Steel burns on Rimworld?

[Shurp]

Well, if I'm putting up big plates of steel, I'll probably use a steel frame and steel bolts, right?

[erdrik]

Well, if I'm putting up big plates of steel, I'll probably use a steel frame and steel bolts, right?

Yea, I would imagine so. But that doesn't apply so much for Stone, Silver, or Gold walls.
I mean you wouldn't make a gold wall on a gold frame with gold bolts. Stone walls would require mortar to bond the bricks together, ect...

Yet you don't have to worry about the materials that would be use to build those parts. You don't need mortar for stone walls and you are not using extra steel(or wood) for the frame of Gold or Silver walls. To say nothing of some players that would want to purposefully build the frame out of wood to save building costs.
Which implies the frame and such is abstracted out as "a flammable material that doesn't cost anything extra to construct the building". Hence why I suggested not recovering non-flammable materials from fire destroyed buildings is the source of the balance issue, instead of the steel structures themselves being flammable.

[Shurp]

Well I build everything out of stone as soon as stonecutting is researched, so there's not much of a balance issue anyway.  I just thought it was hilarious that a lightning strike had set an abandoned steel building on fire, and I was trying to imagine what physics would cause this. I've decided that the builders used an advanced polymer paint to offer 1000-year protection against the elements... but one which burns so hot that it ignites the steel underneath.