61 replies to this topic

[Oompah]

So I core an atlas with a heavy laser that was using a 50 ton fusion reactor and the thing just slumps over and smolders? Where is the, at the very least, a small fire? When you core a mech that thing should explode and parts fly all over the battlefield. Its fairly uneventful just to have the thing slump over and have a small smoke plume.

[Hexenhammer]

There should be when ammo explodes. Fusion/fission reactors, not so much. Nuclear reactions don't explode. they just get hot and melt.

[Tesunie]

There are reasons why the mech doesn't explode into little pieces. That reactor is a fusion reactor, with many fail safes built in. Read here for more information: http://www.sarna.net...i/Fusion_Engine

If you read there, it can explode, but rarely does. And even then, it's more like a steam boiler exploding than a bomb exploding. Even more rare is to have a thermal explosion, where air might rush into a still running engine, and the air becomes super heated and explodes outward with great force.

According to BT technology, there are reasons every mech "slumps" forward instead of "exploding" when damaged. They essentially just loose power as their reactor emergency shuts down.

[Modo44]

I believe PGI tried to recreate the look of plastic toys falling on soft carpet. Great job.

[SmithMPBT]

I miss having to get clear of a downed mechs fusion detonation. It added to the urgency of the combat and the satisfaction of the kill. Best of all it was a dead mans last chance at Revenge on his attacker. You wrap up tight with your opponent and walk to hell together.

[Oompah]

Come on, its a game for petes sake. Give us some explosions or at the very least "Normal thermal expansion of the air causes the air to burst out in a brilliant lightshow often mistaken for a "nuclear explosion". The Thermal Expansion damages anything within 90 meters of the destroyed 'Mech.

Edited by Oompah, 23 July 2013 - 08:19 AM.

[Tesunie]

"Fusion engines usually will only shut down if damaged, and they are absolutely no risk of being a fusion bomb."

"Because the plasma is held in a vacuum chamber (to isolate the superheated plasma from the cold walls of the reactor; contact with the walls would super-chill the plasma below fusion temperatures), a punctured reactor can suck in air where the air is superheated."

"Such dramatic failures are rare, though. It is difficult to sustain the fusion reaction and very easy to shutdown. Safety systems or damage to containment coils will almost always shut down the engine before such an explosion occurs. The massive shielding of the engine (in the case of standard fusion engines, this is a tungsten carbide shell that accounts for over 2/3 of the weight of the engine) usually buys the safety systems the milliseconds needed to shutdown the engine when severe damaged is inflicted."


That's three times it says that an explosion is unlikely to occur. Having it occur for every mech that gets down would break from lore. Those of use who follow this game because of the books, TT game and other older series of MW games appreciate PGI trying to sink as much lore into the game as possible. This isn't "just" another game. This is Mechwarrior. A game with a lot of lore and history behind it. I could agree if they made a reactor have a, say, 1-5% chance of "exploding", but you'd still be talking about it happening so rarely, you might as well not include it into the game anyway.

I don't want this to be another MW3, where every mech was a walking bomb that could blow you up if they happened to chance too close to you when they died (and yet you still could salvage the mech from the crater it created later). It's suppose to be a rare occurrence, unless you set the core to detonate manually. Most pilots though... didn't do that unless they had to. They'd rather have a chance of getting their really expensive mech back. Blowing up should be reserved to those to stress their heat scale far too much (like near 200% of their cap).

Ah... I remember the days. Making a dasher with smallest engine, too many weapons, and no heat sinks. One alpha and I was a crater. Such fun. Or loading up on just a million JJs and jetting out into space. (MW2 by the way, where you could really do some crazy, unlore like things. SO much fun, yet so unusual. Remember my Jenner IIc with two PPCs and JJs.)

[shadowsedge43]

Killing a mech should result in an impressive light show (and corresponding sounds).

There is a major game design principle for doing so:
It is not enough that the player gets the information that he has caused/accomplished a result; The player has got to FEEL it, on a sensual level.

Moreover, different ways off killing a mech should result in different deaths:
Headshots should make for a nice explosion of glas and blood (as it is now, headshots are really anticlimatic)
Let Ammo explosions look different than reactor-kills.
And it would be nice if shooting off a leg had some optical effect, too , though I have no clue how to implement this.

[Tesunie]

shadowsedge43, on 23 July 2013 - 02:11 PM, said:

Killing a mech should result in an impressive light show (and corresponding sounds).

There is a major game design principle for doing so:
It is not enough that the player gets the information that he has caused/accomplished a result; The player has got to FEEL it, on a sensual level.

Moreover, different ways off killing a mech should result in different deaths:
Headshots should make for a nice explosion of glas and blood (as it is now, headshots are really anticlimatic)
Let Ammo explosions look different than reactor-kills.
And it would be nice if shooting off a leg had some optical effect, too , though I have no clue how to implement this.

Reminder: This game is considered a simulator. It is designed with simulating the Battletech 'mech combat as accurately as possible. Keep that in mind when you play it. It isn't just another video game, it's considered a simulator that is trying to break through the suspension of disbelief and make you feel like a mechwarrior from the many novels and other Battletech materials.

With that thought in mind, the reactors rarely went boom. They can be rigged or triggered to explode, either by purposefully overriding the heat shut down and overheating into a giant fireball of destruction, or by setting the reactor to manually overload. (Recall in a book, someone rammed their Assassin into the back of a Excalibur (Warhammer mod, been a while here) and self destructed the mech, ejecting out before he blew.

However, most damage forces the mech to shut down, stopping the fusion reaction from taking place and making it all just metal. This means, no big boom.

As for different damage showing a different way of dieing, that would be cool. Then again, we aren't suppose to have damaged legs that stop working, they should pop off and just about disable a mech, depending upon where it was destroyed at. Having a reactor shut down, would place the mech into standby, where the joints would lock up in the last pose (not this flopping around stuff), and a cockpit shoot out would look like shooting someone in the head, body goes limp from lack of signals to the body and falls over into the ground.

Also, if you look closely at a mech when it goes down, there is some small explosions that go off. If ammo is the cause, there is a popping sound, a but bigger of an explosion, and they crumple.

Keeping in mind that this is a lore based game, and not some new game that the history and technology can change, lore says it wont explode, so it doesn't. If anything, there would be a very small chance of an explosion, I will agree. However, I'd rather the PGI team work on other, more important, additions to the game than a graphical 1-5% chance (or less) of a mech exploding from a downed reactor. (Do also recall, mechs have been known to survive centuries of service, out living their pilots through combat, and going from side to side, person to person. Some mechs staying in a family for many generations even. Having the reactors exploding ever time they get bumped would kinda destroy the belief that these are rugged engines of destruction.)

[Pinselborste]

mechs that run around with tons of ammo should explode, things like Missiles going off and flying around would also be great if you hit Missile ammo or the launcher itself.

also, if someone is at high heat and gets cored, there should be some fire and hot air comming out of its center torso.

another thing is, if you destroy both legs, the 2nd leg that got destroyerd should be ripped off or something, right now it Looks stupid to have a mech die while both legs look totally fine.

[Bhael Fire]

Yes, as mentioned the engine on a mech has various safeguards to prevent catastrophic explosions.

However, if a mech's engine takes a massive amount of catastrophic damage in very short period of time, there should be a massive release of plasma and expanding gasses. This would blow the mech apart in various ways or at the very least, shoot a fiery stream of super-heated gas out of the mech's breached core like a giant 50-ton bottle rocket that failed to launch.

Voila, explosions. Also, Michael Bay.

[blinkin]

i want living legends style explosions. very rare but when they do happen people close by need to **** and anybody seeing the flash on the horizon should feel a sense of pity for the poor souls in that area, regardless of what team they are on.

and as far as the "explosions can't happen" crowd, physics disagrees:

blinkin, on 01 July 2013 - 01:38 PM, said:

ok a little physics lesson for those who say an explosion is impossible:

according to sarna, fusion in mech reactors is done with common hydrogen (1 proton, 1 electron). i have seen no mention of any form of "cold fusion" being used in battlemech engines (if "cold fusion" is confirmed to be used in mech engines it WILL render this entire post irrelevant and allow for safe engines)

temperatures-- this **** is ******* hot
http://en.wikipedia....onuclear_fusion :
Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of particles, so by heating the material it will gain energy. After reaching sufficient temperature, given by the Lawson criterion, the energy of accidental collisions within the plasma is high enough to overcome the Coulomb barrier and the particles may fuse together.
In a deuterium–tritium fusion reaction, for example, the energy necessary to overcome the Coulomb barrier is 0.1 MeV. Converting between energy and temperature shows that the 0.1 MeV barrier would be overcome at a temperature in excess of 120 million Kelvins. <-diamonds melt at just a little shy of 5,000 kelvin according to wikipedia.

^^also note this is the type of fusion used in modern H-bombs. even using nuclear fission we CANNOT produce high enough temperatures to fuse common hydrogen.

http://en.wikipedia..../Nuclear_fusion :




The only man-made fusion device to achieve ignition to date is the hydrogen bomb. The detonation of the first device, codenamed Ivy Mike, is shown here.

unfortunately i could not find exact minimum fusion temperatures as it varies with pressure. last i heard the minimum temperature that the core of a star needed to reach was 2.5 million kelvin to fuse common hydrogen (because of the electrostatic repulsion from the naked protons) and at those pressures around 750,000 kelvin were required to fuse deuterium (²H). on earth we currently can only fuse deuterium and tritium (³H) because they require much less temperature and pressure.

i think you get the point by now, this is incredibly high energy. things that get hot like to expand. imagine it like a steam explosion to end all steam explosions.

PRESSURE-- more dense than any material you have ever experienced
i can say that definitively because a material MUST be plasma to fuze. (plasma means it has reached an energy state high enough that none of the electrons stick to it anymore and it is just a raw nucleus.) for these nuclei to fuse these raw protons MUST be forced within 1 fermi (0.000000000001 millimeters for reference) https://en.wikipedia...i/Atomic_radius : the radius of an atom is more than 10,000 times the radius of its nucleus (1–10 fm),^[2]





so children what happens when you have something held at heat and pressure levels completely unseen on the surface of this or an other planet and then suddenly the thing holding it fails?

even if the reaction stops completely as soon as the containment fails there is still an insane amount of energy there. when you claim there would be no explosion because the reaction stops it is like claiming that a skillet stops being hot as soon as you turn off the burner underneath it.




as for my opinions on the subject: in reality such a reactor would have a massive explosion almost every time it fails, BUT i like gameplay balance so something like a 5% chance or have it set off by causing a certain number of engine critical hits within a certain time frame before the mech is destroyed. 90m radius with an AC20 hit to EVERYTHING within that radius is what i would like to see along with a delay that includes an obvious glowing build up. <-none of this is based on reality because reality would blow up most of the battlefield on a regular basis.

i am just going to store this damned quote somewhere on my profile, because every time this debate comes up someone invariably needs to be beaten over the head with a physics lesson.

Edited by blinkin, 23 July 2013 - 05:39 PM.

[Tesunie]

"Unlike the research reactors of the real world, a Battlemech's fusion engine runs on "light" hydrogen, protium, rather than hydrogen's heavier isotopes deuterium and/or tritium."

"Fusion engines usually will only shut down if damaged, and they are absolutely no risk of being a fusion bomb."

"There have been a number of cases of fusion engines being "over revved" and exploding with devestating force, but this is more akin to a boiler explosion than a true nuclear explosion."

"(to isolate the superheated plasma from the cold walls of the reactor; contact with the walls would super-chill the plasma below fusion temperatures)"

"Such dramatic failures are rare, though. It is difficult to sustain the fusion reaction and very easy to shutdown. Safety systems or damage to containment coils will almost always shut down the engine before such an explosion occurs. The massive shielding of the engine (in the case of standard fusion engines, this is a tungsten carbide shell that accounts for over 2/3 of the weight of the engine) usually buys the safety systems the milliseconds needed to shutdown the engine when severe damaged is inflicted."

I would also like to pull out: "A BattleMech's fusion engine can usually last for decades on a few kilograms of hydrogen." I don't know how much is needed in a hydrogen bomb, but that doesn't sound like much. And I bet most of the energy goes towards cooling the whole thing. (Which would explain the heat temps rising as the reactor is worked up, as it has to dump that heat somewhere, much like a freezer cools it's compartment, at the cost of increasing the heat in the room its in.)

(Only pulled out the relevant sections, but I have a link to the Sarna page for your own reading up above. Not trying to paraphrase anything. Honest.)



It does not say that it can not happen, it just says it is unlikely and hard to happen. As it is, the reactor has an easier time in not working, than in working. A mech can power down a lot easier than it can power up.

Also, the mechs do not use the same Hydrogen we use, or it's heavier subtypes. It uses a light Hydrogen, which reacts differently than the heavy types of Hydrogen. https://en.wikipedia...1_.28protium.29 For more on Hydrogen.

Seen as Sarna is considered the sum of all Battletech knowledge (I might be exaggerating that a bit), I'll have to take it's word on how a fusion reactor build over 1,000 years into our future will run, and what wondrous technology exists in that era of possible time. It says that it wont explode like a nuke, then it wont. It says it can, though rarely, explode like a steam turbine, then I take it that it can explode, but with a very low chance of it.

I could, however, agree to wanting a rare explosion that, when witnessed, makes you feel bad for anyone close enough to it. I'll give that. They can blow like that. However, having every downed mech explode catastrophically would be... catastrophic? On the other side, I'd rather them get CW, more mechs, and fine tune what is here, instead of working on the "rare chance" that a mech might explode. Maybe have it released later, but right now, I think PGI has bigger things to fry.

(PS: I wasn't saying a mech couldn't explode. Was just saying they don't explode often.)

[blinkin]

Tesunie, on 23 July 2013 - 05:59 PM, said:

"Unlike the research reactors of the real world, a Battlemech's fusion engine runs on "light" hydrogen, protium, rather than hydrogen's heavier isotopes deuterium and/or tritium."

yes 1 proton and one electron which is far harder to fuse than the heavier isotopes. so hard to fuse that we CANNOT accomplish the task on earth with our current technology. we cannot reach the pressures and temperatures required.

"Fusion engines usually will only shut down if damaged, and they are absolutely no risk of being a fusion bomb."

yes i have seen the sarna article and carefully studied it. physics disagrees. i hold sarna in high regards but generally real life science trumps any flavor text listed.

"There have been a number of cases of fusion engines being "over revved" and exploding with devestating force, but this is more akin to a boiler explosion than a true nuclear explosion."

a boiler explosion due to pressures and temperatures unseen on earth.

"(to isolate the superheated plasma from the cold walls of the reactor; contact with the walls would super-chill the plasma below fusion temperatures)"

yes fusion stops. how long do you think the fusion lasts in an H-bomb? once it has started expanding you are already done. even in the very sarna article it talks about the reaction in terms of milliseconds.

"Such dramatic failures are rare, though. It is difficult to sustain the fusion reaction and very easy to shutdown. Safety systems or damage to containment coils will almost always shut down the engine before such an explosion occurs. The massive shielding of the engine (in the case of standard fusion engines, this is a tungsten carbide shell that accounts for over 2/3 of the weight of the engine) usually buys the safety systems the milliseconds needed to shutdown the engine when severe damaged is inflicted."

yes sci fi stuff and "technology" reduce the chances of a critical failure, but safety equipment tends to not always work properly when you shoot it full of holes. the tungsten carbide shell just adds shrapnel to the mix, if you want to contain the explosion you would be just as well off making the shell out of paper mache.

I would also like to pull out: "A BattleMech's fusion engine can usually last for decades on a few kilograms of hydrogen." I don't know how much is needed in a hydrogen bomb, but that doesn't sound like much. And I bet most of the energy goes towards cooling the whole thing. (Which would explain the heat temps rising as the reactor is worked up, as it has to dump that heat somewhere, much like a freezer cools it's compartment, at the cost of increasing the heat in the room its in.)

a kilogram is slightly more than 2.2 pounds. imagine 2.2 pounds of C4 explosive and then realize that the C4 might as well be a snap n' pop by comparison.

(Only pulled out the relevant sections, but I have a link to the Sarna page for your own reading up above. Not trying to paraphrase anything. Honest.)

i have read it all several times due to this exact same debate.

It does not say that it can not happen, it just says it is unlikely and hard to happen. As it is, the reactor has an easier time in not working, than in working. A mech can power down a lot easier than it can power up.

but when it does work the hydrogen is compressed and heated to levels beyond anything you have ever experienced on this planet.

Also, the mechs do not use the same Hydrogen we use, or it's heavier subtypes. It uses a light Hydrogen, which reacts differently than the heavy types of Hydrogen. https://en.wikipedia...1_.28protium.29 For more on Hydrogen.

already addressed this earlier, but again standard single proton hydrogen requires far more energy and pressure to fuse than it's heavier forms.

Seen as Sarna is considered the sum of all Battletech knowledge (I might be exaggerating that a bit), I'll have to take it's word on how a fusion reactor build over 1,000 years into our future will run, and what wondrous technology exists in that era of possible time. It says that it wont explode like a nuke, then it wont. It says it can, though rarely, explode like a steam turbine, then I take it that it can explode, but with a very low chance of it.

i will take the word of physicists over the flavor text that has been typed into a game reference.

I could, however, agree to wanting a rare explosion that, when witnessed, makes you feel bad for anyone close enough to it. I'll give that. They can blow like that. However, having every downed mech explode catastrophically would be... catastrophic? On the other side, I'd rather them get CW, more mechs, and fine tune what is here, instead of working on the "rare chance" that a mech might explode. Maybe have it released later, but right now, I think PGI has bigger things to fry.

and all of this is perfectly fine, but people need to stop mutilating scientific disciplines so they can justify or not having some element in the game. i very clearly recognize that i want some of these specific changes because they are fun and NOT because they have anything to do with reality.

(PS: I wasn't saying a mech couldn't explode. Was just saying they don't explode often.)

the only thing that really backs that is the abstract safety measures that are mentioned but not really described. argue whatever game mechanics you do or don't want just don't twist the laws of physics into something that they aren't.

i apologize for being harsh, but i have had these same arguments a dozen times and have become a little crusty where this topic is concerned.

Edited by blinkin, 23 July 2013 - 07:06 PM.

[Tesunie]

I'm being trolled! Oh... sorry. I had to say it, considering I was with you when Cancer was doing his thing a while back.

And, no. You aren't being harsh. I am not a physicist. I don't fully grasp the complete process of fusion, but I do understand the basics at least. I wont argue science I do not currently know (though I'd love to learn about it more if I could, just because I like to know things). However, I have to say, with science fiction, you have to take their word for what can and does happen in their world. Think of it as, physics are different for their world compared to ours.

However, I wouldn't mind an occasional explosion from time to time as Sarna indicates at some point in the game's life. But it be such a low chance you probably wouldn't see one happening often, if at all. I'm just saying, given a choice between having a chance explosion (probably happening once in maybe 10 matches if that), compared to getting something like CW going, I'll choose CW (or some other relevant subject I'm sure you could think of). It just... isn't that big a deal for me. It should happen so infrequently anyway I don't think the game is truly lacking anything by not having it.

I also don't want to have the other extreme where it starts to play like MW3 (or was it 4? I'm sure it was 3) where every mech you destroy will explode catastrophically and take everything even remotely nearby out with it. (And then you somehow still can gain the mech as salvage. You mean, you can salvage that crater and scattered scrap metal back into a mech?) I'm sure you know what I'm talking about here if you ever played the game.

I also really don't want to see the suicide bomber squads that would probably appear if these explosions happened too often. Imagine your enemy just charging into you, sitting in front of your weapons, waiting for you to either kill them, or you let them damage you to near death, back off, and then kill you. Personally, I want to penalize the face huggers by shooting them all the easier (if not by knocking them down even).

As a graphic, maybe we can have a bit of an explosion coming from the last spot hit. But it would have to be small, and just for show for the most part. Larger, damaging explosions would not occur for every mech downed. You could also show grounding wires sparking, lighting on the mech dimming, or other death related graphics as well. I still feel, as nice as it might look, it's just fluff.


If we really want to get honest here though, I'd like to be able to open rifts into a mechs armor, see the internals inside, and then be able to aim at an exposed Gyro, have a mech fall over because it can't stand up and disable the mech that way. Or grind a hole and see a reactor, and aim for the same exact hole to damage the reactor. Shoot a leg off mid thigh, and have the mech fall over onto it's side/front/back and not stand back up. Stuff from the novels (where I'm a bit more experienced compared to TT rules and lore). Would this make for a fun game? Probably not. Do I expect it in this game? Not at all. Too much detail.

I do hope I'm making sense here and not just gibberish. I don't know how well I'm relaying my thoughts on this one.

[Tesunie]

Also, side note... Sarna says that the reaction happens in a vacuum environment. Fusion as we know it requires heat and pressure... so... according to physics and trying to stay true to Sarna and Battletech, how could a fusion reaction be possible in a vacuum magnetic bottle (magnetic fields providing pressure maybe? But a Vacuum provides negative pressure...) and the sides of the reactor core itself is super cooled? But it has to be hot fusion because Sarna also describes it like the process of a Sun.

I think this might be one of those "It isn't going to make perfect logical sense". But I'm sure that the magnetic field of the reactor core that is used to contain the plasma would provide the pressure needed. Or it's just be a strange way to explain why your keys stick to the bottom of your cockpit. Also might explain why the Ferros Gauss slugs seem highly attracted to my reactor... (Yah. I had to joke about it. Sorry.)

[Theronlas]

Tesunie, on 23 July 2013 - 05:59 PM, said:

Also, the mechs do not use the same Hydrogen we use, or it's heavier subtypes. It uses a light Hydrogen, which reacts differently than the heavy types of Hydrogen. https://en.wikipedia...1_.28protium.29 For more on Hydrogen.

"Light" Hydrogen (or proteium or whatever you want to call it) is a single proton, 99.98% of the hydrogen in the universe is of this isotope. A fusion reactor capable of running on this fuel would not need to separate the isotopes at all, just run on straight H2.

blinkin, on 23 July 2013 - 06:56 PM, said:

i apologize for being harsh, but i have had these same arguments a dozen times and have become a little crusty where this topic is concerned.

It does not matter though what happens in the real world (none of the BT stuff is realistic anyway) only what the lore suggests will happen. In this case the result is rather unspectacular most of the time. AFAIK this would actually tally with a real reactor, since any reactor that small (they are sub 100t after all) would have only a few thousand atoms fusing at any one time, so a catastrophic loss of containment would likely not liberate more energy than a small explosive (stick of dynamite or such).

[Bhael Fire]

To be fair to the game, it actually does have a tiny little flaming "fart" that comes out of the mech's center torso when it goes down...but it's barely noticeable. If you blink you'll miss it.

[Gaan Cathal]

blinkin, on 23 July 2013 - 06:56 PM, said:

the only thing that really backs that is the abstract safety measures that are mentioned but not really described. argue whatever game mechanics you do or don't want just don't twist the laws of physics into something that they aren't.

Ironically enough, those abstract safety measures are largely unnecessary. The physics behind Fusion reactors simply doesn't allow for meltdown. It's a far more delicate reaction than Fission, and without precisely controlled pressure and magnetic field containment, the plasma will simply dissipate and the reaction will cease, there's no possibility of a runaway self-sustaining reaction of the sort that causes nuclear fission reactors to go catastrophic.

Tesunie, on 23 July 2013 - 08:14 PM, said:

Also, side note... Sarna says that the reaction happens in a vacuum environment. Fusion as we know it requires heat and pressure... so... according to physics and trying to stay true to Sarna and Battletech, how could a fusion reaction be possible in a vacuum magnetic bottle (magnetic fields providing pressure maybe? But a Vacuum provides negative pressure...) and the sides of the reactor core itself is super cooled? But it has to be hot fusion because Sarna also describes it like the process of a Sun.

The vacuum environment is..ah...bollocks. Pressure in practical fusion reactors is achieved via magnetic fields or lasers (the latter being decidedly inferior but slightly more compact). You would however need cooling¹ of the exterior of the apparatus. In modern fusion reactors that's typically lithium cooling, which is highly flammable and might cause a conventional fireball explosion when ignited.

From a longer-term perspective, anyone piloting one of these for more than a few years of fairly consistent duty is almost certainly sterile, and very, very prone to cancers, particularly of the bones. Fusion reactors give of a lot of neutrons, and neutron radiation is a ***** to shield since, although massive, they're not particularly reactive being chargeless.




¹ Super-cooling is quite a different thing however, god knows what would actually happen if you managed to super-cool a material with a hot fusion reaction ongoing on the other side. Given that super-cooling does such eccentric things to the laws of physics as cause liquids to flow up the sides of their containers I'd imagine the answer is that it would be a very bad idea to try.

[Rovertoo]

If explosions really only happened when the safeties were off, then maybe we could have the bright, spectacular, dangerous explosions only if you cored a mech that had it's override on? That would be pretty rare, and also extremely satisfying!