Thanks Button! This is big news. Going to fire this up right away.
also: does anyone know if the various changes that ModestMod makes to BOILING_POINT and MELTING_POINT (setting values that in vanilla were just "NONE") to various materials in material_template_default.txt only affects "animated organic material" (ie, zombies) as described in the changelog, or does setting those boiling/melting points have other effects in the game as well?
--nomad_delta
Oh it affects living critters too, and animal by-products, but not until they're already goners.
The thing is, living creatures don't actually take burn damage. If you set a dwarf on fire, what kills it is that
their fat starts melting, so they start bleeding, and eventually they die by bleeding out. It takes a lot longer for e.g. bone to reach its modded-in melting point, so if you reach the point where it's relevant, your critter should have bled out & died from their fat melting off already.
The reason this is helpful with zombies is that zombies can't die from bleeding out. No death from bleeding out + no burn damage while animated = animated forever.
In terms of items, a !!-cow bone crossbow-!! takes actual burn damage, turning into a !!x-cow bone crossbow-x!! and eventually into a !!XX-cow bone crossbow-XX!! and then being destroyed entirely. With the modded-in bone melting point, it might become a !!glob of melted cow bone!! before being destroyed entirely. No material has had a melting or boiling point introduced
below its ignition point, so if it gets to the point of melting, it's almost certainly already lost.
The only real concern is if in the case of leather, bone, or woolen artifacts. Artifacts don't take burn damage, but they can melt. So, if your dragon-slayer is using an artifact leather shield and the shield catches on fire, it will eventually melt instead of just staying on fire for all eternity.
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