58 replies to this topic

[aniviron]

To those wondering about gravity: It was confirmed in an interview with NGNG that the map will not be low gravity, one big reason being that it would apparently not work with HSR.

[GrimLeo]

aniviron, on 08 October 2013 - 02:59 AM, said:

To those wondering about gravity: It was confirmed in an interview with NGNG that the map will not be low gravity, one big reason being that it would apparently not work with HSR.

The only reason there would be an HSR issue is if the Devs are assuming the same thrust level for jumpjets between a 1g planet with atmosphere and a 1/10g vacuum moon. Less gravity to fight equals more acceleration, faster jumps, greater jump distance, and longer hang times. I would think falls (either cliff drops or jumpjet initiated) would have less HSR issues as the landing speed would be less. Walking/running are functions of leg movement speed so no change there. Ground pressure is less but I think we could use the Frozen City skid rules for this.

I think the solution is to cut the thrust down. Jumpjets in BT are jets. They intake air, heat it up, and expand it out a nozzle creating thrust. Without air, your jumpjets are now rockets.

Now at this point, the BT technobabble breaks down. Per lore, the mech carries an additional supply of 'air' that some 'burner' powered off the engine heats up. This would mean one charge of jump-juice per match. Now this may limit some, but everyone knows someone is going to try to rocket off the map creating HSR issues if not also map boundary issues.

I would describe jumpjet operations similar to flamer operations. In atmosphere, there is an intake of air, the air is heated by tapping superheated plasma out of the engine fusion bottle, then the heated mixture expands out of the nozzle. In vacuum, only the tapped plasma is available as the reaction mass thus less thrust.

Cut the thrust down so acceleration up matches what we have on the 1g maps. Falls back to ground have more hang time due to the low gravity. This effect will have tactical advantages and disadvantages. Jumpjets are not recharged until mech is on the ground again (Simply to keep someone from trying to stay in the air).

An example of a game in low gravity is Lunar Flight. It is a great but hard to master semi-flight sim.

[aniviron]

GrimLeo, on 09 October 2013 - 01:55 PM, said:

The only reason there would be an HSR issue is if the Devs are assuming the same thrust level for jumpjets between a 1g planet with atmosphere and a 1/10g vacuum moon. Less gravity to fight equals more acceleration, faster jumps, greater jump distance, and longer hang times. I would think falls (either cliff drops or jumpjet initiated) would have less HSR issues as the landing speed would be less. Walking/running are functions of leg movement speed so no change there. Ground pressure is less but I think we could use the Frozen City skid rules for this.

I think the solution is to cut the thrust down. Jumpjets in BT are jets. They intake air, heat it up, and expand it out a nozzle creating thrust. Without air, your jumpjets are now rockets.

Now at this point, the BT technobabble breaks down. Per lore, the mech carries an additional supply of 'air' that some 'burner' powered off the engine heats up. This would mean one charge of jump-juice per match. Now this may limit some, but everyone knows someone is going to try to rocket off the map creating HSR issues if not also map boundary issues.

I would describe jumpjet operations similar to flamer operations. In atmosphere, there is an intake of air, the air is heated by tapping superheated plasma out of the engine fusion bottle, then the heated mixture expands out of the nozzle. In vacuum, only the tapped plasma is available as the reaction mass thus less thrust.

Cut the thrust down so acceleration up matches what we have on the 1g maps. Falls back to ground have more hang time due to the low gravity. This effect will have tactical advantages and disadvantages. Jumpjets are not recharged until mech is on the ground again (Simply to keep someone from trying to stay in the air).

An example of a game in low gravity is Lunar Flight. It is a great but hard to master semi-flight sim.

I'm not saying that I think HSR should be why it's not low grav. I'm just saying that this is exactly what the project director, Bryan Eckman, said. That was one of his big reasons for not giving us a low grav map.

[C E Dwyer]

Stardancer01, on 25 September 2013 - 01:16 AM, said:

Moon Base Map Crater Shadow Cooling

So the moon base map is coming
The difference in heat between being in the light and shadow in a vacuum is dramatic. Should all major shadows be counted as water for cooling purposes?

Should the map be big enough to run around to the dark side?
Should the moon rotate between dark and light every ‘10’ minutes?
Should cool shadow areas appear on your heat vision?

I'd imagine pgi allready have what they want set out, if its that close to addition,hot and cold places sounds a likely feature, but changing every 10 minutes, the moon would be spinning like a top if its going to be a big map, dark and light area's I'd imagine its going to be set around the event horizon

[ShadowbaneX]

I'm hoping the moon map will be at like 0.5 G so that I'll be able to kill myself by hitting escape velocity in my Spider-5V

[627]

Afaik in the books Low-G environment could severely damage your mech if you go too fast (because myomere tension fluffblablablatechnobrabble). I don't know if this was in TT as well with some extra rules...

[TyrEol]

As someone who's interested both in moons and in mechs, I'd love it if PGI thought outside the box here a bit with the environment.

Not all moons resemble the earths moon, it's a fair assumption you'd need something reasonably solid if a mech is going to be on it. But beyond that there's lots to choose from even in our own back yard and hey the inner sphere is big!

I'd love to drive my mech waist deep though lakes of hydrocarbons at temperatures that make frozen city look like spring, or across a jagged landscape of splintered ice and rock.

Image the map shaking as the moons surface buckles under the gravity of the enormous gas giant that spans the whole sky sending plumes of water vapour into space as a huge fountain of ice.

A moon map could be a more extreme environment than anything that's already in the game.

But personally though I'm still hoping it doesn't have more volcanoes, one tera therma is hot enough

[GrimLeo]

It should be an Earth type moon for several reasons.

The main reason BT is and we likely are in a “we are alone” universe is because of our large moon. It stabilizes the spin axis of Earth. We don’t get rapid shifts in the location of the polar region (Think Frozen City). This allowed high order and sentient life to evolve. Full moons also allow primitive humanoids to hunt at night. We are here because of the moon.

Our moon formed due to the impact of a Mar sized planet (Theia) impacting proto-Earth. That impact had to be at a perfect angle otherwise proto-Earth is destroyed or Theia skips off without being captured. This has to make 1/5g moons around 1g planets extremely rare.

On the military side, holding the moon allows you to control the planet. Missiles fired from Earth have to fight the large gravity well to attack targets on the moon. That same gravity well helps missiles fired from the moon attack targets on Earth. In the BT context, replace ‘missiles’ with ‘aerospace fighters’.

I would even go with the back-story that the Moon Base moon is the product of a Star League terraforming effort. Using a smaller body as a starting one, asteroids were tractored in creating a large moon to stabilize the spin axis of the target planet. At the start of the Succession Wars the Moon Base was created to control the now valuable planet below.

Lastly we already have moons. River City is a moon. Terra Therma is an Io-type moon. Living on a 1g moon is likely more common then living on a singleton 1g planet due to the spin axis problem.

aniviron, on 09 October 2013 - 03:44 PM, said:

I'm not saying that I think HSR should be why it's not low grav. I'm just saying that this is exactly what the project director, Bryan Eckman, said. That was one of his big reasons for not giving us a low grav map.

As to the HSR issue, developers are not infallible. I have already presented why I believe they are not thinking ‘outside the box’.

Edited by GrimLeo, 10 October 2013 - 06:38 AM.

[Heffay]

TyrEol, on 10 October 2013 - 02:10 AM, said:

As someone who's interested both in moons and in mechs, I'd love it if PGI thought outside the box here a bit with the environment.

Not all moons resemble the earths moon, it's a fair assumption you'd need something reasonably solid if a mech is going to be on it. But beyond that there's lots to choose from even in our own back yard and hey the inner sphere is big!

Jaro (River City) is a moon. You can see the planet rising on the horizon.

[Sandpit]

I'd like to see jump jets having a boost in a lower gravity atmosphere. So they work at say 125% efficiency on a map like this.

[pbiggz]

Like this

Pay close attention to the lack of fire in explosions, and the speeds my mechs were reaching.

[Sandpit]

pbiggz, on 10 October 2013 - 08:11 AM, said:

Like this

Pay close attention to the lack of fire in explosions, and the speeds my mechs were reaching.

Yea pretty much. MW2 handled it fairly well. I'd like to see some maps like this personally.

[CyclonerM]

Sorry to kill your hopes. I am pretty sure Bryan Ekman said that the moon base map will not have different gravity to avoid HSR issues. If you want to fight in the vacuum than try the map "Extremity" in MW:LL.

[Alex Warden]

Zerberus, on 03 October 2013 - 09:31 AM, said:

However, the difference in het DISSIPATION in a vacuum is zero, and heat dissipation in a vacuum is massively worse than in an atmosphere becasue there is no medium to dissipate the heat to (oterhwise it wouldn`t be a vacuum )

A map in a vacuum would be an overheating nightmare for all but the most eficient builds, because generated heat would never dissipate. You would esentially have a hard cap on shots fired, after that you would overheat and stay overheated for like 2 minutes.then fire one shot, rinse, repeat

even the most efficient mechs achieve that efficiency by DISSIPATING the heat... the mech is always warm, even when it does nothing... the moment you start moving, it builds up heat that has to be dealt with by the heatsinks...and there you go...no air, no/low dissipation... i doubt you could run anything but MG´s without the risk of overheating


in german heatsinks are called "Wärmetauscher", which means as much as heatEXCHANGERS... the german language gives a hint on their functionality just by the word... exchanging hot air for cooler air... if i´m not totally wrong here

throw out all heatsinks and pack like 15 tons of coolant for your flush injection

Edited by Alex Warden, 10 October 2013 - 02:51 PM.

[Accursed Richards]

Off-topic, but just on this:

GrimLeo, on 10 October 2013 - 06:37 AM, said:

It should be an Earth type moon for several reasons.

The main reason BT is and we likely are in a “we are alone” universe is because of our large moon. It stabilizes the spin axis of Earth. We don’t get rapid shifts in the location of the polar region (Think Frozen City). This allowed high order and sentient life to evolve. Full moons also allow primitive humanoids to hunt at night. We are here because of the moon.

Our moon formed due to the impact of a Mar sized planet (Theia) impacting proto-Earth. That impact had to be at a perfect angle otherwise proto-Earth is destroyed or Theia skips off without being captured. This has to make 1/5g moons around 1g planets extremely rare.

Because we only have a pool of one planet with intelligent life and one planet with any known native life, it's very tentative and unscientific to extrapolate from that what conditions "all" intelligent life would need, or assume that Earth is the "best" example--we don't even know how likely intelligent life is in absolute terms because again, sample size of 1. Not to mention which, the only reason the Earth seems "ideal" for human life is because we've spent billions of years adapting to it's attempts to kill us. After all, the greatest mass extinction ever was caused by the the volatile excreted toxin that we now call "Oxygen".

[Stijnovic]

I don't think low gravity makes you run faster, here, take a look at these guys (2:15 and 6:13). Especially maneuvering, accelerating and decelerating are proving to be difficult.

About vacuum: it is absence of matter, so it can not have a temperature. Vacuum is the best thermal insulator in the universe. Similarly, it cannot transmit sound which is vibration of matter. In vacuum, heat can only be transmitted by radiation, like the sun does.

Edited by Stijnovic, 11 October 2013 - 06:31 AM.

[LastPaladin]

Should jumpjets work better in low gravity? Should mechs climb slopes easier, since they can just bounce up them?

[Sandpit]

LastPaladin, on 11 October 2013 - 08:10 AM, said:

Should jumpjets work better in low gravity? Should mechs climb slopes easier, since they can just bounce up them?

That's what I'd love to see

[LastPaladin]

aniviron, on 08 October 2013 - 02:59 AM, said:

To those wondering about gravity: It was confirmed in an interview with NGNG that the map will not be low gravity, one big reason being that it would apparently not work with HSR.

Boo! The potentially coolest part of a moon map, and they just scrap it

[GrimLeo]

Using kinematic equations, I have done some calculations:

For a 35 ton Jenner with all 5 jumpjets doing a 25 meter jump on a 1 g planetoid, you get a 1.25 Thrust to Weight (T/W) ratio and spend 7 seconds in the air (4 seconds burn, 1 second drifting up, 2 second fall). Your velocity at burn cutout is 35.9 kph. Your final velocity before impact is 79.7 kph.

Go to a 1/5 g moon (Earth’s moon is .17 g). Make a jump using the same thrust. You now have a 6.27 T/W ratio and spend 48 seconds in space (4 seconds burn, 21 seconds drifting up, 23 seconds drop). Your velocity at burn cutout is 148.9 kph. Your final velocity before impact is 162.4 kph. Your jump is 519 meters. Even if you survived the tons of AC ammo shot your way, you wouldn’t survive the impact. Clearly, Bryan Ekman is right about there being HSR issues, but only if he assumes no change in thrust level.

Cutting the thrust down to 30%, you get a 1.86 T/W ratio and spend 12 seconds in space (4 seconds burn, 3 seconds drift up, 5 seconds drop). Your velocity at burn cutout is 24.2 kph. Your final velocity before impact is 35.7 kph. Your jump is 25 meters.

I do not see a HSR issue using only 30% thrust. I see no reason in game terms, why you would want to spend 44 seconds of a 48 second flight floating helplessly in space wondering if the incoming fire gets you before the impact does. So please, cut the thrust and give us a proper Moon Base map.

Edited by GrimLeo, 12 October 2013 - 07:07 AM.