100 replies to this topic

[Idgit Galoot]

One element I personally miss from the older MechWarrior games was the risk of getting in too close to your enemies, or allies. Mech's having the chance to go critical would break up the monotonous ecm brawling, and also add another strategic element to the game. Don't get me wrong I like to get into brawls and duke it out over who's the better pilot, but I think that there should be a risk for an entire team to be within 50 meters of each other and/or their foes. It could also put into play the need to aim at other parts, other than just trying to go straight for the core depending on the situation. Adding in the friendly target info so you can monitor you allies to avoid a friendly blast would also need to accompany this. Maybe even requiring the use of the eject button. If you don't eject, your pilot dies and there could be a xp bonus for a surviving pilot. I love the simulation aspect of the MechWarrior games, so I enjoy all the little details that can add to the required attention span for playing the game. I would love to be able to core a Catapult and inflict even more damage to un-attentive enemies. Plus it could make people think about their lance formations and positioning as a team a bit more.

[focuspark]

Mechs exploding after being cored is fun in single player games, but it really sucks when it happens in multiplayer games. Nothing like punishing brawlers for doing their job. If mechs did massive explosions after being cored, all the short range weapons in the game would be... pointless.

[blinkin]

focuspark, on 28 January 2013 - 11:05 PM, said:

Mechs exploding after being cored is fun in single player games, but it really sucks when it happens in multiplayer games. Nothing like punishing brawlers for doing their job. If mechs did massive explosions after being cored, all the short range weapons in the game would be... pointless.

i see your point, but in most of the games (that i have played) it took a while for the explosion to go off. as a close range pilot myself i think it would be okay as long as most reasonable mech builds had time to back out of range. that could be done either by making the reactors take several seconds to detonate and/or limiting explosion size.

and the reactor explosions should be fairly rare. i think an average of 1-2 per match would be good.

Edited by blinkin, 28 January 2013 - 11:40 PM.

[Idgit Galoot]

I agree with it being rare, it could even be more prominent to certain models, or the way the player configured their heatsinks. The mech could even go through a cool animation of different pieces flying off warning everybody around that its going to blow, giving them time to get out of range. But I can understand where it could get frustrating, it would just half to be balanced like anything else.

[Roland]

focuspark, on 28 January 2013 - 11:05 PM, said:

Mechs exploding after being cored is fun in single player games, but it really sucks when it happens in multiplayer games. Nothing like punishing brawlers for doing their job. If mechs did massive explosions after being cored, all the short range weapons in the game would be... pointless.

In MW4, it didn't suck at all. It actually added some additional depth to the game.

When we were fighting, we needed to make sure our brawlers got clear of a target before finishing it off.

[Adridos]

Roland, on 29 January 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

In MW4, it didn't suck at all. It actually added some additional depth to the game.

Yes, it added a big fat mechanism suitable for griefing as making a living bomb was fairly easy.

[canned wolf]

Every mech exploded in MW4. As a result they had to make the explosions tiny to minimize griefing issues. MWLL has a perfect system as far as I'm concerned. You can't grief with it because the explosions are far too rare, but you can't ignore them either because they do a lot of damage if you are in close. I think one explosion every two or three matches is the ratio I would go with, but opinions vary on the subject.

As far as it making it hard to brawl, suck it up chuck. If a feature like this was included it would be for imersion. Any military vehicle carries enough stored energy in ordinance and fuel to explode pretty big should the right circumstances occur. Battlemechs carry multiple weapon systems and a fusion reactor to support them. I don't care whether you say its a fusion explosion, a coolant system explosion, or the capacitors that the reactor would need to provide stable power exploding. Ammo explosions should also threaten nearby mechs.

I like brawling, if this feature is included, I'll adapt to it. Maybe stand backa few feet in my Atlas instead of just wading in all the time, or continue playing as I do accepting that sometimes it is going to get me killed.

Edited by canned wolf, 29 January 2013 - 10:15 AM.

[focuspark]

But nuclear reactors don't explode, they meltdown... so how does this add immersion?

[Hotthedd]

focuspark, on 29 January 2013 - 10:16 AM, said:

But nuclear reactors don't explode, they meltdown... so how does this add immersion?

Then make the explosions of ammo and/or Gauss Rifles inflict splash damage. A ruptured fusion reactor WOULD however unleash massive heat. Perhaps a heat penalty instead of splash damage for being too close to a cored 'mech?

[canned wolf]

Fukashima and Chernobyl didn't explode? I've seen craters that call your version of events into question. Those were both civilian reactors too, military reactors use higher purity uranium and so produce more energy in a smaller vessel.

On my sub I remember when a couple of us were talking to one of the new guys. Someone brought up the point that the battery had enough stored energy to blow the entire boat a mile into the sky. I chimed in because the new guy looked horrified. I told him that could never happen... The boat didn't have nearly enough structure to hold together in an explosion like that. More likely we would be blown to roughly chicklet sized pieces. For some reason my reasurance didn't seem to help.

ANY high energy system has the potential for catastophic failure. It may be an utterly conventional explosion, but the energy captured in the system demands that it's still going to be a large one.

Edited by canned wolf, 29 January 2013 - 10:36 AM.

[Hotthedd]

canned wolf, on 29 January 2013 - 10:31 AM, said:

Fukashima and Chernobyl didn't explode? I've seen craters that call your version of events into question. Those were both civilian reactors too, military reactors use higher purity uranium and so produce more energy in a smaller vessel.

"Mech engines are Fusion reactors, not Fission reactors. No uranium, hydrogen (highly flammable, btw)

[blinkin]

fusion reactions are much higher energy than fission. the material used only determines how much residual radiation there will be.

fusion is what powers the big glowing ball that is 8 light minutes away from earth and provides the majority of our heat and energy.

Edited by blinkin, 29 January 2013 - 10:37 AM.

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

canned wolf, on 29 January 2013 - 10:31 AM, said:

Fukashima and Chernobyl didn't explode? I've seen craters that call your version of events into question. Those were both civilian reactors too, military reactors use higher purity uranium and so produce more energy in a smaller vessel.

That weren't actual nuclear explosion (you know, like atomic bomb).

[canned wolf]

The reactor ittself is also not the only part of the system. I beleive at Chernobyl and Fukashima both, the explosions originated in the coolant system. As I said above the battery on a nucleart sub has serious damage potential.

Current fusion reactors are pretty safe, but current fusion reactors produce very little power. Not enough to sustain themselves. A reactor that produces enough power to be useful will have the threat of explosion. People call them safe because that explosion probably wouldn't be nuclear. So it would be small... by nuclear standards, maybe only a city block or two leveled, and very little residual radiation.

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 29 January 2013 - 10:52 AM, said:

That weren't actual nuclear explosion (you know, like atomic bomb).

I know, I've been saying that over and over again. Tell me which one makes you more dead. A 5 kiloton conventional explosion or a 5 kiloton nuclear explosion?

[blinkin]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 29 January 2013 - 10:52 AM, said:

That weren't actual nuclear explosion (you know, like atomic bomb).

no they weren't. they still released very large amounts of energy. capacitors in a home computer can explode (they look like little blooming flowers after it happens) the explosion will be small because the relative amount of energy is small.

sudden release energy = explosion

more energy = larger explosion

i don't think civilian reactors can create a full atomic explosion. i am pretty sure the material they use is not refined enough, but there is still energy that can be released.

[Corvus Antaka]

The argument is that fusion reactors don't blow up. Still, myself, I'd like to see a 20-50% chance of explosion with a 50m radius maybe? we need a little more boom

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

Funny fact: Chernobyl NPP operated untill 15 december 2000. It's more than 14 years after explosion so it wasn't THAT big.

[Solis Obscuri]

Quote

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. More often a destroyed engine will be punctured by weapons fire. 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. 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.

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.

http://www.sarna.net...i/Fusion_Engine

[focuspark]

If we're talking about just a big boom 2 - 5% of the time when a mech dies due to engine death, then sure why not, I can go along with it - so long as we're not talking about setting of a nuclear bomb.

What kinds of damage are we discussing to the nearby mechs? I think it should be no more than a single PPC hit spread out over the mech. Maybe 1-2 pts per section?

[Adridos]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 29 January 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

Funny fact: Chernobyl NPP operated untill 15 december 2000. It's more than 14 years after explosion so it wasn't THAT big.

There was an explosion, but not a nuclear explosion.

The cooling system failed and a block of the plant went boom in a manner similar to a conventional gass explosion, which was, of course, the worse scenario, since Ukrainians simply thought: "Oh well, we'll fix it and everything's going to be fine." The people did not die at the spot but you know how radiation contamination works. They were evacuated but that hardly helped them. Then you had people who went in there to concrete the reactor in, but the whole area was beyond saving, etc.

Basically, nothing bigger than a simple TNT explosion.