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-- I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT STOCKPOLING --
I fully understand that a fusion reactor cannot go critical like a fission reactor and cause a megaton sized explosion.
What I mean is rapid decompression of the engine.
The principle is this:
the average Fusion reactor core is extremely small. all it really is, is about a thimble of reactive plasma that is highly unstable and dense with energy. what is keeping it so tightly pact is a static electromagnetic barrier that prevents any thermal energy from escaping the plasma and dissipating on the interior walls of the engine.
now often times what happens when a fusion engine is destroyed, the energy converter is destroyed or the magnetic field fails and the thermal energy dissipates instantly into the interior walls. Nothing spectacular.
On very rare occasions, though, the engine's interior walls are breached. Note that the protective shields inside. a fusion reactor is extremely dense and extremely strong, so this would only happen when the mech in question takes a huge amount of direct fire in a short period of time (say, an AC/20 direct critical hit on the engine). I think it's reasonable that 5% of mechs die in such a manner.
Now, don't worry, your mech is built safer than that. There are safety systems that prevent the very hot and very unstable plasma from escaping the engine, so what would happen is the engine would heat up and melt over a few seconds. Still not very dangerous. Still not the explosion I'm talking about.
every once in a while, though, a mech will take a ridiculous amount of fire power in the final moments of life. And I'm talking like two AC/20 shots or eighty LRMs in the span of half a second. When such a high amount of damage is absorbed to the center torso, it often shreds the engine's outer components and puncture the core so quickly that the Safeguards cannot enact fast enough. The plasma (which is under tremendous pressure) will rapidly expand and flood out of the tiny hole in the interior wall.
The result looks something like this:
An Atlas is trapped with his back to a wall. his armor is gone and his internals are heavily damaged. He is surrounded by an entire lance of mechs, armed to the teeth with Large lasers, SRMs and various other weapons. He's not going down with out a fight and he opens fire with everything he's got. The enemy mechs courteously return fire. Four full alphas ram the atlas at once. The mech is shredded to pieces and the protective walls in the core are punctured. White hot plasma jets out of the Atlas's chest. The entire chest caves out, shooting superheated fire and high velocity shrapnel outwards in a cone shape, showering the attacking mechs. The lance of mechs all survive the event, but with a moderate amount of damage taken.
or the event could play out like this:
A Spider is fleeing from a stalker 3F in a straight line. The stalker is very sluggish, but he is fast enough to train his weapons onto the poor fellow. The spider attempts to Jump up to throw off his foe's weapons, but to no avail. The stalker fires four PPCs into the back of the Spider, which catastrophically damages the engine. The spider begin plummeting to the ground, but before he hits, the engine unleashes. The entire spider is blown apart by the ensuing release of energy.
Or maybe like this:
A thunderbolt is determinedly charging his way up a hill in a last ditch effort to make a difference in the fight. Near the top is a Madcat MKII with two heavy Gauss rifles trained on the valiant Thunderbolt. The thunderbolt fires his ppc in hopes to get a lucky hit on the Madcat before his ultimate and guaranteed death. The weapon hits the Madcat, only to anger the pilot. Both Heavy Gauss rifles fire. The Thunderbolt takes both 250 Kilogram rounds (550 pounds per shot) in the chest. The rounds exit through the back and continue some distance. In a flash (Pun much?) the thunderbolt is ripped in two by the explosion. Shrapnel is sent far and wide in an attractive umbrella pattern. Both halves of the thunderbolt are now molten white slag.
This my friends, is an interesting feature to add to mechs that makes sense and already exists in lore. It should honestly be a very rare occurrence, and the damage yield to other mechs should be pretty low, but it would be a kick *** visual. The destruction should be increased for every ton of ammo in the mech.
here's a link, look under fusion engine explosions.
http://www.sarna.net...Mech_Technology
thank you for devoting your time to my suggestion.
also, tooltip; Gauss rifles and other Armor-piercing ammunition should make this event much more likely.
EDIT: HottHedd had a brilliant idea. I'm going to modify the post accordingly
Edited by PenitentTangent, 14 July 2013 - 06:03 AM.
'Nuff said.
