I've been going through my static.ini at times, selecting objects for which I see no good reason to assign fire/smoke after their destruction. That is, the kind of longer-lasting fire and smoke columns typically used for buildings and the like. Stuff like rock walls, paint cans, chairs, people, animals and all kinds of small, inconsequential or inflammable bric-a-brac should not consume valuable resources once destroyed. A scenario in which an airfield is well populated with lots of 'clutter' could otherwise result in a very low frame rate and/or lots of effects simply being switched off and on. A real mess. And even for less heavily populated scenarios, the reduction in effects is still a good thing.
Anything of any importance is, of course, left alone. Although I do have randomness in effect, where about 1/3 of objects will not generate one or both of fire and smoke. And I also randomly set an effect from a different Body type, for purposes of variety; in this way a bunch of the same, say, Pacific huts will not all have the identical fire/smoke.
Thus far I've given 1,036 objects the new property, "NoFireSmoke", which is written to a new line along with the other properties in static.ini. And of course Explosions.class is written to read this and act accordingly. I'll certainly be including more objects for such assignment.
Note than any new properties added to any *.ini files do not cause conflicts with stock code; they are simply ignored as though not existing. For instance, I've added a new property to the MGun weapon classes which define a NEW second tracer smoke. In this way I have implemented the ability to have a combination of the old 2D trail smoke and a particle-based 3D smoke; the best of both worlds! Via a conf.ini [Mods] entry, one can select 2D only, 3D only, or a combination of 2D/3D. (The two 3D-related options apply only to the player's plane; AI always uses 2D, out of resource consumption considerations, primarily.)