314 replies to this topic

[TechNoir]

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.

That was my first thought seeing this post. Glad I'm not the only one who thought this, seems others have the same opinion/fact also.

[CloaknDagger]

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.

Fission reactors don't explode either...

[Blood and Steel]

Ammo cooking off, especially when not cased... MOST definately, and it should look simmilar as in USMCG JarheadEd's early posting showing videos of such happening to tanks. Also, when this happens, it shouldn't be one huge fireball but a chain of violent but short radius explosions and shrapnel as hull bits are blown away by internal explosions of deadly munitions. The force should also be directly related to the amount of ammo that was left in the mec when it cooked and the type of ammo that cooked. My dragon with dual AC/5's carries 250 rounds of ac5 ammo, if it all cooks at once the cooking should be very dangerous to be around and it should happen over a period of several minutes and be very fiery with sparks of molten metal shooting out like the fourth of July and with lots of smoke, but no stupid fireballs. A Catapult fuly loaded with missiles should have a spectacular cook off as well, but NO nuclear explosions, thats just silly.

Edited by Blood and Steel, 19 September 2012 - 04:43 PM.

[David Sumner]

BDThumper, on 22 June 2012 - 06:43 PM, said:

Fission is even less likely to result in any type of explosion/detonation. A huge amount of pressure is needed to maintain fission and as soon as the pressure vessel is ruptured the hydrogen is released and the fission reactor runs out of energy to burn and the pressure in which to convert it.

You can trust me..I'm a doctor, well not the kind that helps people, but a radiation health physicist.

Apart from the bit where you confuse Fusion and Fission?

We played table top with a reactor exposion rule once when multiple criticals occurred.
A Salamander got toasted, criticalled, the engine went, the chain reaction of 'Mech explosions took out the 2 companies involved (both sides of the conflict), and wiped out most of the city we were defending. Why couldn't we roll like that for shooting :}


End of campaign

Didn't consider them "nuclear" explosions though. Just the usual result of dumping plasma at 4500K into atmosphere.

[Alex Wolfe]

Blood and Steel, on 19 September 2012 - 04:40 PM, said:

Ammo cooking off, especially when not cased... MOST definately, and it should look simmilar as in USMCG JarheadEd's early posting showing videos of such happening to tanks. Also, when this happens, it shouldn't be one huge fireball but a chain of violent but short radius explosions and shrapnel as hull bits are blown away by internal explosions of deadly munitions. The force should also be directly related to the amount of ammo that was left in the mec when it cooked and the type of ammo that cooked. My dragon with dual AC/5's carries 250 rounds of ac5 ammo, if it all cooks at once the cooking should be very dangerous to be around and it should happen over a period of several minutes and be very fiery with sparks of molten metal shooting out like the fourth of July and with lots of smoke, but no stupid fireballs. A Catapult fuly loaded with missiles should have a spectacular cook off as well, but NO nuclear explosions, thats just silly.

Well... mech armor is unbelievably durable (a direct hit from a giant gauss slug that would obliterate a modern battleship is only an "ouch" for a mech)... so I believe ammo explosions (that should already lose a lot of energy from bursting out of the exploding mech's own armor) shouldn't do too much damage to "bystanders" unless they were hugging...

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 19 September 2012 - 05:00 PM.

[Trooper60709]

For one thing, mech's engines just melt so they fall over. If they did go nuclear, you wouldn't live to fight again without clones which haven' t benn invented yet.

[CCODEZ]

The end of that Clanner about sums up my expectations/thoughts

[Telecleez]

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

http://indy-adventur...h/destruct.html

Edited by Telecleez, 19 September 2012 - 05:13 PM.

[RagingOyster]

No, it would lead to light mech kamikaze attackes to weaken the enemy while missle boats finish them off and other such tactics that i doubt anyone wants to see. Besides fusion reactors don't "go nuclear" and explode when breached, they just stop. I do think we should be able to cause some nice explosions from non-CASE ammo storage crits though!

[DeeSaster]

Hexadecimus, on 19 September 2012 - 09:30 AM, said:

This is what I was thinking too.

Awesome post to necro a thread. Popcorn!

[Skylarr]

Alex Wolfe, on 19 September 2012 - 04:30 PM, said:

Yeah well, the thing is that the whole thread seems to be misunderstood. Very rare explosion from a superheated engine, sitting inside an armor stuffed with weapons and ammo and hit by a missile or something is perfectly plausible.

An actual nuclear explosion (with EMP, fallout and all that stuff), as per the thread title, is just silly and unsupported.

You are correct. A Mech that looses to much shield have a small chance to experience a THERMAL EXPLOSION. There are to many safeties involved for a Mech Engine to actually go blow up.

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.

[Blood and Steel]

Alex Wolfe, on 19 September 2012 - 04:57 PM, said:

Well... mech armor is unbelievably durable (a direct hit from a giant gauss slug that would obliterate a modern battleship is only an "ouch" for a mech)... so I believe ammo explosions (that should already lose a lot of energy from bursting out of the exploding mech's own armor) shouldn't do too much damage to "bystanders" unless they were hugging...

While this is true about mech armor, by the time the ammo is cooking off this means that section of armor has already been highly compromised. Also if about 10 hits in that area can make that ammo go critical and there are 200 rounds of ammo in it (a heck of alot more than the ten it took to make it go critical) the results should still look like the fourth of July.

No nuclear explosion, but plenty of fireworks and at least limited damage to something standing in the blasts.

[Xandralkus]

I think there should be a bit more to it than the present shower of metal debris. While destroying the fusion reactor should not cause a catastrophic meltdown and devastate everything nearby (because fusion reactors do not work that way), it would be reasonable to conclude that a sizable mass of high-density, high-temperature plasma is present.

If the containment field is breached because the reactor is damaged, then fusion will stop, because there will be nothing to hold the plasma in a constant, super-dense state (which is required for fusion to happen). The fuel cannot under any circumstances reach the heat and temperature necessary to fuse in an uncontrolled state.

The plasma in the reactor (since it will no longer be contained) will be free to explosively decompress and melt things. Would this effect do any noticable damage to a battlemech? Maybe, since it is functionally identical to a thermobaric bomb, but even under the worst of circumstances, this would be no more damaging than an SRM or two.

[Mercutio Jackson]

Oh it seems I have stumbled onto a science and physics based thread... I think the option should be there and a button mapped to shut it down, I.E. in the middle of your friends so it is less of an end all and of course Less team killing.

[Belkor]

I would absolutely enjoy a good core explosion once in a while. It will hopefully do a bit of damage and heat to surrounding mechs. The current mech deaths are a bit tame.