28 replies to this topic

[Terror Teddy]

When the magnetic field of a fusion reactor breaks about 5000 Celsius of pure heat is released (if i remember correctly) - INSIDE the mech.

It would not explode unless you had ammo or volative fuel - it would make a nice MELTING spectacle of itself and leave a crater though.

http://en.wikipedia....finement_fusion
http://en.wikipedia....ki/Fusion_power

Some data above.

[The Gunman]

I wouldn't mind engine explosions but only if its very rare. (Like 1% of engine core deaths, not from legging or head-shots.)

[Huntsman]

The Gunman, on 01 July 2013 - 12:20 AM, said:

I wouldn't mind engine explosions but only if its very rare. (Like 1% of engine core deaths, not from legging or head-shots.)

You usually aren't killed by the core going critical. You're already done for at that point and the impact to getting cored is to those around you who take splash damage. The frequency that a mech that is destroyed through the torso going critical should definitely be much higher than 1% however. If it occured that rarely there would be little point in implimenting it into gameplay.

MWLL's rate of reactor explosions was 25% I believe, but that may be excessive. Still, 15%-20% of the times you're killed though the torso (getting legged or headshots should have any chance for the reactor to go crit obviously) is frequent enough to have an impact on gameplay, while not frequent enough to become too annoying.

[Dagger6T6]

an occasional mech explosion spectacle would be cool due to ammo or in certain rare cases the engine ... I don't think I want to see mechs going crit and making a huge mushroom cloud though.

that seemed to happen way to much in MWLL

[blinkin]

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.

[Oppresor]

The other night I was heading deep into unsupported territory in Tourmaline when (I figure it must have been) a Spider decided to stay well in tight behind my Atlas. Basically, there was nothing I could do and slowly but surely I was taken out.

Now to where this ties in with your subject. I thought to my self, in this situation if I am definitely going to be destroyed before I can make any contribution to the efforts of my lance, wouldn't it be a great idea if I could self destruct with (Remember its an Atlas) enough force to wipe the (Spider, Raven, Flea or possibly Jenner) of the face of which ever god forsaken planet I am fighting on to uphold the honour of house davion.

[Zyllos]

I think having the reactor go into meltdown and everyone needing to flee the immediate vicinity would not add a lot to this game.

But, I wouldn't mind seeing a reactor explode, ripping the torso from the legs, having the mech fall in two pieces, every now and then.

Edited by Zyllos, 01 July 2013 - 01:54 PM.

[Bhael Fire]

I think having a fusion reactor leak 3% of the time whenever you core somebody would be pretty cool.

But rather that a nuclear explosion, I envision the leak to look like a stream of super-heated gas shooting out from the breach like a giant blowtorch then slowly fizzling-out, leaving the standard smoldering/smoking wreck. Anyone caught in this stream would take damage equal to that of a flamer.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Bhael Fire, on 01 July 2013 - 02:19 PM, said:

I think having a fusion reactor leak 3% of the time whenever you core somebody would be pretty cool.

But rather that a nuclear explosion, I envision the leak to look like a stream of super-heated gas shooting out from the breach like a giant blowtorch then slowly fizzling-out, leaving the standard smoldering/smoking wreck. Anyone caught in this stream would take damage equal to that of a flamer.

If anything, this would be the best way and as a rare conditional.

So possibly, only if a mech is stripped of armor, then loses CT with a heat threshold greater than 100% at the time, and if there is an engine critical to represent a sudden breach.