Scaled Flooring efficacy?

[Lord of Bunwich]

I feel like Scaled Flooring is relegated to Deconstruction Duplication more because there's so little information on what it does rather than it actually being useless. The Wiki page for it is incredibly barren and, while its explanation is undoubtedly accurate, it does very little to inform the player of whether or not Scaled Flooring is a worthwhile investment.

"Slows the spread of fire" was confirmed to refer to two things: The radius at which something on the Scaled Flooring is ignited by something else, and how long it takes for something that still can light it on fire, to do so.

I did some testing. Naturally, it's more complicated. Both statements are true, but how true they are is very much understated.

A single Fire source, whether it's a dead Fire Hound, Tree, or Magma Pool, cannot PASSIVELY light anything on fire if the target is on Scaled Flooring. Things that directly light things on fire are unaffected, like angry Willows, hostile Lavae, touching a Magma Pool, and unfortunately, Wildfires. A significant enough initial fire, like two Fire Hounds dying at the same time or a campfire next to a Lava Pool, can still start a fire. Under certain circumstances, this can cause a chain reaction and burn down certain things as normal (such as flammable Walls) but this is rare and relatively easy to avoid.

Some ideas for "Range":

It takes 2 Hay Walls to light other Hay Walls on fire. They do so up to 6 Walls away, if all 8 walls are in a line. On Scaled Flooring, it will only ignite 2 Walls.

For how long it takes to light things on fire, this is less clear. It does NOT seem to affect smoldering time, only how long it takes to begin Smoldering. This has no effect on Wildfires, which skip straight to smoldering.

I'd argue that, with the exception of perhaps Wildfires, Scaled Flooring is actually an acceptable replacement for an Ice Flingomatic, given that you don't need the Scales for anything else and don't like the restricted range of the Flingo.

However, it DOES have a synergy with Emergency Mode of Flingos: In the situations where a fire is capable of spreading (2-3 walls are ignited), the spread is slowed enough that Emergency Mode will stop the fire before it spreads to anything that was not directly lit on fire.

There are two things Scaled Flooring does NOT do:

Prevent Wildfires

Protect things from Fire Damage

I feel like if things that were on Scaled Flooring were just immune to Wildfire checks, Scaled Flooring would become a worthwhile investment in long-term worlds or under important structures.

Since Wildfires are usually the main source of base destruction (in my experience) Scaled Flooring not affecting it kind of sucks, as even with Scaled Flooring you can still get major structures destroyed. It just doesn't destroy anything more than what the wildfire targeted.

I'm going to add some of these details to the wiki, since it gives basically no examples or details. It'd be nice if someone could double-check what I add to make sure it's intelligible, at all.

TL;DR Scaled Flooring makes stuff ALMOST fireproof, but Wildfires are still too much of a threat to avoid using a Flingomatic. so disable or rework wildfires

[Baark0]

It's efficient a duping scales I guess, but you can have 1 guy on ornery beefalo and 1 guy with hambat and bone armour and farm scales from the source (dfly), and if you're playing solo, Wolfgang with spicy buff from Warly should be enough damage to get scales, even with a hambat. Stopping the spread of fire isnt that helpful imo, now if it stopped fires altogether, then it might be better.

[Yuuko]

I've used them in fire farms before, but with the reset change to how fire spreads I don't need them anymore.

It would be nice if they gave a better fire protection, but instead we got giant trees that cover the top of the screen XD  There is no power without cost...

[Mooagain]

I guess if you combine scaled flooring with lureplants it could save your valuable structures, since they're at the top of the wildfire priority list.

[Lord of Bunwich]

Just now, Mooagain said:

I guess if you combine scaled flooring with lureplants it could save your valuable structures, since they're at the top of the wildfire priority list.

For that, most would just use the Flingomatic. You also need to cover everything NEAR the lureplant, instead of the Lureplant.