during the night over the city") hehe

- U could use fire to boil some water or oil to defend places

- If u try to light a smoke with a too high level fire spell, u might choke on the first inhalation (this one is not serious :P)


For fire being able to heal, I could see it stopping some DoT, but for a healing effect, idk. Maybe if ur resting near a fire it could add a bonus to your regenration if its during cold time :P

[Lachrymose]

yea, i like the idea of fire "healing" in a sense. it wouldn't replenish damage, but if you had like a bleed dot on you, it would stop the dot from doing any further damage.

it'd be really cool to see magic do more than just straight damage. like i said before, water magic could put out fires. well, if somehow you were lit on fire, you could use water magic to put it out.

hereshk, i think being able to light oil on fire would be really cool. like you've probably seen a lot in movies, when you're defending your city, and the enemy army is trying to ram down the gates, you pour oil on them and light it. i feel like this would be awfully hard to implement though so it may not be so viable.

[Hereshk]

Originally Posted by Lachrymose

hereshk, i think being able to light oil on fire would be really cool. like you've probably seen a lot in movies, when you're defending your city, and the enemy army is trying to ram down the gates, you pour oil on them and light it. i feel like this would be awfully hard to implement though so it may not be so viable.

Yeah, I agree it might be too hard to implement. I think I already saw it in a game, like in the Total War games (wich is only solo though).

[ccoa]

I remember in Stronghold 1/2 you could place oil pits on the floor and have archers shoot flaming arrows at them lighting the whole ground on fire. It was pretty cool and in that sense I'm not sure if it would be hard or not to implement. I guess I'm saying you could just have that part of ground deal damage to any one in the are when attacked by a fire spell or skill aswell as throw up a particle effect onthe ground and players in the area. But I don't know if that's easy or hard because I'm no developer

[lazyasian224]

could you also use magic to affect the environmental conditions in the area?
say like prior to a seige, a group of the defending mages gathered around and like necromancer + demonologists would do, sorta like summon different weather conditions?
cold blizzard-like conditions could make it hard to see, weaken fire magic, slow the movement of combatants, restrict aerial combat etc. this would effect the entire field of battle and maybe add a little to the fighting experience.

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by lazyasian224

could you also use magic to affect the environmental conditions in the area?
say like prior to a seige, a group of the defending mages gathered around and like necromancer + demonologists would do, sorta like summon different weather conditions?
cold blizzard-like conditions could make it hard to see, weaken fire magic, slow the movement of combatants, restrict aerial combat etc. this would effect the entire field of battle and maybe add a little to the fighting experience.

yea, i think it'd be cool if players could somehow control the weather. it would have to be relatively difficult to do. i was thinking since there will be religions and gods, if guilds could devote themselves to one god and make offerings/sacrifices and once they gained enough favor, they could ask for certain favors from their god (such as to make it rain, snow, etc).