Fire

Learn more about fire.

Fire in World of Warships is a damage-over-time effect that occurs due to damage taken from enemy high explosive shells or aircraft bomb hits. Fire is represented visually by flames spewing from the deck or superstructure of a ship, as well as by flames along the edges of the in-game user interface. Ships can sustain multiple fires simultaneously; each part of a ship that is on fire increases the amount of damage that a ship suffers per second.

Setting Fires

The "Set on Fire" ribbon is awarded for setting fire to an enemy ship.

Hits from four types of ordnance can cause a ship to catch on fire:

A high explosive shell from a main or secondary battery.
An HE aircraft bomb.
An HE rocket.
A depth charge hit on a submarine.

It is impossible to cause a fire on an allied ship.^[1]

A "Set on Fire" ribbon is awarded for each individual fire set on an enemy ship.^[2]

Fire Zones

Every ship has four distinct zones along its main deck that can be set on fire, fore, aft, and two amidship. Thus the maximum number of fires on a ship is four. The commander skill Fire Prevention for battleships reduces the number of fire zones to three (one amidship). Submarines can only have one active fire, in the amidship section.

Fire Chance

Fire Chance (the chance a shell or bomb will set a fire) is calculated by combining a base chance for the ordnance to set a fire, the target ship's intrinsic resistance to fire, and certain modifiers, as shown below.

Fire Resistance

Each ship hull has an intrinsic resistance to fire. The amount of resistance is based on ship type, ship tier, and the hull that is currently equipped (Stock or Top). (Premium ships all have the Top Hull.) This resistance is expressed as the Fire Resistance Coefficient (FRC). The lower the coefficient, the more resistant the ship is to catching fire.

The user interface will display several different indicators to let captains know their ship is on fire. The timer shows only the duration of the most recent fire set.

The Fire Resistance Coefficients (FRC) are shown below:

Ship Tier	(Stock Hull)	(Top Hull)	(all)
Tier I	1.0000		N/A
Tier II	1.0000
Tier III	1.0000	0.9667
Tier IV	0.9334	0.9001	0.8002
Tier V	0.8668	0.8335
Tier VI	0.8002	0.7669
Tier VII	0.7336	0.7003
Tier VIII	0.6670	0.6337
Tier IX	0.6004	0.5671
Tier X	0.5338	0.5005
Tier XI	N/A	0.4340

Base Fire Chance

"Projectile Base Fire Chance" for artillery is displayed in the Port screen by mousing over the Main Battery or Secondary Armament entries in the Artillery section. Only HE shells have a Fire Chance. In addition, each ship entry in this wiki includes the fire chances for main and secondary HE shells.

For aircraft bombs and rockets, the base fire chance is a characteristic of the size and type of ordnance used and varies between 4% for small rockets carried by attack squadrons and 64% for large HE bombs. See the tables in the Aircraft article for more info. The information can also be view in the Port screen by mousing over the appropriate type of squadron in the Aircraft section.

The Calculation

The chance to set fire for a single high explosive shell hitting a ship is calculated by the following formula (the formulas for airborne rockets and bombs are similar):

Fire Chance = FRC · ( 1 - DCM1 ) · ( 1 - FP ) · ( ( FC_B · IFHE ) + DE + Σ S )

where:

FRC — the ship's Fire Resistance Coefficient (see above).
DCM1 — the effect of the Damage Control System Modification 1 upgrade: 5% (0.05) with the upgrade installed, zero without.
FP — the effect of the Fire Prevention skill: 10% (0.10) with the skill, zero without.
FC_B — the Projectile Base Fire Chance (see above).
IFHE — the effect of the IFHE commander skill: 50% (0.5) or 1.0 without the skill.
DE — the effect of the Demolition Expert commander skill: 0.01 with the skill, zero without.
Σ S — the sum of the effects of the mounted Signals Victor Lima and India X-Ray : +0.01 or +0.005 each depending on gun caliber, else zero.

As an example, we can compare the chance of a single Benson high explosive shell lighting a fire on an enemy Bismarck.

Tier VIII Bismarck is using Hull B (Top) (FRC of 0.6337) upgraded with Damage Control System Modification 1; the crew is not skilled at Fire Prevention.
VIII Benson fires 127mm HE Mk.32 with a 5.5% base fire chance. Her commander is a Demolition Expert (not IFHE) and is flying both the Victor Lima and India X-Ray signals.

The fire chance (per hit) would be:

(0.6337) x (1 - 0.05) x (1 - 0.00) x ((0.055 * 1) + 0.01 + 0.01) = 4.52% fire chance

If the Bismarck commander acquires the Fire Prevention skill, the chance would then be:

(0.6337) x (1 - 0.05) x (1 - 0.10) x ((0.055 * 1) + 0.01 + 0.01) = 4.06% fire chance (90% of the above, along with limiting the maximum number of simultaneous fires to 3)

If instead Benson's commander was not a Demolition Expert, the chance would be:

(0.6337) x (1 - 0.05) x (1 - 0.00) x ((0.055 * 1) + 0.00 + 0.01) = 3.91% fire chance (87% of the first example)

The Benson example, with its 13.5% variance in fire chance, demonstrates the effectiveness of the Demolition Expert skill on certain ships, especially those with a high rate of fire and a low individual fire chance per shell (such as Atlanta, Gearing, or Akizuki).

A shell's base fire chance can be found by hovering the mouse over the Main Battery information in the Port screen.

Fire Damage

Damage dealt by each instance of fire on a ship is fixed as 0.3% of its total health pool per fire per second (1% for aircraft carriers and submarines). Each fire has a base duration of 60 seconds for battleships, 30 seconds for cruisers, destroyers and submarines, and 5 seconds for aircraft carriers. A fire that is allowed to burn for the full duration will consume 18% (0.3% x 60 sec.) of a battleship's maximum health, 9% of a cruiser's or destroyer's maximum health, 5% (1% x 5 sec.) of a carrier's, and 30% (1% x 30 sec.) of a submarine's maximum health.

There are exceptions to the above fire duration for cruisers, the cruisers: Tier VI Admiral Graf Spee and HSF Admiral Graf Spee have a base fire duration of 45 seconds; Large Cruisers^[3] have a base fire duration of 60 seconds. Maximum fire damage is thus 13.5% (0.3% x 45 sec.) for the German Tier VI, and 18% (0.3% x 60 sec.) for the Tier VII, VIII, IX and X Large Cruisers.

Captains of battleships and large cruisers can quickly see, then, that while one fire might be considered a nuisance, two or more are a major threat to the ship.

Other Effects of Fire

Ships on fire have their surface detection range increased by 2.0 km and their aerial detection radius increased by 3.0 km. This is particularly noteworthy for destroyer captains.

Fire does not increase the detectability of submarines.

Extinguishing Fires

Fires can only be extinguished by utilization of the Damage Control Party  consumable, or by waiting for the fire duration timer to expire. The duration of a fire can be reduced in several ways:

Equipping Damage Control System Modification 2 will reduce the duration by 15%.
Using a commander with the Level 3 commander skill Basics of Survivability will reduce the duration by 15%.
Flying the India Yankee () signal will reduce the duration by 20%.

Each of these effects stacks with the others; however, they are multiplicative rather than additive.

For example, if all three reduction effects are stacked, the duration of a single fire on a battleship or large cruiser is: 60 seconds x 0.85 x 0.85 x 0.80 = 34.68 seconds.

The below tables provide the fire durations and total health loss for the different combinations of the above three effects.

Fire Impacts to Aircraft Carriers
Modifiers	Total Damage	Duration
Total damage	5.0% of base health	5 seconds

Fire Impacts to Battleships and Large Cruisers^[3]
Modifiers	Total Damage	Duration
Total damage	18% of base health	60 seconds
With one -15% modifier	15.3% of base health	51 seconds
With a -20% modifier	14.4% of base health	48 seconds
With two -15% modifiers	13% of base health	43 seconds
With one -15% modifier and a -20% modifier	12.2% of base health	41 seconds
With two -15% modifiers and a -20% modifier	10.4% of base health	35 seconds

Fire Impacts to *Admiral Graf Spee*
Modifiers	Total Damage	Duration
Total damage	13.5% of base health	45 seconds
With one -15% modifier	11.5% of base health	38 seconds
With a -20% modifier	10.8% of base health	36 seconds
With two -15% modifiers	9.8% of base health	33 seconds
With one -15% modifier and a -20% modifier	9.2% of base health	31 seconds
With two -15% modifiers and a -20% modifier	7.8% of base health	26 seconds

Fire Impacts to Destroyers and Cruisers
Modifiers	Total Damage	Duration
Total damage	9% of base health	30 seconds
With one -15% modifier	7.7% of base health	26 seconds
With a -20% modifier	7.2% of base health	24 seconds
With two -15% modifiers	6.5% of base health	22 seconds
With one -15% modifier and a -20% modifier	6.1% of base health	20 seconds
With two -15% modifiers and a -20% modifier	5.2% of base health	17 seconds

Fire Impacts to Submarines
Modifiers	Total Damage	Duration
Total damage	30% of base health	30 seconds
With one -15% modifier	25.5% of base health	25.5 seconds
With a -20% modifier	24% of base health	24 seconds
With one -15% modifier and a -20% modifier	20.4% of base health	20.4 seconds

All damage sustained by fires is 100% eligible for recovery by ships that can use the Repair Party  consumable. Note that a standard Repair Party heals up to 14% of a ship's base health (16.8% with the India Delta () signal) over 28 seconds, comparable to a single fire on a battleship depending on other modifiers.