314 replies to this topic

[Thanatos676]

I'm all for mechs exploding when killed. The Ammo cooking off would create a nice explosion, but exploding like a small nuke? No. It would be a terrible game play mechanic if you could explode your mech when your about to die just to kill your opponent. Where is the honor in that?

Nightwish, on 30 June 2012 - 05:57 AM, said:

But since AC's UAC's and RAC's use 'Uranium' for bullets all bets are off

they actually use Depleted Uranium.

[Bongo TauKat]

Thanatos676, on 30 June 2012 - 06:00 AM, said:

they actually use Depleted Uranium.

*runs to go see if an A-10 nukes if you shake it hard enough*

[deamon001]

I answered no but i wanted to answer yes and no as i think the pilot should have no choice in mech self destruction but say if the engine is hit and pushes it past critical yes it should blow

[Melcyna]

Which is stupid... (fusion argument aside, let's give it a rest ppl, fusion reaction CANNOT explode uncontrollably in the manner you expect, it's not just unlikely, it's physically impossible in the condition required for a power source)

let's be frank here, there's a subset of players in any game (including MWO) that are fond of explosions...

they watch Bay's movie and love the xplosions, they play CoD and love the xplosions, the more xplosions per minute they see the better they think it is...

which is fine, that's their taste... but they are missing out the real deal...

it's NOT the explosions...

it's NOT the giant fireball...

it's NOT the mushroom cloud...

that made a battlemech so entertaining to kill...

it's the fact that you get to see your enemy DISMEMBERED in the most gratuitous fashion possible allowed from a mech destruction...

EXPLOSIONS especially big ones, do the OPPOSITE OF THIS, because it obscures that very enemy as it currently undergoes ultra rapid deconstruction facilitated by my depleted uranium slug.

Why do they want to obscure the beautiful sight of the enemy being destroyed inside out and replace that with some generic explosion? I want to see every detail of my enemy battlemech being destroyed, right till it slumped into the ground dead... then i'll probably put another slug into it just for kicks.

Nightwish, on 30 June 2012 - 05:57 AM, said:

But since AC's UAC's and RAC's use 'Uranium' for bullets all bets are off

Nuclear fission don't work that way, aside of the fact that it's depleted uranium that's used in weapons.

hint: there's a reason why uranium enrichment is required for nuclear power or weapon use and why you can't just chuck uranium into a nuclear reactor or weapon and expect it to work.

Edited by Melcyna, 30 June 2012 - 06:16 AM.

[Krubarax]

I fail to se why ammo should explode when your mech's reactor shuts down.
So let us drop the "ammo explosion" arguments.
They belong in a different thread

Anyways - I have voted NO in about four of theese kinds of threads, for all reasons stated above.
It simply will not happen.
If people just want things to expload spontanously because they like big explosions, then soon enough we will have trees, stones, birds and poo going nuke as soon as you walk past.

No thanx.
I really liked how mechs went out of action in MW3 and MC2.
MW4 sucked big time and I can proudly say I never played MechAssault.

Battletech might be based on futuristic pseudoscience, but please, try to keep it as realistic as possible.
I do not want crap to just happen to satisfy the hollywoodexplosionsarecool-crowd

[Kooroush Azartash]

The reactor should not go "nuclear" when it melts down because the mech reactor is a fusion reactor. Only Fission reactors melt down like that. It is because fission reactor fuel is uranium, plutonium, etc. rods. Here, water is runs over them to heat into steam. The rods get hot from fission reaction (atom splitting) of heavy radioactive materials and the water heating is controlled by control rods which regulate the emission of the rods. They go critical and melt down when this process isn't controlled and this normally is caused when something stops functioning.
Fusion reactors works by fusing light materials, such as hydrogen, together. Since hydrogen is a gas, it must be emitted into a reaction core where energy (like a laser) is shot into the two "colliding" atoms giving it just enough energy to fuse and release large amounts of energy and heat which is used to heat the water for the reaction. This process just stops when a component stops functioning.
What can happen, in both cases, is that if the reactor is ruptured the super-heated water which is under very high pressure can explode out with devastating effect.

[Unclehambone]

I find the use of the term "reactor going critical" kind of amusing here. Because in the real world, a reactor going critical is a good thing, i.e. it's self sustaining and producing power on its own. But again this isn't the real world.

[empath]

Oh, crap; this AGAIN?

I feel like I've been arguing over this 'artistic license' drek for decades...{goes checks <rec.games.mecha> posts from 1997} oh, yeah, I HAVE.

The physicists have posted repeatedly the facts of the universe (and the rules lawyers have posted repeated VERSIONS of optional, non-standard rules ammendments that limit the instance of 'Stackpoling'), so you can always go back through the previous dozen pages of posts for plenty of ammunition AGAINST GIANT BLEEPING EXPLOSIONS.

...heh, okay - quick tangent while we're on the subject of 'ammunition' - did ANYONE pay attention to the YouTube videos of the Centurion tank dying when it's ammo cooked off? Where were all the 'damage adjacent units' secondary explosions? I saw plenty of cinders flying maybe 2-5 metres away (which might have even been fragments of melting armor), but hardly anything that would do more than cause injuries to neighbouring infantry, and possibly start fires on soft targets. Oh, and in the TableTop game, a unit that is adjacent to another is thirty metres away. So I guess that puts your 'ammo explosion risk' argument right in the trash can.

And you wanna know why? Because there's this little thing that prevents a combat platform's internal explosions from being a problem to adjacent units...the combat platfom's own armor. You know, that six inches of steel the Centurion tank was swaddled in? all the propellant for the ammunition - which burns relatively slowly for explosives (you know, so cannon don't just explode or rupture every time when fired) - and the HE warheads - which based on the ATGM used, probably had shaped charges so they're basically superhot blowtorches rather than barrels of Michael Bay-brand gasoline, so even THAT CATASTROPHIC destruction of a tank is relatively harmless to any other combat platform.

And that brings us back to the whole 'collateral damage' argument; if an ammunition explosion- which many have been grasping at for the 'well okay, reactors won't do it, but at least ammo will' consolation - fail to have any material impact upon nearby units, and we've already buried the utterly unrealistic 'slow-moving fiery hurricane that bowls stalwart 'Mechs over after a few seconds struggle and causes them to disintegrate upon striking the ground' garbage that practically wounds the universe when it is asserted as being physically POSSIBLE (People kvetching about MechAssault? Try MW4:V's opening cinematic that gives Michael Bay a pyrogasm from the hardened concrete hangar building that 'takes an LRM to the knee' and abruptly becomes 'The Devil's Blowtorch' like I described above), we're really not left with much.

YES, I agree that there should be cosmetic pyrotechnics when a 'Mech gets killed; a series of masked flashes as ammo cooks off inside the machine, or maybe a few blue actinic arcs from piece to piece as the 'Mech's electrical systems go. But there's really no justification for anything above paint-job damage to another 'Mech even five metres away.

One thing I'd like, though, is variety in death 'lightshows' - MW had legged 'Mechs fall over and 'cored' 'Mechs just stand there with some smoke pluming out of the torso, MW2 had the beaten machines completely disappear in a series of explosions that removed each body part, and MW3 was a little more varied, but MW4? Every - EVERY 'Mech that suffers incapacitating damage collapses and explodes in exactly the same way, then leaves the same boxy pile of 'chicken wire' behind.

[Henchman 24]

FactorlanP, on 22 June 2012 - 06:32 PM, said:

^This deserves repeating.

It escapes me why so many seem to find him to be such a fine writer.

You mean there were BT cannon writers that didn't read like dimestore checkout novels? Man I swear someone was dreaming about Fabio when writing about the Steiners.

As an actual sci-fi reader, I always thought the novels, and even the backstory module books were written by rank amateurs(think worse than Piers Anthony).

Edited by Henchman 24, 30 June 2012 - 08:38 AM.

[Fire for Effect]

There is something missing in the poll:

SOMETIMES

I have not sifted thruogh 13 pages of answeres but a quick "flyby" showed me that some were answering correct from the TT perspective.
A Mech has an exactly 1/36 Chance to go (not nuclear thats impossible) with nice fireworks if the engine is hit twice in a phase. so it happens if you use advanced rules
(Max Tech page 19)

[Halfbreed]

In MW4 Mercs did the Mechs reactors go off when they were destroyed? And didn't they do damage to other mechs if you were right next to them?

[Butane9000]

I think downed mechs should explode and do significant damage to any mechs in the area. But I don't believe it should be a nuclear sized blast. So I voted no. Would like to see mech corpses be dangerous though.

[Psyche]

LOL,

Yeah...experts....

I suppose the big Nuclear Warheads being FUSION reactions (2 of the 3 stages in linked version which is the 2nd most powerful 'known' nuclear warhead version publicly) means that those 25 megaton explosions won't actually occur when they reach their target. http://en.wikipedia....41_nuclear_bomb

That would be so interesting and typical of the governments to build {very expensive} weapons that don't work.

I'm pretty sure a Powerplant won't go 'nuclear' unless intentionally set to do so, the failsafes are damaged (specific critical hit): which would forecast what was going to happen by increasing heat regardless of heat dissipation capabilities, and/or was borderline to begin with [running at edge of shutdown with damage to the powerplant].

Edited by Psyche, 07 July 2012 - 10:09 AM.

[Mechwarrior5138008]

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

Remember that a reactor in melt down merely builds up heat in an uncontrollable fashion but does not result in a nuclear detonation. Radiation is not affected or effected by temperature, the elemental compounds may be but the radioactive particles; alpha, beta (now considered a ray instead of a particle) and fast or thermal neutrons, or radioactive rays; gamma, beta, positron, or x-ray, are not.

A nuclear detonation requires a modicum of knowledge of not only radioactive materials but also electronics and chemical explosives to construct. The possibility of this happening in the environment is not probable even in a combat environment. The worst that happens is the reactor goes into melt down and changes the material around it into a gaseous radioactive state, which is released into the environment and the reactor core melts into the ground.

It would be rare for a nuclear reactor to achieve the heat needed to burn to the core of the earth. This is due to the heat dispersion into the atmosphere and the ability of the core to disassociate from itself.

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.

I think you have fission and fusion confused, but you are right, that neither type of reactor should ever explode.

A Fission reactor is simply electrons leaving one atom of something like uranium 235 and bouncing electrons from other atoms of uranium, all while inside a giant vat of water and controled by rods of lead so the fission doesnt go out of control while heating the water into steam to drive electric generators. This is unlike the fission bomb which is the actual splitting of atoms of plutonium (usually) which creates a massive explostion. Both fission, but two very different types of reactions.

Fusion is the bonding of two atoms into something entirely new and different, like pressuring two atoms of hydrogen into helium, or helium into lithium. (These three elements were the first and only three elements created during the big bang and make up the majority of the universe.) Consequently, the only way we know how to achieve this is inside of a nuclear bomb, using the much easier to attain fission explosion to create the pressure needed to then set off a fusion explosion, making modern day nukes fairly clean explosions, since the ammount of radioactive material (plutonium) needed to start a fusion reaction has gotten smaller over the years. (Old school nukes often used another large ball of plutonium inside the fusion explostion to create catastrophic sized bombs that would have then created the nuclear winter everyone is so scared of.)

There has been an ongoing joint attempt by many countries for a few decades to build a fusion reactor that would start a new age of electric generation. The problem is that to contain a fusion reaction, you need more power than the reaction itself creates. This in itself leads me to believe that an explosion would be possible if the containment field were to be disrupted mid reaction, but in my readings, the scientists say that it wouldnt happen, something to do with the containment field being part of the power that pressurizes and creates the fusion to begin with.

Now I think that they are trying to use lasers to create the environment needed to join two hydrogen atoms into helium and that they have an idea how to contain and harness the power generated by this fusion. but until someone manages to do it, there is still the side that says a fusion reactor can and will explode in the right circumstances, and no one has proved differently.

So until then, I like to think that the fusion reactor in a mech basically makes the mech a walking tactical nuke just waiting to be cooked off, and Robert Stackpole may not be the best writer in history, but I enjoy all of his BT books, and am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on whether or not a mech can or will explode in some poor brawlers face.

This being said, it would not be a 50 megaton explosion leveling everything for 40miles in every direction, but probably a couple hundred kilotons, enough to melt the armor off of anything within a few hundred yards, and killing any unfortunate soul caught outside of his/her mech and/or heavily fortified concrete bunker.

Edited by Rayj, 07 July 2012 - 11:35 AM.

[Melcyna]

Psyche, on 07 July 2012 - 10:07 AM, said:

LOL,

Yeah...experts....

I suppose the big Nuclear Warheads being FUSION reactions (2 of the 3 stages in linked version which is the 2nd most powerful 'known' nuclear warhead version publicly) means that those 25 megaton explosions won't actually occur when they reach their target. http://en.wikipedia....41_nuclear_bomb

That would be so interesting and typical of the governments to build {very expensive} weapons that don't work.

I'm pretty sure a Powerplant won't go 'nuclear' unless intentionally set to do so, the failsafes are damaged (specific critical hit): which would forecast what was going to happen by increasing heat regardless of heat dissipation capabilities, and/or was borderline to begin with [running at edge of shutdown with damage to the powerplant].

Rayj, on 07 July 2012 - 11:23 AM, said:

I think you have fission and fusion confused, but you are right, that neither type of reactor should ever explode.

A Fission reactor is simply electrons leaving one atom of something like uranium 235 and bouncing electrons from other atoms of uranium, all while inside a giant vat of water and controled by rods of lead so the fission doesnt go out of control while heating the water into steam to drive electric generators. This is unlike the fission bomb which is the actual splitting of atoms of plutonium (usually) which creates a massive explostion. Both fission, but two very different types of reactions.

Fusion is the bonding of two atoms into something entirely new and different, like pressuring two atoms of hydrogen into helium, or helium into lithium. (These three elements were the first and only three elements created during the big bang and make up the majority of the universe.) Consequently, the only way we know how to achieve this is inside of a nuclear bomb, using the much easier to attain fission explosion to create the pressure needed to then set off a fusion explosion, making modern day nukes fairly clean explosions, since the ammount of radioactive material (plutonium) needed to start a fusion reaction has gotten smaller over the years. (Old school nukes often used another large ball of plutonium inside the fusion explostion to create catastrophic sized bombs that would have then created the nuclear winter everyone is so scared of.)

There has been an ongoing joint attempt by many countries for a few decades to build a fusion reactor that would start a new age of electric generation. The problem is that to contain a fusion reaction, you need more power than the reaction itself creates. This in itself leads me to believe that an explosion would be possible if the containment field were to be disrupted mid reaction, but in my readings, the scientists say that it wouldnt happen, something to do with the containment field being part of the power that pressurizes and creates the fusion to begin with.

Now I think that they are trying to use lasers to create the environment needed to join two hydrogen atoms into helium and that they have an idea how to contain and harness the power generated by this fusion. but until someone manages to do it, there is still the side that says a fusion reactor can and will explode in the right circumstances, and no one has proved differently.

So until then, I like to think that the fusion reactor in a mech basically makes the mech a walking tactical nuke just waiting to be cooked off, and Robert Stackpole may not be the best writer in history, but I enjoy all of his BT books, and am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on whether or not a mech can or will explode in some poor brawlers face.

This being said, it would not be a 50 megaton explosion leveling everything for 40miles in every direction, but probably a couple hundred kilotons, enough to melt the armor off of anything within a few hundred yards, and killing any unfortunate soul caught outside of his/her mech and/or heavily fortified concrete bunker.

Both fails to understand that fusion bombs and fusion reactors work in a very different manner...

in a fusion bomb, they currently utilize a fission nuclear detonation to create the necessary condition for the fusion material (which is surrounded by the fission material or other mechanism or material that will compress the fusion material)... so essentially you have a fusion bomb material surrounded by the compression mechanism then you detonate the fission bomb to set enough energy to make the fusion reaction to occur. IE: in order for them to start this fusion reaction they DETONATED A CONTROLLED NUCLEAR EXPLOSION through a fission bomb to produce the compression force necessary for the fusion material to start it's reaction.

You can't even start the reaction if you just detonate a nuclear bomb randomly next to it... for it to even start, the nuclear detonation and the force it generates HAS to be directed in an exact manner to compress the fusion material (which aint gonna happen if you just detonate a nuclear explosion next to the fusion), it has to be channeled in another word to the exact parameter needed for the fusion which is usually done by surrounding the fusion material with the compression force from the fission explosion.

in a fusion power generation (the ones we have anyway) on the other hand, the fusion reaction is started and sustained with far smaller energy than that of a fission bomb, with such a small amount of power available the fusion reaction can only be performed on a much smaller scale with only a small amount of the fuel in the chamber at any point in time.

If we say dump the whole fuel into the chamber, the reaction dies off because the chamber only have limited capability to sustain the fusion reaction and the moment you dump more than it can handle the very sustenance of that reaction condition fails.

So in EITHER case, the idea that a fusion reactor goes off in a nuclear manner is NONSENSICAL.

in a nuclear weapon you needed ANOTHER nuclear weapon to start the reaction in the first place and even that has to be done EXACTLY right in a pre determined condition, and this is why nuclear weapon don't actually detonate into nuclear explosion when destroyed or intercepted by ABM weapon, movies were bullshitting you when they show nuclear weapon detonating as they get shot into a nuclear fireball.

and in a nuclear reactor, there is never enough fuel in the chamber to start a fusion explosion, nor is the reaction chamber for fusion power system can produce enough power to start such reaction in the first place.

it's a NONSENSICAL idea top to bottom, as far as fusion reaction we know of are concerned with.

Edited by Melcyna, 08 July 2012 - 12:21 AM.

[MrFancypants]

A chance for a big explosion would make for a more interesting game in my opinion. Doesn't need to be nuclear, a sufficiently large conventional explosion will also cause a small mushroom cloud as well.

Not sure how BattleTech lasers work, but if there are chemical fuels involved they may explode at high temperatures. Likewise, the heatsinks may contain water which could produce hydrogen if exposed to a lot of heat. Then you have ammo in some mechs.

The low chance of an explosion could be explained by the fact that any self-respecting engineer will build in some safety measures to prevent catastrophic explosions. Like how some modern tanks have mechanism to funnel the energy of an ammunition cook-off away from the crew.

Edited by MrFancypants, 08 July 2012 - 03:40 AM.

[Radman]

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?

No. Fusion reactors, much like modern day nuclear reactors though how they function are quite different, are not really capable of "going nuclear". I hope they leave out this particular gimmick.

Ughh. I just read through some of the posts in this thread. Guys, not possible for a modern day fission reactor to cause a nuclear explosion. There is no way to purposefully or accidentally do so. And if anyone has brought up, or tries to, Chernobyl that was not a nuclear explosion. It was a melt down due to stupid design. When the reactor overheated the containment vessel melted allowing radioactive material to leak through to the atmosphere. It also allowed radiation to contaminate other materials which, due to the heat, would catch on fire or in some other way allow itself to become airborne.

Finally, Uranium 235 is indeed used in nuclear reactors but the reaction is kept alive by neutrons not electrons. And the control rods are hafnium not lead. Lead is usually used as shielding. Hafnium has the great ability to absorb neutrons. Wish I had more time but off to paint ball!

Edited by Radman, 08 July 2012 - 05:04 AM.

[MrMasakari]

Mechs should explode yes, nuclear ? No. Ammo rack explosions etc totally, if your sat right next to an enemy shooting him in the torso and he just drops, its kinda dull. If the enemy has a chance of their ammo detonating and taking off 1/4-/1/8 of your hp depending on how close you are and tonnage/armor ratio then it certainly adds a bit more depth to it.

Im thinking more Mech commander style, madcat gets shot in the back, detonates shortly after, doesn't wipe out half the city, just does a relativley small but impressive explosion, if your too close then you suffer.

Just not all the time, whenever you land a crit or something.

Edited by Artaire, 08 July 2012 - 05:03 AM.

[Bobfrombobtown]

Artaire, on 08 July 2012 - 05:02 AM, said:

Mechs should explode yes, nuclear ? No. Ammo rack explosions etc totally, if your sat right next to an enemy shooting him in the torso and he just drops, its kinda dull. If the enemy has a chance of their ammo detonating and taking off 1/4-/1/8 of your hp depending on how close you are and tonnage/armor ratio then it certainly adds a bit more depth to it.

Im thinking more Mech commander style, madcat gets shot in the back, detonates shortly after, doesn't wipe out half the city, just does a relativley small but impressive explosion, if your too close then you suffer.

Just not all the time, whenever you land a crit or something.

Ammo wouldn't explode in such a manner as to damage a nearby 'mech. The armor protection a downed 'mech had left would contain the blasts, and even if it didn't if you've ever seen a demonstration where someone exploded the propellant of an ammo round without it being chambered into a weapon the damage it does is reduced by a metric crap ton. This is due to the propellant exploding and exerting equal force on both the casing and the actual bullet. (There's an episode of Mythbusters where they explode a bullet in a vehicle's fuse box here's a link to the segment in question, hopefully it's not region restricted or anything.)

[StandingCow]

It shouldn't be a nuclear explosion... since it is a fusion engine... but you should get a VERY bright harmless flash.