106 replies to this topic

[Arctic Fox]

Zakatak, on 09 May 2012 - 04:48 AM, said:

BTech reactors can't be that powerful. They can charge their drives faster using a solar sail at 20AU then if they used their reactors.

Not true. Quick-charging the drive with a reactor is much, much faster than using a jump sail. The real problem is that charging a K-F drive that quickly tends to fry it, which is not extremely beneficial to the continued survival of the ship. Also, regular JumpShips have to go to extreme lengths to conserve mass, so they don't typically carry more than a few dozen tons of fuel to run their station-keeping engine, which isn't quite enough to regularly charge the jump drive with. WarShips have no such problem.

Just to illustrate. An SLDF 520,000 ton Whirlwind class destroyer normally carries a mere 5,000 tons of hydrogen fuel and reaction mass. Under heat-expansion mode, this is capable of accelerating it at 1 g for 126 days. And that's not even particularly impressive compared to some other ships...

EDIT: Whoops, I forgot the Whirlwinds predate the Star League because of their origins as the Davion I class, but that's just as well...

Edited by Arctic Fox, 09 May 2012 - 05:17 AM.

[Catamount]

Arctic Fox, on 09 May 2012 - 04:25 AM, said:

It should be noted that BattleTech's fusion reactors violate conservation of energy completely and utterly. Matter/Antimatter is nothing compared to the drives that can accelerate BattleTech's WarShips and DropShips to large precentages of the speed of light with ridiculously low mass ratios.

Anyway, I'd have to wager on the SLDF. It will be fairly hard for them to win against the Covenant's handwavium in an actual fight, of course. But if both sides are dropped into the real world then the SLDF's will only lose their FTL drives and much of their drive's and armour's efficiency, while the Covenant ships would be utterly helpless.

I'm sorry, but I really highly doubt that BT fusion reactors are anywhere near 100% efficient at liberating energy from matter.
That's just the nature of fusion reactors.

That means less energy for weapons, shields (oops, BT ships don't even have them), and this plays out tangibly, because even a UNSC ship should be able to mission kill any BT ship with one shot, considering that they appear to outstrip their per-shot energy capability by a factor of about 1000.


Also, I'm fairly sure we're not talking about what would happen if each were dropped into real-world physical conditions (in which case neither would function particularly well). When one says "Covenant ship", or "SLDF ship", or references any ship in a BT debate, it generally refers to such a ship with its actual canonical abilities intact. If it didn't, there'd be no point in having a vs debate

Besides, there's no directly evidence that the technology in these franchises can't exist; we merely don't know if they can or can't. There are limits there, of course. Some franchises make claims that are just flat out wrong, such as Halo getting the mass of iron and tungsten wrong in their S-MAC rounds. That's just a flat out mistake. I'm inclined to count canonical capabilities so long as they don't start doing things like that (or, you know, running reactors with more then 100% efficiency, like Star Wars EU)

Arctic Fox, on 09 May 2012 - 05:14 AM, said:

Just to illustrate. An SLDF 520,000 ton Whirlwind class destroyer normally carries a mere 5,000 tons of hydrogen fuel and reaction mass. Under heat-expansion mode, this is capable of accelerating it at 1 g for 126 days. And that's not even particularly impressive compared to some other ships...

Can I get a source on that? That's actually fairly impressive.

On the other hand, isn't it just as likely our advanced, FTL-capable race is simply able to employ mass-reduction tech of some sort?

If they have that much energy, why the pathetic weaponry? If BT reactor tech was that good, everything from ships to battlemech ought to be capable of orders of magnitude more energetic output than we see.

Also, if BT reactors are so thermodynamically efficient, why do mechs produce so much waste heat when they draw energy, that they literally have to stop firing to avoid blowing up the reactor anytime they come remotely close to drawing what said reactor can output? It seems like for every gigajoule of firepower I put out, I have to deal with about that much heat energy on my mech! That hardly sounds amazingly efficient

I'm seeing more than a little bit of inconsistency here.


Edit: Unless I'm not figuring this right, that's actually not very impressive, doing the math.

520,000,000*9.8*3600*24*126 = 55477094400000000J or about 55 petajoules. That's considerably less energy than is liberated from just one KILOGRAM of antimatter, and it takes BT five million kilograms of the stuff?!

Even if Covenant reactors were one ten thousanth of a percent efficient (with a tech that should be near 100% on paper), they'd still be orders of magnitude better!

Edited by Catamount, 09 May 2012 - 05:42 AM.

[Arctic Fox]

Catamount, on 09 May 2012 - 05:23 AM, said:

Can I get a source on that? That's actually fairly impressive.

On the other hand, isn't it just as likely our advanced, FTL-capable race is simply able to employ mass-reduction tech of some sort?

The TROs have a value called 'Tons/Burn-day' for Small and Large Craft, which basically means how many tons of fuel and reaction mass the ship uses to accelerate at 1 g for one day in strategic movement. The Whirlwind is listed at 39.52 tons per burn-day, which adds up to 126 and a half days acceleration. Some ships, like both versions of the Tiamat, can accelerate for well over a year (And that doesn't even count converting the considerably larger cargo space these ships have to carry several times more fuel).

How they do it is not quite elaborated on, but I don't think it's ever been implied that there's any sort of magitech (which BattleTech thankfully avoids, unrealistic efficiencies not withstanding, as much as possible) involved. Just plenty of handwaving.

Anyway, I was merely joking about putting the forces in the real world. But as long as we're not doing that, you also have to avoid using real world comparisons for technology. BattleTech's fusion reactors are clearly much more effective than Matter/Anti-Matter is in the real world.

Edited by Arctic Fox, 09 May 2012 - 05:49 AM.

[Catamount]

Arctic Fox, on 09 May 2012 - 05:47 AM, said:

The TROs have a value called 'Tons/Burn-day' for Small and Large Craft, which basically means how many tons of fuel and reaction mass the ship uses to accelerate at 1 g for one day in strategic movement. The Whirlwind is listed at 39.52 tons per burn-day, which adds up to 126 and a half days acceleration. Some ships, like both versions of the Tiamat, can accelerate for well over a year (And that doesn't even count converting the considerably larger cargo space these ships have to carry several times more fuel).

How they do it is not quite elaborated on, but I don't think it's ever been implied that there's any sort of magitech (which BattleTech thankfully avoids, unrealistic efficiencies not withstanding, as much as possible) involved. Just plenty of handwaving.

Anyway, I was merely joking about putting the forces in the real world. But as long as we're not doing that, you also have to avoid using real world comparisons for technology. BattleTech's fusion reactors are clearly much more effective than Matter/Anti-Matter is in the real world.

Real world constraints can sometimes apply in vs debates, depending on how the debaters look at it, and the circumstances (real-world physics are the only neutral ground between franchises), but either way, as I showed in my above edit, BT reactors are not more efficient than M/AM reactors.

If they were, they'd be more than 100% efficient, and that would frankly just be too stupid to be correct , but either way, doing the math out, that 5000 tons of fuel nets a downright pitiful energy output, far less than even a single kilogram of antimatter.

This is consistent with low energy yields from BT weapons (even without having to draw much of the combat energy for shields!), and the general observed inefficiency of BT reactors, which seem to lose much of their output as nothing but useless heat. Honestly, it's a wonder BT reactors even work in space they're so bad.

I can see why the ships need thousands of double heat sinks when the reactor tech is that bad, although it begs a question: where the hell does the heat go?!

Edited by Catamount, 09 May 2012 - 06:00 AM.

[SquareSphere]

Depends on the objective. The Covenant are more equiped to take and hold an objective intact, ie better personel equipment. If the objective is to flatten the objective SLDF wins hands down.

[Atlai]

The Covies would win at first but then i think the SLDF would reverse engineer there tech and, being allowed to screw with it as much as they want, would be able to equip that to those naval space cannons from MW3 and battlemechs,

And if they could hot drop into High Charity they would win outright with battlemechs, i mean a plasma rifle is going to do squat against an Elemental let alone an Atlas then once they took over High Charity without the prophets orders, the Elites would join with the humans(they said they wanted too when they first met them) and finish off the Brutes and any other Covie that still was loyal.


...then the flood would be found and everyone would die

Edited by Mason West, 09 May 2012 - 06:20 AM.

[guardian wolf]

Also another thing that the SLDF has that would negate the Covie glass planet, would be the Naval Anti-ship guns based on the ground, to engage enemies in orbit.

[Arctic Fox]

Catamount, on 09 May 2012 - 05:23 AM, said:

If they have that much energy, why the pathetic weaponry? If BT reactor tech was that good, everything from ships to battlemech ought to be capable of orders of magnitude more energetic output than we see.

Also, if BT reactors are so thermodynamically efficient, why do mechs produce so much waste heat when they draw energy, that they literally have to stop firing to avoid blowing up the reactor anytime they come remotely close to drawing what said reactor can output? It seems like for every gigajoule of firepower I put out, I have to deal with about that much heat energy on my mech! That hardly sounds amazingly efficient

I'm seeing more than a little bit of inconsistency here.

Well, the smaller reactors on BattleMechs and AeroSpace fighters are not nearly as efficient as the transit drives on ships (Yes, that's stated in canon). But, well, BattleTech is not the most amazingly consistent universe ever, though I'm not certain how good Halo is in that category.

Catamount, on 09 May 2012 - 05:23 AM, said:

Edit: Unless I'm not figuring this right, that's actually not very impressive, doing the math.

520,000,000*9.8*3600*24*126 = 55477094400000000J or about 55 petajoules. That's considerably less energy than is liberated from just one KILOGRAM of antimatter, and it takes BT five million kilograms of the stuff?!

Even if Covenant reactors were one ten thousanth of a percent efficient (with a tech that should be near 100% on paper), they'd still be orders of magnitude better!

Unless I too am missing my calculations completely, which has been known to happen, I have absolutely no idea how you got to that. By my calculations, the kinetic energy produced by the Whirldwind's engines with 5,000 tons of fuel is:

Velocity: V = 9.81 * 3,600 * 24 * 126 = 106,795,584 m/s
Mass: M = 520,000,000 kg
Kinetic energy: E = 1/2MV^2 = 520,000,000 / 2 * 106,795,584^2 = 2.965e24 J

Meanwhile, 2,500 tons of Antimatter annihilating with 2,500 tons of matter add up to...

E = MC^2 = 5,000,000 * 299,792,458^2 = 4.494e23 J

...one order of magnitude less.

Now, keep in mind that the efficiency of the Whirlwind's engine is actually a lot greater than it seems by that, since a fair amount of its fuel is not converted into energy, but has to be thrown out of the back of the engine. The energy for the same amount of M/AM is based on the assumption that both all of it is converted into energy and that it is 100% efficient.

Catamount, on 09 May 2012 - 05:59 AM, said:

Real world constraints can sometimes apply in vs debates, depending on how the debaters look at it, and the circumstances (real-world physics are the only neutral ground between franchises), but either way, as I showed in my above edit, BT reactors are not more efficient than M/AM reactors.

If they were, they'd be more than 100% efficient, and that would frankly just be too stupid to be correct , but either way, doing the math out, that 5000 tons of fuel nets a downright pitiful energy output, far less than even a single kilogram of antimatter.

Clearly not. Well, as clearly as my calculations can be...

Edited by Arctic Fox, 09 May 2012 - 06:43 AM.

[Catamount]

Again, you guys need to consider the energy disparity here.

Unless there's evidence that the SLDF can field weapons in the hundreds of terrajoules, Covenant ships would just shrug off SLDF hits without an issue, while they'd be able to mission kill any SLDF ship, probably in a single shot, if the aforementioned high-gigajoule range outputs are correct for BT naval weapons.

Arctic Fox, on 09 May 2012 - 06:35 AM, said:

Unless I too am missing my calculations completely, which has been known to happen, I have absolutely no idea how you got to that. By my calculations, the energy for the Whirldwind's engines with 5,000 tons of fuel is:

Velocity: V = 9.81 * 3600 * 24 * 126 = 106,795,584 m/s
Mass: M = 520,000,000 kg
Kinetic energy: E = 1/2MV^2 = 520,000,000 / 2 * 106,795,584^2 = 2.965e24 J

Meanwhile, 2,500 tons of Antimatter annihilating with 2,500 tons of matter add up to...

E = MC^2 = 5,000,000 * 299,792,458^2 = 4.494e23 J

...one order of magnitude less.

Now, keep in mind that the efficiency of the Whirlwind's engine is actually a lot greater than it seems by that, since a fair amount of its fuel is not converted into energy, but has to be thrown out of the back of the engine. The energy for the same amount of M/AM is based on the assumption that both all of it is converted into energy and that it is 100% efficient.

No, no, I did make a mistake there, one so obvious I'm actually slightly embarrassed, so let's just move on ;

Nevertheless, if it's BT reactor tech that's magical, rather than BT engines, then why do only the engines exhibit this behavior?

BT weapons should be firing off energy outputs in the petajoules, easily, if not the exajoules, not putting off piddling shots in the high-gigajoule range.

Edited by Catamount, 09 May 2012 - 06:40 AM.

[Arctic Fox]

Catamount, on 09 May 2012 - 06:36 AM, said:

No, no, I did make a mistake there, one so obvious I'm actually slightly embarrassed, so let's just move on ;

Nevertheless, if it's BT reactor tech that's magical, rather than BT engines, then why do only the engines exhibit this behavior?

BT weapons should be firing off energy outputs in the petajoules, easily, if not the exajoules, not putting off piddling shots in the high-gigajoule range.

Good question, what is the basis for determining exactly how much energy BattleTech weapons produce...?

[Trevnor]

Catamount, on 09 May 2012 - 06:36 AM, said:

Again, you guys need to consider the energy disparity here.

Unless there's evidence that the SLDF can field weapons in the hundreds of terrajoules, Covenant ships would just shrug off SLDF hits without an issue, while they'd be able to mission kill any SLDF ship, probably in a single shot, if the aforementioned high-gigajoule range outputs are correct for BT naval weapons.

Hrm... Naval grade Gauss rifles impart a very very high kinetic energy, high enough that I doubt the Covenant shields could do all that much under multiple hits at the same time....

Also, if you notice, most of the time, the Covenant shields are only repelling projectile weaponry. I don't see many lasers, which should be able to just go through shields like they weren't there.. Unless the shields can somehow reflect or refract light? Because you can see the ships fine, except when projectiles are actually hitting.

Edited by Lt Trevnor, 09 May 2012 - 07:17 AM.

[guardian wolf]

Also, doesn't the SLDF have Mass Drivers? Or is that the invention that the WoB discovered, and not rediscovered?

[Arctic Fox]

guardian wolf, on 09 May 2012 - 07:37 AM, said:

Also, doesn't the SLDF have Mass Drivers? Or is that the invention that the WoB discovered, and not rediscovered?

The Star League had prototypes, but the Word of Blake used it in actual combat. Even then, one can't say they put it into widespread use since they had it fitted to...what...the Erinyes and that's it?

It's not really particularly advanced technology, though, just a Gauss rifle scaled to ridiculously impractical proportions.

[guardian wolf]

Arctic Fox, on 09 May 2012 - 07:49 AM, said:

The Star League had prototypes, but the Word of Blake used it in actual combat. Even then, one can't say they put it into widespread use since they had it fitted to...what...the Erinyes and that's it?

It's not really particularly advanced technology, though, just a Gauss rifle scaled to ridiculously impractical proportions.

Still though, one hit from that, and that's a small planet/large asteroid crashing into a ship, that'd kill even High Charity wouldn't it? I would put money down that a Mass Driver would punch through High Charity with shields, and armor. Also you still have the entire IS together, and so, sharing, and producing tech to cover their worst aspect, Space combat, and honestly, I would wager a bit of money on the IS's ASFs against the Seraphs, and Banshees, just a thought.

[Sam Spartan]

Paladin1, on 08 May 2012 - 07:37 PM, said:

Halo universe

You have absolutely no Idea how confused I was by this topic before I read this.
I was worried that wizkids were breaking the canon even more.

[Arctic Fox]

guardian wolf, on 09 May 2012 - 08:04 AM, said:

Still though, one hit from that, and that's a small planet/large asteroid crashing into a ship, that'd kill even High Charity wouldn't it? I would put money down that a Mass Driver would punch through High Charity with shields, and armor. Also you still have the entire IS together, and so, sharing, and producing tech to cover their worst aspect, Space combat, and honestly, I would wager a bit of money on the IS's ASFs against the Seraphs, and Banshees, just a thought.

Hmm. I wonder. It seems to me like the MAC and the Mass Driver are quite comparable to each other. According to the Halo wiki the UNSC's standard ship-mounted MAC fires a 600-ton slug at 30km/s. A Heavy Mass Driver only fires a 90-ton slug, but we don't know what the velocity of the projectile is (It must be at the very least ~10km/s to be able to reach maximum range in one turn, though). As I recall, in The Fall of Reach they had to hit a Covenant ship three times to punch through its shields. Perhaps a Heavy Mass Driver can achieve similar results, if not by mass then maybe with more velocity or greater firing rate. Is there any reference to the firing rate of the standard MAC in Halo? I know the Pillar of Autumn had a special one that could fire three shots one after the other, but what about the standard one?

The Mass Driver is a very inefficient weapon, though. A bunch of Heavy N-Gausses can deliver far more damage than it can. So if it can effectively breach the Covenant ships' shields, I doubt the SLDF's standard WarShips would have much trouble with them. Especially if, as Lt Trevnor says, the fact that we can see the ship through the shields means it won't stop lasers...

EDIT: Also, what about nuclear weapons, which I'm assuming work the same way in both universes? I haven't read it in a while, but doesn't a single nuclear warhead from the Iroquois manage to drain the shields of two Covenant frigates completely in The Fall of Reach? In the BattleTech universe, literally everything can carry a nuclear weapon, especially DropShips and WarShips which can carry high-yield warheads and a whole lot of them. The SLDF had few problems with nuking bothersome targets to ashes whenever it wanted to, so I wonder how much of an effect that would have...

Edited by Arctic Fox, 09 May 2012 - 08:52 AM.

[guardian wolf]

*shrugs* well you guys obviously know a bit more about this then I do, but what about ASFs? I'd wager my money on the IS variety of ASFs then the Seraph, and Banshee, as I am sure that they would be outmaneuvered, slower, and not as well armed as some of the ASFs that the IS has.

[Trevnor]

Pretty much what it boils down to, is that the Covenant have, what, about two or three different types of ship to ship weaponry? And the SLDF has four kinds, in many different sizes/yields/types. Missiles, with nuclear warheads, massive lasers that I'm not sure the Covenant shields could stop, gauss rifles, PPC's. I would still say the advantage goes to SLDF

[Arctic Fox]

guardian wolf, on 09 May 2012 - 08:48 AM, said:

*shrugs* well you guys obviously know a bit more about this then I do, but what about ASFs? I'd wager my money on the IS variety of ASFs then the Seraph, and Banshee, as I am sure that they would be outmaneuvered, slower, and not as well armed as some of the ASFs that the IS has.

The Banshee can be taken down by small arms fire; they will certainly be shredded if some ASFs or any sort of semi-decent anti-aircraft platforms show up. I'm not really sure about the Seraph, though...

Edited by Arctic Fox, 09 May 2012 - 09:09 AM.

[guardian wolf]

It takes about 7-9 shots from the cannon on board a Sabre to take out the shields, and the missiles kill it in one after the shields are gone. So, my guess is a salvo or two from even a Centurion ASF, would take it out.