74 replies to this topic

[Sideways]

Ok so my question is in games so far every mechs engine has gone crit EVERY time it goes down, if this happend it would not only wipe away all chance of salvage but cause a lot of damage to surrounding buildings/mechs etc. So whould we Continue this trend and have every mech go crit or use the optional rule that was published for CBT that there are certain requirements that have to be me (coring out the center torso internals in 1 round) and then still only have a slight chance of going crit but when they do, wreaking all holy hell with whatever is close by, say no to it at all, or stay with the exslodey mechs of the past...

[Razor Kotovsky]

Depenable on reactor's size, not the mech's.

[infinite xaer0]

well, the way I look at it, fusion reactors can't "go critical" in real life, so the only AOE damage I want' to see from a mech "blowing up", is if your ammo stores explode. Though, i guess this could also happen if you crit the reactor on certain mechs.

[Sideways]

What I was hinting at, Yes....But generally something the size of a Direwolf is going to have a bigger engine than say a Firemoth, LOL

[Grimm Wulf]

Woops... voted befor I compleatly read everything... XD

*deletes his vote, and picks the right one* There we go... really don't want it to go boom every time. XD

Edited by Grimm Wulf, 04 November 2011 - 06:48 AM.

[CoffiNail]

MWLL does this perfectly IMO

[Razor Kotovsky]

infinite xÆr0, on 04 November 2011 - 06:46 AM, said:

fusion reactors can't "go critical"

I'm ignorant in this matter. Please explain without sending me to wikipedia, if you would be so kind.

[Saurok]

No engines going critical. As Battletech rules state it, engines wont explode as some novels and games present them.

[Sideways]

CoffiNail, on 04 November 2011 - 06:48 AM, said:

MWLL does this perfectly IMO

Haven't played, can ya break it down for me?

[Sideways]

Saurok, on 04 November 2011 - 06:51 AM, said:

No engines going critical. As Battletech rules state it, engines wont explode as some novels and games present them.

Later "optional rules" were officially published which had what is basically rules for "option 3" in this poll

Edited by Sideways, 04 November 2011 - 06:54 AM.

[Saurok]

Sideways, on 04 November 2011 - 06:53 AM, said:

Later "optional rules" were officially published which had the what is basically rules for "option 3" in this poll

Indeed, and those optional rules state clearly that it is added since some people want it for extra cinematic fireworks. And it does not really happen.

And MWLL did improve over MW4. But I still didn't like the way how they did those, it was way too common.

Edited by Saurok, 04 November 2011 - 06:58 AM.

[Kargush]

Razor Kotovsky, on 04 November 2011 - 06:48 AM, said:

I'm ignorant in this matter. Please explain without sending me to wikipedia, if you would be so kind.

From Sarna wiki, based on BT publications.

Quote

The magnetic fields which contain the plasma also protect the plasma from the frigid (relative to the temperature of the plasma) reactor chamber walls. The fusion reactions in a BattleMech fusion reactor only occur in a very narrow band of temperature and pressure conditions. The hotter and the higher the pressure, the faster the reactions occur.

When heat is added to a gas, it expands. If it can't expand, its pressure goes up. Thus when the reactions spike a bit the plasma gets hotter and in turn it tries to expand. However, the magnetic fields aren't rigid so they will expand a little a bit, allowing the plasma ball to expand, which, in turn, lowers the pressure in the plasma - which cools the plasma and allows it to collapse to its normal size. There is a little bit of extra room in the reactor chamber for just this reason.

There are, however, other ways the reaction can cool down. If the magnetic fields don't do their job, the plasma ball can actually touch the frigid walls of the core which results in the plasma ball "blinking out." This barely even scuffs the walls of the reactor. When the plasma ball contacts with the frigid walls of the fusion reactor the fusion reactions in the plasma stop almost instantly because there is no stored thermal mass in the plasma ball. All of the heat in the plasma comes from active reactions. The multi-ton reactor walls (comparative to the plasma ball) have so much thermal mass that they can soak up the heat of the reaction and barely heat up. The plasma ball does not normally have enough thermal energy to do more than add a little heat to the walls of the engine around it.

Fusion reactors *do* on very rare occasions die in a spectacular manner and the majority of those times isn't due to an exploding reactor.

What normally happens is that the reactor core is breached allowing a large quantity of relatively cold air into the vacuum of the reactor chamber which puts out the fusion reaction instantly... but in so doing, the intruding air in the reactor chamber soaks up all the heat and comes blasting back out in a white-hot blinding gout of flame. Considering that it takes massive damage to breach a reactor core so quickly that the safety fields can't drop down before something intrudes into the chamber... the visual end effect is that the 'Mech has very nearly been blasted in half, followed very quickly by a blinding fireball. This is a spectacular way to decommission a fusion reactor - a rampaging super-hot oxygen flash fire - but it is not a nuclear blast.

In the last instance it will happen that a MechWarrior will figure out that they can overcharge the engine, causing the plasma ball to heat up to an amazingly high temperature - far beyond their normal operating range - and than kill the magnetic field quickly, causing the extremely overheated plasma to hit the reactor walls which causes the reactor lining to explosively evaporate. The result of this is that the reactor is over pressurized, which causes a respectable explosion - but again, not a nuclear explosion.

Tl:dr version: the only thing likely to happen is the reactor shutting down. And if it does get breached, you get a flash-fire, not an explosion.

Edited by kargush, 04 November 2011 - 07:17 AM.

[wyggles]

kargush, on 04 November 2011 - 07:14 AM, said:

In the last instance it will happen that a MechWarrior will figure out that they can overcharge the engine, causing the plasma ball to heat up to an amazingly high temperature - far beyond their normal operating range - and than kill the magnetic field quickly, causing the extremely overheated plasma to hit the reactor walls which causes the reactor lining to explosively evaporate. The result of this is that the reactor is over pressurized, which causes a respectable explosion - but again, not a nuclear explosion.

I wanna be able to do that, as a last ditch effort of course.

[Razor Kotovsky]

kargush, on 04 November 2011 - 07:14 AM, said:

From Sarna wiki, based on BT publications.

Tl:dr version: the only thing likely to happen is the reactor shutting down. And if it does get breached, you get a flash-fire, not an explosion.

Chernobyl, too, was just a steam explosion. Just sayin'.
There is a very fine line between a tactical nuke and a big conventional bomb.

What i'm saying is the infamous explosion in the '09 trailer looks just like it is supposed to (for an atlas). I agree it's a rare event, but should happen every once in a while on a CT critical.
Adds an excellent smokescreen, too.

Edited by Razor Kotovsky, 04 November 2011 - 07:36 AM.

[wyggles]

Razor Kotovsky, on 04 November 2011 - 07:34 AM, said:

Chernobyl, too, was just a steam explosion. Just sayin'.
There is a very fine line between a tactical nuke and a big conventional bomb.

What i'm saying is the infamous explosion in the '09 trailer looks just like it is supposed to (for an atlas). I agree it's a rare event, but should happen every once in a while on a CT critical.

Uhh, wasn't it the Warhammer that went critical?

[Razor Kotovsky]

wyggles, on 04 November 2011 - 07:36 AM, said:

Uhh, wasn't it the Warhammer that went critical?

You are right, haven't seen the trailer for a long time.

Let's just say this detonates the remaining ammo as well. 5 tons of rockets and shells is serious business.

[Tweaks]

Core explosion should only occur if:

• The core reactor is breached by a hit
  
• The core reactor overheats before it's able to shutdown
  
• All of the above

That's it. The size of the explosion depends on the size of the core reactor and how much explosive payload the Mech still has in its bays.

Keep it simple and plausible.

[Stormwolf]

It wouldn't leave a lot of salvage if every mech ended as a mushroomcloud.

Just sayin.

[Shepherd]

I'm not really a fan of an exploding reactor. It's impossible for a mech who gets its second leg blown off to instantly explode. Or a mech suffering a headshot.

Maybe a mech's gyro gets destroyed. No explosion, but entirely disabled mech.

I'm ok with ammo cooking off and an explosion engulfing the mech (or a critical hit destroying ammo in the same way). I don't really think that explosion should hurt nearby mechs.

I chose the "explode, but rarely" option not because I want reactors to explode but because I want ammo to explode.

[DFDelta]

Should happen very rarely, and when they do they only deal damage to things in the very close vicinity, but a huge ammount of heat in a wide radius.