314 replies to this topic

[Duke Grimm]

syngyne, on 22 June 2012 - 09:02 PM, said:

Detonate, no. But plasma containment's lost before. I can't find the link anymore, but I think it was on an ITER mailing list. One of the physicists was asked what happened when a fusion reactor lost containment, and the answer was "not much." A millimeter or so of surface material inside the reactor was burnt, and I think he said the reactor shifted a centimeter or so. That's it.



The sun also has a titanic amount of mass, creating an equally titanic amount of gravity and pressure to keep all the reactants squeezed close enough. That's one of the reasons why our fusion reactors today have plasmas that are fifty times hotter than the sun... we have no way to generate or contain that kind of pressure, so we have to go the other way and make the plasma really really hot to ensure that there are enough reactants with enough kinetic energy to fuse when they bump. Keeping that plasma hot enough and contained to a small enough area is very, very hard, so any little thing that goes wrong basically causes the reactor to fizzle out.



The plasma inside a reactor is very, very hot. It is also carried by a very, very small amount of mass. If any impurity ends up inside the reactor (like air, a uranium round, etc) it's going to soak up the plasma's heat and cool it to the point that the reaction just fizzles out.

Note: I am not a plasma physicist, this is based on research I did for a school project many moons ago.

But this is all based on non-self-sustaining non-viable fusion reactors. When one of these loses containment they cut the power (figuratively). No explosion because no more food. All of the "fusion" reactors of today are non efficient and are not self sustaining, meaning that we have to put in far more energy than they put out. IF/WHEN there is a REAL reactor that creates its own energy I for one want to believe that it will detonate in an awesome bloom of radioactiveness that makes one not want to pierce the core and want to disable the mech instead. I do like salvage afterall. Mmmmm salvage.

[Blackfire1]

Its called a Cascading engine failure in TT.

[Ray Stantz]

I really don't think it would be an issue in game, so long as they manage the actual damage it produced, so it couldn't be abused. I'd actually like too see it.

[IIIuminaughty]

why do when ppl make polls they make it multi vote?... yes or no question but u can vote yes and no... ugh! irritates me more than clan ghost bear lovers thinking they going to take over my Beloved FRR!!

Yes reactors should go BOOM if crit!

[Holski77]

shadows96, on 22 June 2012 - 06:10 PM, said:

after watching the mech warrior revision trailer and seeing at the end how the pilot's mech went nuclear when it was destroyed, it got me thinking though having a mech go nuclear when destroyed is a very poor decision (you would have many nuclear explosions happening at once that would be a disaster) but the devs brought up how when mechs overheat they shut down and the pilot can override this at the risk of having his mech's reactor melting down, so should it be that when you override and that causes your mech the melt down should it go nuclear?

Yes, the first mech that dies should blow everyone on the map up!

[Scimitar]

I think it would add a nice bit of random chaos like in WoT when you get ammo rack takes a bad hit and all your munitions go BOOM.

[Backblast]

It's a fusion, not a fission engine -> no silly nuclear explosion.

The only thing exploding should be ammo.

[light487]

Yes.. and no... I think MW:LL has it pretty good last time I played it...

Ultimately it should be possible but not too frequent.. it needs to be something that happens infrequently enough that you go "OH MY GOD!" when you see it.. but also needs to not be too damaging to other mechs but more of a eye candy thing.. I'd like it if there was a shockwave that made the mech shake and all that.. but unless there was a way to balance things, wouldn't want it to actually damage like a nuke would.

[IIIuminaughty]

light487, on 24 June 2012 - 08:57 PM, said:

Yes.. and no... I think MW:LL has it pretty good last time I played it...

Ultimately it should be possible but not too frequent.. it needs to be something that happens infrequently enough that you go "OH MY GOD!" when you see it.. but also needs to not be too damaging to other mechs but more of a eye candy thing.. I'd like it if there was a shockwave that made the mech shake and all that.. but unless there was a way to balance things, wouldn't want it to actually damage like a nuke would.

Good IDEA!

[Vileus]

FactorlanP, on 22 June 2012 - 06:13 PM, said:

Fusion reactors don't go out of control like fission reactors, quite the opposite. The process is delicate and finely tuned. Messing with that balance should cause the reaction to stop, not go out of control.

It could just melt down and become non-functional, since we don't really have a fusion reactor and the only ones we know of are stars how would we even know how it would behave.

[Neokigali]

Randomized Stackpole effects = cool mech deaths....better then just having the mech just shutdown and fall over all lame like. Re-Watch the announcment video and think of how boring it would of been if the pilot just ejected and his mech just broke and fell over. I understand the "Fission Reactors dont go nuclear" fact, but it just seems like your giving up on the rewarding feeling of seeing and enemy blow up in an epic fashion.

[Skylarr]

Canon does say Yes.

It has been in every rule book since the 1st edition. Everyone calls it a Fusion Explosion, but, is not a true Fusion Explosion.

Physics does say Yes



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.

[Hikaru]

Please go back to Star Wars or something.

Battlemechs don't go "nukular" when you core them.

/sigh

[plague]

I hope so. Well, that they can explode violently due to "meltdown" (not really). They don't explode like atomic weapons, obviously. Some of the best games I ever had in Megamek were from these sorts of games. One infamous one resulted in the death of all pilots and destruction of all mechs, other than a single pilot who, after his mech was destroyed in a blast, ejected, ran up to a downed mech and shot the unconscious pilot inside. It was a brutal, firey battle, and he was the sole survivor and witness.

It should probably be limited to specific game types (whatever is meant to be the most heart-pounding, I guess) and be very rare. Why? It's fun! And awesome.

Edited by plague, 24 June 2012 - 10:31 PM.

[Mechfan909]

lets keep the urban legend alive alright, as much as i know mechs can go nuclear if some certain conditions are met and some of those are when your reactor engine is breached instantly while its very hot, i mean its going critical temperatures but as i much as i can say even if these conditions are met it can only occur by chance like 10% or less, but if not nuclear explosions you can always look up to ammunition explosions that can kill a mech (but the risk is also reduced if you use CASE) look up to sarna for more info that's all i know and that's what i can say.

[Skylarr]

Hikaru, on 24 June 2012 - 10:25 PM, said:

Please go back to Star Wars or something.

Battlemechs don't go "nukular" when you core them.

/sigh

I never said they went NUCLEAR. The engine has a chance to explode if to much of the outer casing is destroyed.

It would be the same thing as a boilers exploding.

[Hikaru]

Not you dude, the OP.

[Precentor_Apollyon]

They should explode, but not everytime like in MW4, only when a overheated reactor get a critical hit.

[Tincan Nightmare]

Skylarr, on 24 June 2012 - 10:18 PM, said:

Canon does say Yes.

It has been in every rule book since the 1st edition. Everyone calls it a Fusion Explosion, but, is not a true Fusion Explosion.

Physics does say Yes



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.

Well I don't know where you got that quote from but it sure wasn't in the first edition rules. This OPTIONAL rule didn't show up into the first print of Maximum Tech I think, way down the road after the game had been around for a decade or two. It was something that players could CHOOSE to allow in a match, but was never mandatory. In fact the first paragraph of the rule states

'Though the scientific reality of fusion engines prevents them from exploding, the dramatic effect of such an expensive piece of machinery blowing up in a huge ball of fire is so appealing to the majority of Battletech players that this rule was created to satisfy the common desire for a good explosion.'

The rule states that any time in a single turn that a mech engine takes two or more critical hits the player would roll 2 six sided die, and on a roll of 12 the engine explodes. And far from a 'pretty cool death' it was fairly catastrophic. The exploding unit and anything else in the same hex was instantly destroyed, and the hex was set on fire. For 1 hex away units took damage based on the mechs engine rating divided by 10, scattered randomly in 5 point groups. For 2 hexes from the exploding units hex it was divided by 20, and by 40 for 3 hexes. So a Centurion with a 200 rated engine in MWO operating under this rule that takes 2 engine critical hits, would instantly destroy anything in a 30 meter sphere around it and leave a blazing fire the same diameter, do 20 points of damage across the surface of any units within 60 meters, 10 points out to 90 meters, and 5 points out to 120 meters. And since it happened during a single turn sequence it would happen within a few seconds.

Now does that sound like a 'cool' or 'pretty' thing to experience, a blast out to 120 meters and instant death if your too close. And some weapons are short ranged. MG's, flamers, and sm. lasers only reach out to 90 meters (yah its BT ranges don't rant about them) while med. lasers, SRM's, and even an AC/20 max at 270 meters. So unless you bring nothing but LRM's and other long range weapons, expect to occasionally die if you get too close in a fight. Hell this even sounds like what we see in the trailer for MW5 when the Warhammer goes nuclear, I just don't want to be the Atlas pilot that wins a fight then gets vaporized for my trouble (not to mention the repair bill.)

[Khushrenada]

Tincan Nightmare, on 24 June 2012 - 01:42 PM, said:

Yep and thats why it shouldn't be in the game, because who wants to be winning a match just to have your opponent declare Jihad and take you with them since they know they are going to lose anyway. If they put this in as just a pretty light show and a cool cgi death for the mech that doesn't effect other mechs, cool won't bother me none, but I do not want an exploit for suicide mechanics to steal victories from people.

"steal victories from people"....

besides my statement was used as a joke, answering 2 posters before mine, since it is not my style to go kamikaze (even though i carry the draconis combine flag ).

but if they implement a big explosion of a mech (what ever type it will be), they should damage other mechs standing close by regardless if friends or enemies, since that is what explosions do...
if you happen to stand that close, you did something wrong in the first place, as there is no melee attack in the game atm.

someone declaring jihad on the enemy team would only work, if you could detonate your reactor manualy (which i am against as well), but how would someone "plan" to get his reactor beeing hit critically by the enemy?

and as many have put out already, its canon, it happened in every other battletech game, it looks awesome and it doesn`t wipe out the whole team as if someone dropped a nuclear bomb on the battlefield...
so i suggest you get used to it and enjoy the lightshow (and keep your distance )