65 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

Dimento Graven, on 11 January 2019 - 12:26 PM, said:

You lose your radiator, you've lost heat threshhold. I had a radiator burst on my 2000 Tundra a few years back, and my engine IMMEDIATELY went into the red and the ICU immediately throttled my power and eventually shut the engine off, because there was no longer any place to store and radiate the heat away from the engine. No, my truck didn't blow up, but if the ICU wasn't there to prevent me from continuing to drive at 70mph on the highway, I'm sure I would have very extremely quickly done some serious damage to the point of needing to replace/rebuild the engine.

So yeah, the current dynamic makes perfect sense to me with that REAL WORLD experience.

and youd be right if games were supposed to be realistic.

however games exist to help people escape from reality.

your real world experiences are irrelevant in games because nobody wants to play a game thats realistic. if we wanted that we would just go play real life instead. plus your whole realism argument is pretty flimsy anyway given how unrealistic battletech is in general. you cant cherry pick certain things for being unrealistic and ignore everything else thats unrealistic. Because if youre going to use the realism argument, then if have a problem with one thing being unrealistic, then you also must have a problem with everything else thats unrealistic; which is basically the entire game.

what matters to a game is what makes the game fun. shutting down when your side torso gets blown out is inherently not fun. it not being fun is the only reason needed to change it.

Edited by Khobai, 13 January 2019 - 04:15 PM.

[Prototelis]

Uhhmmm no. He'd still be wrong my dude.

Current mechanic; Totally against the laws of thermodynamcs

Nice Anecdote; Not totally understanding how the various systems in heat engines interact while not totally being aware of engine safety features.

[Dimento Graven]

Sorry, but you're all wrong (oh and good job at getting in those little personal insults and jibes).

Absolutely fantastic that some of you argue that I'm wrong because of, probably, intentional misunderstandings of how heat capacitance and dissipation actually works, and then the other half understand the reality but decide to declare it unfun and therefore it should have no bearing on a game.

Some of you are great at taking things out of context, spouting half-truths, cherry picking a portion of a sentence, etc. but the fact remains, lose a heat sink, you lose heat capacity which immediately affects any 'mech that's moving, firing, etc. etc. etc. Destroy a heat sink, including the 'radiator' that heat is dumped somewhere. The heat doesn't 'fall to the ground' as some of you are implying. The melted slag is mostly contained within your 'mech.

Lose a radiator, you lose coolant and thus lose heat capacity as well. The coolant in an engine absorbs heat, the coolant is moved, exterior to the engine for cooling and is cycled back into the engine. The total caloric capacity of the engine is the mass of the engine+absorption qualities/quantity of the coolant within the sytem.

In an IC engine remove the coolant and pretty much instantly an engine begins to heat up beyond desired levels, and if allowed to continue running, destroys itself (very quickly). How much more quickly this can happen with a theoretical fusion engine... nanoseconds...

Sorry that some of you find limitations on your all-alpha, all-the-time firing mindset after suffering significant reactor damage as 'unfun' but, long term, this is good for the game.

Run cooler builds, or fire less often to keep your heat under control, or don't alpha every single time your weapons recharge, and/or torso twist a bit more, change your builds to SE's, and you'll be better off.

For me I'm having fun with this change. I've adjusted my play style, I've made the changes necessary to certain builds.

This and ends up being no big deal.

[Y E O N N E]

FFS, could you possibly understand what you are talking about any less, both IRL and game-wise?

The ICE is generating heat at a constant rate. If you lose your radiator, you are not taking the heat that was already in the system and shoving it into the block, you are removing it from the system and what you see is new heat having nowhere to go.

When an LFE or cXL gets thirded, it cuts power to keep the heat from overpowering the remaining sinks (why do you think you run slower, genius?) ergo no spike. Firing weapons have less capacity to sink into and what is sunk has less ability to be dissipated, but that has nothing to do with the engine heat.

Here's a litmus test:

If I have a steel bar uniformly containing XYZ joules of energy, represented by its temperature being uniformly 200 degrees, and I cut off 20% of it from the end, what is the new temperature of my remaining steel bar? If your initial thought is 240 degrees, I have some bad news for you.

[Prototelis]

I didn't insult you bro.

There's no reason to be insulted for being mistaken. You don't understand heat engines, or thermodynamics. That's okay, most people don't. That's why they pay mechanics, and those mechanics defer to engineers.

I never once commented on how I feel about this mechanic, only that it is thoroughly un-scientific.


Easy way to test. Boil a pot of water on the stove, dump the water out. Does the pot instantly get hotter after you dump the water out? No. No it does not.

Edited by Prototelis, 14 January 2019 - 07:12 AM.

[Dimento Graven]

Y E O N N E, on 14 January 2019 - 07:08 AM, said:

...

The ICE is generating heat at a constant rate. If you lose your radiator, you are not taking the heat that was already in the system and shoving it into the block,

So a portion of the steam from the coolant doesn't somehow get absorbed into engine block? The block is shielded from that external heat source?

Quote

...you are removing it from the system and what you see is new heat having nowhere to go.

I'm glad we agree, the engine has lost heat capacitance with the loss of the coolant system and immediately begins to run hotter.

Quote

When an LFE or cXL gets thirded, it cuts power to keep the heat from overpowering the remaining sinks (why do you think you run slower, genius?) ergo no spike. Firing weapons have less capacity to sink into and what is sunk has less ability to be dissipated, but that has nothing to do with the engine heat.

I blame PGI's refusing to implement any sort of heat affects table for this misunderstanding:

Classic rules - you start exceeding your cooling capacity, eventually you build up enough heat that the fusion reactor can't provide the power necessary for movement, thus slowing you down.

Quote

Here's a litmus test:

If I have a steel bar uniformly containing XYZ joules of energy, represented by its temperature being uniformly 200 degrees, and I cut off 20% of it from the end, what is the new temperature of my remaining steel bar? If your initial thought is 240 degrees, I have some bad news for you.

Yeah, take that same bar, stick it in a box.

Cut off that bar, 20% as you say, stick it in the same box as the original portion, even though the cut off portion of the bar is no longer connected to the original bar, does the total heat in the box instantly diminish by 20%?

Does that 20% instantly become 0 degrees?

Remove the bar from the box, does the heat instantly diminish by 20%?

Edited by Dimento Graven, 14 January 2019 - 07:39 AM.

[Prototelis]

You're missing the point entirely bro.

THE HEAT IN A DESTROYED COMPONENT IS NOT MAGICALLY TRANSFERRED INTO THE ADJACENT COMPONENTS WHEN REMOVED.

That is what this new mechanic does, and it is wholly unrealistic. That IS NOT how thermodynamics work. What you are describing IS NOT how thermodynamics work.

The heat of the iron bar isn't going to immediately spike at the moment you remove part of it, it isn't going to immedietly spike when you start heating it again. It will however heat up faster, just like a car engine.

You should give up the "histrionics," you are wrong.

Edited by Prototelis, 14 January 2019 - 11:17 AM.

[Dimento Graven]

Prototelis, on 14 January 2019 - 11:06 AM, said:

You're missing the point entirely bro.

THE HEAT IN A DESTROYED COMPONENT IS NOT MAGICALLY TRANSFERRED INTO THE ADJACENT COMPONENTS WHEN REMOVED.

You're right it's not magic, it's radiated/conducted where those hot molten parts are now laying about in the torso area, exacerbating the fact that not only is there heat capacity in the remaining engine, but there's less ability to vent it.

Quote

That is what this new mechanic does, and it is wholly unrealistic. That IS NOT how thermodynamics work. What you are describing IS NOT how thermodynamics work.

Pumping the same amount of energy into less available heat capacity results in the "spike." When you lose the capacity, the temperature begins to go up immediately.

Quote

The heat of the iron bar isn't going to immediately spike at the moment you remove part of it, it isn't going to immedietly spike when you start heating it again. It will however heat up faster, just like a car engine.

Continuing to pump the same amount of energy into a smaller amount of mass, the energy builds up and that mass heats up faster and can get to its own melting point with no means of venting the resulting heat.

Quote

You should give up the "histrionics," you are wrong.

You accuse me of "histrionics", yet you're the one using size 6 fonts? I find that kind of ironic.

What it looks like a lot of you are expecting is, "20% of my engine just got destroyed, why don't I instantly lose 20% of my heat?"

That's not how it works either...

Edited by Dimento Graven, 14 January 2019 - 12:09 PM.

[Koniving]

Prototelis, on 14 January 2019 - 11:06 AM, said:

You're missing the point entirely bro.

THE HEAT IN A DESTROYED COMPONENT IS NOT MAGICALLY TRANSFERRED INTO THE ADJACENT COMPONENTS WHEN REMOVED.

That is what this new mechanic does, and it is wholly unrealistic. That IS NOT how thermodynamics work. What you are describing IS NOT how thermodynamics work.

The heat of the iron bar isn't going to immediately spike at the moment you remove part of it, it isn't going to immedietly spike when you start heating it again. It will however heat up faster, just like a car engine.

You should give up the "histrionics," you are wrong.

Minor question, how do we know the heat is transferred into said block?

The heat system is only two staged in MWO, raise and cool and it is not yet cooled, as such it hasn't yet gone to the heatsinks. Though the heat from the weapon systems in that section may possibly go with it. Or were they sucked into heatsinks closer to the center already?

Now if it was three staged...that'd be another story. We'd know where the heat is and how much to subtract, as well as how much is actually generated by the weapon system and how much by the engine revving up to produce the power on demand (its not direct current, its alternating current, the power needed increases to meet the demand. It does not constantly run at top power output).

Just my two cents.

[Y E O N N E]

Dimento Graven, on 14 January 2019 - 12:07 PM, said:

You're right it's not magic, it's radiated/conducted where those hot molten parts are now laying about in the torso area, exacerbating the fact that not only is there heat capacity in the remaining engine, but there's less ability to vent it.

...which is why the engine throttles its output.

Also, there are no molten parts lying around, certainly nothing hotter than the reactor or the weapons array. Even in the vacuum of space, where the only way to dissipate heat is pure radiation, incandesence lasts only moments.

Quote

Pumping the same amount of energy into less available heat capacity results in the "spike." When you lose the capacity, the temperature begins to go up immediately.

Continuing to pump the same amount of energy into a smaller amount of mass, the energy builds up and that mass heats up faster and can get to its own melting point with no means of venting the resulting heat.

Nobody is refuting that, we are refuting that it is the same amount of energy, because it very clearly isn't on account of speed dropping 20% (lose 20% of the engine, lose 20% of the output, OMG it's logical). We are also pointing out that the fusion engine can handle it's own heat for simply running and providing locomotion, it's the weapons overdraw which causes it to go up. Running an ICE is not analogous to the LFE, but instead to the weapons firing.

Quote

What it looks like a lot of you are expecting is, "20% of my engine just got destroyed, why don't I instantly lose 20% of my heat?"

That's not how it works either...

If something is 100% saturated, and you remove 20% of that something, the remainder is still 100% saturated. It shouldn't go up or down simply by removing that 20%. That is what used to happen, and should still be happening, when you lose an ST with LFE or cXL. The lowered total cap and dissipation and speed are all still there.

[Verilligo]

Dimento Graven, on 14 January 2019 - 07:38 AM, said:

Yeah, take that same bar, stick it in a box.

Cut off that bar, 20% as you say, stick it in the same box as the original portion, even though the cut off portion of the bar is no longer connected to the original bar, does the total heat in the box instantly diminish by 20%?

Does that 20% instantly become 0 degrees?

Remove the bar from the box, does the heat instantly diminish by 20%?

You're committing a cardinal sin of engineering: you're conflating temperature with heat. If the cut off portion of bar is placed within the same box as the larger portion, the enthalpy of the system (which is also not "heat" as conventionally meant, but has a relationship) will remain the same as before, assuming no losses due to conduction/convection/radiation. If you remove the cut off portion from the box, you are quite literally going to reduce the enthalpy of the system by 20%, because mass is a part of this equation. You have removed 20% of the mass. What do you think is going to happen?

The temperature, however, will not reduce by 20% immediately. Because that's not how temperature works. You are doing less work (and thus less potential loss as "heat" or entropy), however, and so you will cool down to a lower temperature than you were at before, presuming you aren't continuing to pump additional work into the system, which would raise the enthalpy (and potential entropy) of the remaining section of bar. At least until you have a phase change, then you get to do actually interesting math.

Edited by Verilligo, 14 January 2019 - 02:04 PM.

[Dimento Graven]

Y E O N N E, on 14 January 2019 - 12:40 PM, said:

...which is why the engine throttles its output.

Is that what it's truly doing? Actively throttling output, OR, is it a result of the heat (which is ALSO supposed to affect movement). Again, I blame PGI for not implementing a heat affects table and leaving us with an ambiguous situation.

Quote

Also, there are no molten parts lying around, certainly nothing hotter than the reactor or the weapons array. Even in the vacuum of space, where the only way to dissipate heat is pure radiation, incandesence lasts only moments.

Most of the destroyed engine/ST is intact in your 'mech, just not functional. It hot before, it's still hot, and now can't easily vent away the heat.

Also, as far as I can remember at the moment, we only have one vacuum map in the game at the moment, HPG (unless Vitric Forge is also vacuum but can't recall for certain), so yeah all the other maps have plenty of atmosphere to assist in radiating the heat energy into the rest of the surrounding chassis..

Quote

Nobody is refuting that, we are refuting that it is the same amount of energy, because it very clearly isn't on account of speed dropping 20% (lose 20% of the engine, lose 20% of the output, OMG it's logical). We are also pointing out that the fusion engine can handle it's own heat for simply running and providing locomotion, it's the weapons overdraw which causes it to go up. Running an ICE is not analogous to the LFE, but instead to the weapons firing.

You keep saying the engine is throttled because you lose 20% of your speed and, I guess, therefore assuming the engine should be running 20% cooler. HOWEVER, I refute the assumption that the engine is "throttled" and the reasoning should be obvious:

If the engine is 'intelligently' throttling itself, why isn't it throttling the major power draws of weapons reloading? Weapons don't take 20% longer to recharge/reload, energy weapons aren't doing 20% less damage, and/or have 20% less range, neither does gauss...

Honestly all this should happen, it's an incomplete mechanic dating back to TT games where losing portions of your engine result in, not only slower speed, but also increased heat generation (as lore would have us believe the system becomes incapable of maintaining as tight a 'magnetic bottle' to contain the super heated plasma thus allowing more heat to be inadvertently dumped into the system).

So whether or not you are right about the "engine throttling", due to the now more inefficient fusion reaction taking place you're generating AT LEAST the same amount of heat, with fewer heat sinks and lower heat capacity to handle it.

Quote

If something is 100% saturated, and you remove 20% of that something, the remainder is still 100% saturated. It shouldn't go up or down simply by removing that 20%. That is what used to happen, and should still be happening, when you lose an ST with LFE or cXL. The lowered total cap and dissipation and speed are all still there.

Yes, and with the same amount of energy being pumped into it, the remainder gets hotter even faster. The new system accounts for that and handles it dynamically and accurately and is now subtracting the loss from the correct 'side' of the 'capacitance' pool.

[Prototelis]

Dimento Graven, on 14 January 2019 - 12:07 PM, said:

You accuse me of "histrionics", yet you're the one using size 6 fonts? I find that kind of ironic.

I had to make it really big because you can't ******* read.

[Dimento Graven]

Prototelis, on 14 January 2019 - 07:23 PM, said:

I had to make it really big because you can't ******* read.

Oh man, the one feel I had, and you got it..

[Y E O N N E]

Dimento Graven, on 14 January 2019 - 03:21 PM, said:

Is that what it's truly doing? Actively throttling output, OR, is it a result of the heat (which is ALSO supposed to affect movement). Again, I blame PGI for not implementing a heat affects table and leaving us with an ambiguous situation.

Does it matter? The heat-spike is a transient effect, the speed-reduction is not. A transient effect cannot explain an equilibrium condition.

Quote

Most of the destroyed engine/ST is intact in your 'mech, just not functional. It hot before, it's still hot, and now can't easily vent away the heat.

It's hot, still hot, and in a part of the 'Mech that is no longer generating any heat at all, is now cooling off, and in general no longer matters for any reason. Or...it's on the ground. Some of it is certainly on the ground.

Even if we accept that logic, why are we not heating up when we get shot with basically anything bigger than MG that isn't Gauss?

Quote

Also, as far as I can remember at the moment, we only have one vacuum map in the game at the moment, HPG (unless Vitric Forge is also vacuum but can't recall for certain), so yeah all the other maps have plenty of atmosphere to assist in radiating the heat energy into the rest of the surrounding chassis..

We have a few:

HPG Manifold
Vitric Forge
Terra Therma (description says it has a token atmosphere...which is as good as vacuum)
Grim Plexus/Grim Portico (I think, I'd have to go see the description again)

The atmosphere of the other maps assists in convecting heat away, but that was my point: any bits hot from getting blasted are not going to be hotter than a fusion reaction for a gigawatt laser for long (if ever) on most maps and heat less than those two sources is basically declared by BT lore to be negligible.

Quote

You keep saying the engine is throttled because you lose 20% of your speed and, I guess, therefore assuming the engine should be running 20% cooler. HOWEVER, I refute the assumption that the engine is "throttled" and the reasoning should be obvious:

If the engine is 'intelligently' throttling itself, why isn't it throttling the major power draws of weapons reloading? Weapons don't take 20% longer to recharge/reload, energy weapons aren't doing 20% less damage, and/or have 20% less range, neither does gauss...

Gauss is an anomaly; it should be as hot as every other high-energy electric weapon in the game but it isn't. Heat is really the measure of how far you are straining the reactor since, in BT lore, the engine spikes instantaneously to provide the necessary power. And we are still generating the same heat.

I do agree weapons ought to cycle slower and that could be a neat penalty. Heck, having more realistic power management in general would be pretty fun to play with.

Quote

Honestly all this should happen, it's an incomplete mechanic dating back to TT games where losing portions of your engine result in, not only slower speed, but also increased heat generation (as lore would have us believe the system becomes incapable of maintaining as tight a 'magnetic bottle' to contain the super heated plasma thus allowing more heat to be inadvertently dumped into the system).

That's not what I read. When it can't maintain the bottle, it shuts down. If it's punctured, it may explode.

Quote

So whether or not you are right about the "engine throttling", due to the now more inefficient fusion reaction taking place you're generating AT LEAST the same amount of heat, with fewer heat sinks and lower heat capacity to handle it.

There is no such thing as a "less efficient fusion reaction". It either fuses or it doesn't. You can maybe change how fast it fuses with extreme difficulty, but a damaged fusion reactor isn't going to fuse more intensely. It will be less intense. That's less heat generated, and also less energy per second to be extracted.

Frankly, BattleTech really screwed up on how power delivery works, but they did say that a damaged reactor is likely to shut down and the worst you might get is a sudden in-rush of air to result in a littoral explosion. That part is actually pretty accurate.

Quote

Yes, and with the same amount of energy being pumped into it, the remainder gets hotter even faster. The new system accounts for that and handles it dynamically and accurately and is now subtracting the loss from the correct 'side' of the 'capacitance' pool.

There isn't the same amount of energy from the engine, though. Weapons, yes, locomotion, yes, and those are accounted for with the reduction to heat cap and dissipation. But idle operation? Noep.

Edited by Y E O N N E, 14 January 2019 - 09:18 PM.

[Dimento Graven]

Y E O N N E, on 14 January 2019 - 09:16 PM, said:

Does it matter? The heat-spike is a transient effect, the speed-reduction is not. A transient effect cannot explain an equilibrium condition.

This argument, again, partially stems from PGI not implementing certain portions of the rule set, and misapplying others, and thus making people want to slap incorrect reasoning behind one affect.

Quote

It's hot, still hot, and in a part of the 'Mech that is no longer generating any heat at all, is now cooling off, and in general no longer matters for any reason. Or...it's on the ground. Some of it is certainly on the ground.

Sure some is on the ground, most is in the 'mech and whether through conduction, radiation/convection, the heat that was in those now slagged components is still going into your 'mech.

Quote

Even if we accept that logic, why are we not heating up when we get shot with basically anything bigger than MG that isn't Gauss?

Good question, it would add more to the game if enemy weapons fire that hit actually imparted additional heat to your 'mech. Totally agree with that sentiment (and heck even gauss impacts should).

Quote

We have a few:

HPG Manifold
Vitric Forge
Terra Therma (description says it has a token atmosphere...which is as good as vacuum)
Grim Plexus/Grim Portico (I think, I'd have to go see the description again)

Good to know, I hadn't bothered keeping up with atmospheres of the maps since PGI changed atmospheric affects on heat dissipation.

Quote

The atmosphere of the other maps assists in convecting heat away, but that was my point: any bits hot from getting blasted are not going to be hotter than a fusion reaction for a gigawatt laser for long (if ever) on most maps and heat less than those two sources is basically declared by BT lore to be negligible.

That's still heat being imparted to a system that now has less capacity and less cooling ability.

It is still additive.

Quote

Gauss is an anomaly; it should be as hot as every other high-energy electric weapon in the game but it isn't.

Disagree with this.

Quote

Heat is really the measure of how far you are straining the reactor since, in BT lore, the engine spikes instantaneously to provide the necessary power. And we are still generating the same heat.

Actually the weapons fire is what generates the heat, not just the charging, as I recall from TT (and feel free to correct me if I'm misremembering) certain weapons, when damaged and not 'destroyed' generate MORE heat when fired.

Quote

I do agree weapons ought to cycle slower and that could be a neat penalty. Heck, having more realistic power management in general would be pretty fun to play with.

Yeah and a heat affects table too.

The game is missing depth and is to much rocks-papers-scissors-spock, when it comes to the interactions of various components.

Quote

That's not what I read. When it can't maintain the bottle, it shuts down. If it's punctured, it may explode.

That's at the extreme end of the damage spectrum, heck it's something that could be manually initiated if the character wanted to 'johnny jihad' himself...

Quote

There is no such thing as a "less efficient fusion reaction". It either fuses or it doesn't. You can maybe change how fast it fuses with extreme difficulty, but a damaged fusion reactor isn't going to fuse more intensely. It will be less intense. That's less heat generated, and also less energy per second to be extracted.

Sorry, but there's at least 3 major fusion experiments going on now on the planet (and at least one other in the process of being built) that say, "We need to make an efficient fusion process." Current reactors aren't 'net positive' on their energy production yet, they're still producing a lot less energy than is required to initiate the reaction, but they're still F'ING HOT when they do have a fusion reaction in process.

Quote

Frankly, BattleTech really screwed up on how power delivery works, but they did say that a damaged reactor is likely to shut down and the worst you might get is a sudden in-rush of air to result in a littoral explosion. That part is actually pretty accurate.

The fusion explosions in the lore were from the sudden release of the magnetic bottle, that hot plasma vaporizing portions of the engine (and super heating any atmosphere present) causing a massive pressure explosion from expanding gasses (makes sense, the hot plasma is tens of thousands of degrees, any materials it touch will instantaneously vaporize and expand as a gas, that pressure builds up and 'splodes).

Quote

There isn't the same amount of energy from the engine, though. Weapons, yes, locomotion, yes, and those are accounted for with the reduction to heat cap and dissipation. But idle operation? Noep.

Idle operation has its own level of heat generation, heck for the longest time in game our 'mechs would run between 3 and 8 percent heat capacity just standing there, before 'skills', and anyway, when you're in a battle getting an ST blown off, you're far from 'idle' anyway...

[Verilligo]

Dimento Graven, on 14 January 2019 - 10:22 PM, said:

That's at the extreme end of the damage spectrum, heck it's something that could be manually initiated if the character wanted to 'johnny jihad' himself...

It's also something that has no basis in reality. But Battletech fusion reactors are only somewhat based on reality, which is why a discussion on applying actual physics to gameplay is going to fall somewhat flat. Eventually you have to resort to explaining things by saying "because robot."

Quote

Sorry, but there's at least 3 major fusion experiments going on now on the planet (and at least one other in the process of being built) that say, "We need to make an efficient fusion process." Current reactors aren't 'net positive' on their energy production yet, they're still producing a lot less energy than is required to initiate the reaction, but they're still F'ING HOT when they do have a fusion reaction in process.

It's a lot more simple than this, actually: currently, we cannot even perform controlled fusion. There's just a lot of obstacles in the way of making a controlled fusion reaction occur in a way that can be carried out continuously, a lot of it dealing with simply keeping everything contained. Then you have the matter of scaling the system to an appropriate size. But when you hear scientists say "efficient," they don't exactly mean what you think they mean. Efficiency covers a large number of topics, including reaction fuel and methods of obtaining it, the amount of useful work from other sources required to be expended for the reaction to be carried out, the way in which the resulting work is harnessed, etc. You will ALWAYS be at a net negative work at the end of a reaction than when you started, the question is how much of that work at the beginning of the reaction was useful. Tritium as a material isn't very useful as a means of doing work, but it can be converted into useful work (and waste heat) through a reaction. This is a law and is the reason why perpetual motion machines are scientifically impossible.

You can adjust "efficiency" indirectly, though, by impacting fuel feed rate or the manner in which the work out of the system is harnessed. Damage the fuel line and less will be fed to the reactor, thus impacting how much work can be produced in the reaction, resulting in less work and also less waste heat. Damage the means by which the work and waste heat are harnessed from the reactor and more work will go to waste, potentially increasing the amount of waste heat generated. Though in reality, if you damaged the reactor to much of any extent, you'd just end up with the whole thing shutting down.

Quote

The fusion explosions in the lore were from the sudden release of the magnetic bottle, that hot plasma vaporizing portions of the engine (and super heating any atmosphere present) causing a massive pressure explosion from expanding gasses (makes sense, the hot plasma is tens of thousands of degrees, any materials it touch will instantaneously vaporize and expand as a gas, that pressure builds up and 'splodes).

Again, sounds nice on paper, but this doesn't happen. The reason it happens in Battletech is "because robot." You don't suddenly shift from a controlled fusion to uncontrolled fusion... because the components necessary for uncontrolled fusion are not physically present.

[Y E O N N E]

The reasons they explode in BT are neatly outlined in the tech manual. It is an explosion of the in-rushing atmosphere being flash-heated by the reactor core in the moment it gets punctured. It is not because the fusion plasma went nuts and exploded out.

They also state that such explosions are rare, normally the engines just fizzle out.

[Dimento Graven]

Verilligo, on 15 January 2019 - 08:33 AM, said:

It's also something that has no basis in reality. But Battletech fusion reactors are only somewhat based on reality, which is why a discussion on applying actual physics to gameplay is going to fall somewhat flat. Eventually you have to resort to explaining things by saying "because robot."

What I find amusing about this is how the arguments have spanned from: "Don't make it closer to reality, reality isn't fun, it needs to be changed..." and then there's the "It's not close enough to real so it's wrong and needs to to be changed..."

Quote

It's a lot more simple than this, actually: currently, we cannot even perform controlled fusion. There's just a lot of obstacles in the way of making a controlled fusion reaction occur in a way that can be carried out continuously, a lot of it dealing with simply keeping everything contained. Then you have the matter of scaling the system to an appropriate size. But when you hear scientists say "efficient," they don't exactly mean what you think they mean. Efficiency covers a large number of topics, including reaction fuel and methods of obtaining it, the amount of useful work from other sources required to be expended for the reaction to be carried out, the way in which the resulting work is harnessed, etc. You will ALWAYS be at a net negative work at the end of a reaction than when you started, the question is how much of that work at the beginning of the reaction was useful. Tritium as a material isn't very useful as a means of doing work, but it can be converted into useful work (and waste heat) through a reaction. This is a law and is the reason why perpetual motion machines are scientifically impossible.

Actually we have around 20 functioning tokamak reactors, one in GB regularly initiates "controlled" fusion reactions (the key is to not confuse "controlled" with "sustained"), but because the process is currently so inefficient, the energy output has always been less than the input.

They are closing in on net 0, and a few even project hitting a positive net within the next decade, you can google lots of articles on the subject.

Quote

You can adjust "efficiency" indirectly, though, by impacting fuel feed rate or the manner in which the work out of the system is harnessed. Damage the fuel line and less will be fed to the reactor, thus impacting how much work can be produced in the reaction, resulting in less work and also less waste heat. Damage the means by which the work and waste heat are harnessed from the reactor and more work will go to waste, potentially increasing the amount of waste heat generated. Though in reality, if you damaged the reactor to much of any extent, you'd just end up with the whole thing shutting down.

The efficiency in "real world" sense is getting a net positive of energy so that it can be turned into a commercial product and earn money.

Quote

Again, sounds nice on paper, but this doesn't happen. The reason it happens in Battletech is "because robot." You don't suddenly shift from a controlled fusion to uncontrolled fusion... because the components necessary for uncontrolled fusion are not physically present.

As far as 'efficient reactions' in the BT universe, it's a reaction where the heat generated is sufficiently low enough to be vented while moving and firing weapons multiple rounds.

As the engine is damaged, the reaction becomes 'less efficient' heat-wise because the magnetic bottle is not as "tight", allowing more plasma to escape and add heat to the system.

Whether or not that's PGI's actual interpretation your guess is as good as mine, and really that's just a lore reason for a pragmatic balance fact, it's not important.

I like the change it makes sense to me, and even in spite of the 'sense of it' it adds REAL VALUE to SE engines, which were sorely F'd in balance because as it was prior to the change and since the intro of the LFE because there were extremely few reasons to load an SE. NOW, however, SE's can be loaded (on non-omni 'mechs) to provide additional survivability, over and above the LFE/XL.

It's a good thing, over all, for the game.

Edited by Dimento Graven, 15 January 2019 - 08:01 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

I don't agree it's a good thing for the game. The LFE and cXL should've been the baseline as they were, and they should've done something to the other two engine types to make them more attractive. That being said, I don't necessarily think the other types needed something, anyway; big 'Mechs made plenty of use of STD engines to fit some of the most powerful builds in the game and Lights did the same with XL.

There is zero merit to trying to make all three engines an equal choice for every weight class, because the absolute limits which exist on speed, size, and available tonnage make such an effort futile.