22 replies to this topic

[Elrodvoss]

I was curious that since we are riding around in 20-100 ton fusion reactors, that if a little more flair could be added into the game.

Anyone that is knowledgeable with Battletech history is familiar with the "Stackpole" maneuver. While I am not saying we give players an option to run up and nuke their mechs, but in one of the Tech Readouts Advanced Rules, it did give an option that if the CT was completely destroyed, that there was a slim chance the reactor would go unstable and nuke.

Much like in one of the 1st promo trailers for MWO, i believe.

My 1st though is just for a nice visual effect. Good size explosion, small nuke cloud, etc. Something that would get other players attention for a moment, as it should.

2nd though would be to apply damage from the exploding mech to close mechs. I would not have game changing damage, but may on par with a shell strike, and gravitating outwards with diminishing damage.

Now when I say slim chance, I am looking at like 1 in 1000 chance maybe. (0.1%).
Like to have it as something that is rare to see, but something that someone that plays 10+ games in a day has a good chance to experience.


Again, the damage aspect is optional, but I believe the visual effect would be a nice addition to the game play.

To see a mech in the distance or in the middle of a brawl, just explode and everyone is taken back for that moment. Or to see that light or medium mech running away and someone gets that one shot off and you see a nice mushroom cloud in the distance 800 meters away as the last kill.

[El Bandito]

As long as there are plenty of visual and audio effects I am fine with the occasional "OMG GET AWAY FROM HIM!" shenanigans.

I would be even fine with collateral damage. But do turn that off during comp matches.

[Vellron2005]

If a mech nuked upon death, that sure would help with keeping the face-hugging lights away..

Alas, It is doubtful PGI will devote resources to this..

[Sable Dove]

Unlike a fission reaction, if a fusion reaction goes out of control, it just dies out. You might see an explosion from the fuel source, but it's not like a nuke going off.

Now, the mech's gyro breaking would basically be a gigantic fragmentation grenade as huge chunks fly in all directions at high enough velocity to deal some significant damage, even to nearby mechs.

[Weeny Machine]

Yeah, why not punish brawling even more. Snipewarrior/Lurmwarrior Online.

[Khobai]

Bush Hopper, on 29 October 2018 - 01:32 AM, said:

Yeah, why not punish brawling even more. Snipewarrior/Lurmwarrior Online.

what? it doesnt just punish brawling. if a nuke goes off and kills everyone on the map it punishes everyone equally. it doesnt matter if youre a brawler, sniper, or lrmwarrior. youre equally dead when the mushroom cloud hits.

I mean if were gonna do this nuke thing lets at least do it right.

Edited by Khobai, 29 October 2018 - 01:43 AM.

[Bombast]

We've been through this before, and it's a bad idea. MWO already runs like a paraplegic, no reason to throw more fancy graphic intensive explosions into the mix, and proximity based damage punishes the already extremely risky brawling. Stackpoling causes a lot of problems while adding almost nothing to the game.

[Tom Sawyer]

Sorta like this?

[MeiSooHaityu]

The whole fusion engine explosion (Stackpoling) thing really isn't...a thing. It made it into novels for dramatic license and into a few video games, but in reality, a critical hit on an engine just causes the engine to cease functioning. It's nothing too dramatic.

If there was a mechanic to be added like this, there is some provisions for a rapid release of pressure due to the intense heat of the engine being ruptured. It supposed to cause an explosion that can damage mechs within a short radius. It is EXTREMELY rare in lore (probably done to help bring the Stackpole novels in line with lore), but it can happen.

If PGI was to latch on to that extremely rare occurrence and make it the opposite (very common), it would be an exaggeration to an extreme, but it would at least have some roots in lore.

[KodiakGW]

Just add High Explosives to the game if you want to go boom. Don’t need more RNG mechanics.

Really, it’s the only thing to make the Hellspawn worth taking.

[Karl Streiger]

Well.... the MWLL Nukes were nice.... just saying. Was playing the game for only a couple of hours in my group... and suddenly everything turned white. One of the very best WTF moments in computer gaming.

The nukes in MW4 were lame and if PGI decided to do nukes it would be kind of MW4 nukes not those awesome MWLL moments. Simple because for the reason that anything the MWLL team did should be ignored because MWLL was made by customers and customers don't have a clue.

[Khobai]

KodiakGW, on 29 October 2018 - 05:52 AM, said:

Just add High Explosives to the game if you want to go boom. Don’t need more RNG mechanics.

Really, it’s the only thing to make the Hellspawn worth taking.

Id be okay with that as long as you can pack on enough explosives to kill everyone on the map.

When you self-destruct you should get 11 teamkills, a suicide, and 12 enemy kills.

Make it a consumable item.

This game is just not fun to play anyway. So having a way to end the game immediately would spare people the torture of having to play it. Youd be like the doctor kevorkian of MWO.

"who can self destruct first" sounds like a better gamemode than skirmish.

Edited by Khobai, 29 October 2018 - 07:26 AM.

[LordNothing]

since most fusion reactor concepts involve a strong vacuum chamber and the worst thing that can happen is one of your coils quenching and rapidly destroying itself. if the chamber gets breached you get an implosion and the inrush of atmosphere would contaminate the plasma and make it loose energy, stopping fusion reactions. you might get an explosion from the generator loop, but i have a feeling a battlemech would use a direct conversion system to really keep the reactor size down. something like a polywell would make a really good mech engine.

[TheCaptainJZ]

It'd be fine seeing an explosion from a mech's CT when it dies just as a visual effect to confirm the kill more noticeable than smoke but not a big one large enough to encompass the whole mech. It can do damage if it's limited to just facehuggers like 20 m or something.

[The6thMessenger]

Gameplay wise it's probably problematic as a mechanic, of course that depends on the implementation. I mean if we allow this, would we put up with allahu-ackbar playstyles? I mean put rocket-launchers on something like an Archer, alpha all 15, and then overheat-die, which results in a fusion explosion. Do that either with Cyclops, or with a Locust. Is that really fun?

From a realistic perspective though (not that it helps with sci-fi), Fusion explosions are a result of energy released by the fusion of matter. The environment to achieve this with conventional weaponry is vastly different from a fusion engine. A fission bomb typically involves sub-critical mass either being collided with another subcritical mass like gun-type atom-bombs, others are super-compressed which are implosion-types.

And the actual fusion-type like the Teller-Ulam design for Thermonuclear bombs, uses the primary explosion of said fission bomb, to initiate fusion that results in the secondary explosion.

So how do you get electric energy from that? Well you don't. There's electro-magnetic-pulse, but it's there to explode, not to be a glorified battery.

[Snowbluff]

LordNothing, on 29 October 2018 - 07:35 AM, said:

since most fusion reactor concepts involve a strong vacuum chamber and the worst thing that can happen is one of your coils quenching and rapidly destroying itself. if the chamber gets breached you get an implosion and the inrush of atmosphere would contaminate the plasma and make it loose energy, stopping fusion reactions. you might get an explosion from the generator loop, but i have a feeling a battlemech would use a direct conversion system to really keep the reactor size down. something like a polywell would make a really good mech engine.

The reactors seem like some kind of a linear well or a stack of toruses.

[Throe]

[delete by user]

Edited by Throe, 08 November 2018 - 03:26 PM.

[LordNothing]

Snowbluff, on 30 October 2018 - 08:49 AM, said:

The reactors seem like some kind of a linear well or a stack of toruses.

still possible. several fringe fusion machines, and the lm machine are all in that configuration. but something like a tokamak would never fit in a battlemech. theres physics reasons that limit minimum size of the cross section of the torus to around a meter. failed fusions can send the ions slaming into the walls and you need a certain amount of space to right their trajectory. ions hitting walls is bad, its a massive energy leak that kills your fusion rate. polywell has this limit too but being a spherical chamber the whole thing can be a lot smaller.

Edited by LordNothing, 30 October 2018 - 09:00 AM.

[Rick T Dangerous]

Those were the best brawls in MW4:Mercs, when three or four mechs went in and the first that went down triggered a chain reaction. Always a blast...

[LordNothing]

i got to say i loved the stackpoling in the living legends. epic.