27 replies to this topic

[Ironheart]

There should be a section on the forums for this kind of stuff.

There are literally thousands of things you can nitpick.

[Kodiak Jorgensson]

according to the wiki the ICE vehicles use power amplifiers which took up extra weight on the vehicles, in 3059 Clan Hells Horses developed the chemical lasers which removes the reliance on power amplifiers on ICE vehicles. the negatives for using chemical lasers on vheicals is there performance profile is equal to I.S laser standards and they require ammo



http://www.sarna.net...Power_Amplifier
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Laser

[Rayge]

Kodiak Jorgensson, on 06 February 2012 - 05:04 PM, said:

according to the wiki the ICE vehicles use power amplifiers which took up extra weight on the vehicles, in 3059 Clan Hells Horses developed the chemical lasers which removes the reliance on power amplifiers on ICE vehicles. the negatives for using chemical lasers on vheicals is there performance profile is equal to I.S laser standards and they require ammo



http://www.sarna.net...Power_Amplifier
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Laser

'banks of capacitors continually charged by the vehicles engine'

It's a huge battery. I believe this thread is finished

[lonewolfsyndrome]

Rayge, on 06 February 2012 - 05:22 PM, said:

'banks of capacitors continually charged by the vehicles engine'

It's a huge battery. I believe this thread is finished

This is basicly it, same thing for battle armor energy weapons and their jump jets. It's basicly just a battery pack. In the RPG they have a limited number of shots, in the table top it's assumed that the battle does not last long enough for the packs to need a recharging so it's not listed.

[Sidney]

First time I've seen the power capacitators fingered as breaking implausibility.

The game has portable PPCs and hand held laser rifles, plasma rifles and pulse laser handguns.

Strapping a few tons of batteries to a vehicle to fire a six ton weapon (PPC) doesn't seem that bad in comparison.

In any case, if this sort of thing bothers you, I'm curious what you think about the 'mech armour that's mere fractions of an inch thick, yet stop supersonic slugs, entire clips of 120mm rounds and is so strong that an Abrahams' tank round would only scratch paint. ...yet it breaks apart if a 'mech walks through a garage door?

[GreyGriffin]

Having played A Time of War (Mechwarrior RPG's latest edition), I can confirm that Battletech has insanely good battery technology. A 15 gram power pack can run a civilian communicator (Basically an audio/visual cell phone) for 300 hours of continuous operation. That very same battery can turn around and give enough peak output to fire 5-7 shots out of a laser pistol, each powerful enough to kill a man.

Apply that same level of technology to a multi-ton capacitor, in a logistical chain that undoubtedly includes SOME kind of fusion engine, and yeah, lasers capable of melting tank armor mounted on armored cars doesn't seem so bad.

[Gunmage]

About 12000 K 'Mech temperatures above... I always believed it was reactor core temperature, not the mech's.

[Nebfer]

While it is true their is a issue with B-techs ICEs and energy weapons but it's not as horrible as the OP makes it out to be.

One we need to know how powerful B-tech energy weapons are? How much energy do they use? Also how much fuel do they use per shot? And what kind of efficiency are the weapons and engines?

One thing to note per kilogram of gasoline one gets 47.2 megajoules of energy, assuming 100% efficiency.
Second lets assume that a Large Laser has a out put of 320 megajoules (roughly 40 megajoules per point), though that assumes 100% efficiency for the laser. Lets say it's 80% efficient so the total amount used per shot is 400 megajoules, assuming the ICE is only 50% efficiency this requires 16.9 kilograms of gasoline to deliver a single shot.

Per strategic ops, in a single maintenance cycle (roughly 8 hours) if the unit is sent out on a combat or SAR mission, the unit will use 2% of it's engine mass in fuel (the fuel tank is 10% of the engines mass) it will also travel 500km. So a 23 ton ICE engine (like on the Bulldog) will have a 2.3 ton fuel tank, and use 460kg of than each time it sees combat. To fire it 24 times requires 405 kilograms (leaving 55 for other things which is a bit low). Now thats not nearly as bad as the OP stated... not all that good though (but I would not call my self an expert on this topic, I could be completely wrong...). Though one could suppose than a ICE tank has a number of battery's to draw from and uses the engine to recharge them...

Though I should point out the efficiency's of B-techs fusion engines running off regular hydrogen it's greater than 100% (do the math on a 10,000 ton dropship accelerating at 1G using only 2 metric tons of (liquid) hydrogen per day)...