100 replies to this topic

[blinkin]

Noth, on 03 February 2013 - 12:52 AM, said:

The air would go back out the holes or any other cracks and opening it comes to as all explosions take the path of least resistance. At most it would be like a flamer, probably weaker. It still is not an explosion. The only explosion is an extremely rare boiler type explosion caused by essentially over revving the engine, which we cannot do.

sarna disagrees. around here sarna seems to be have the final say in any debates.

that was direct copy pasta from the fusion engine page. i even gave a link if wish to make sure i didn't edit anything.

what determines an explosion is the rate of expansion. if air were suddenly sucked into a vacuum (like exists around the fusion material) then is superheated rapidly enough it could explode very violently. according to sarna mech reactors are actually using plain hydrogen and not deuterium (which was my original assumption). this means that the fusion material needs to be kept at temperatures in excess of 2,500,000kelvin. just for perspective i am pretty sure temperatures on earth in a natural setting never go above 400kelvin. even our current hydrogen bombs cannot create those temperatures.

our hydrogen bombs use dueterium which only needs 100,000kelvin to initiate fusion.

Edited by blinkin, 03 February 2013 - 01:05 AM.

[Noth]

blinkin, on 03 February 2013 - 12:56 AM, said:

sarna disagrees. around here sarna seems to be have the final say in any debates.

that was direct copy pasta from the fusion engine page. i even gave a link if wish to make sure i didn't edit anything.

I know exactly what it says. It just says thermal expansion happens and causes basically bright lights (not blowing the mech apart). It doesn't say explosion. It only mentions explosions when talking about a boiler style explosion.

Edited by Noth, 03 February 2013 - 01:00 AM.

[blinkin]

Noth, on 03 February 2013 - 12:59 AM, said:

I know exactly what it says. It just says thermal expansion happens and causes basically bright lights (not blowing the mech apart). It doesn't say explosion. It only mentions explosions when talking about a boiler style explosion.

The Thermal Expansion damages anything within 90 meters of the destroyed 'Mech."

[Noth]

blinkin, on 03 February 2013 - 01:06 AM, said:

The Thermal Expansion damages anything within 90 meters of the destroyed 'Mech."

That is not blowing the mech apart. That is basically the heat from the flame causing the damage, the same way a flamer does damage and really shouldn't do much more damage than that.

[INSEkT L0GIC]

I wouldn't mind if they did it as a Containment Override Module, for example, that would grant an additional +10% before a Mech equipped with it would shut down from overheating (or similar bonus), but making an engine more unstable when destroyed, with a release of Heat & minor damage to Mechs within 90m.

[blinkin]

Noth, on 03 February 2013 - 01:11 AM, said:

That is not blowing the mech apart. That is basically the heat from the flame causing the damage, the same way a flamer does damage and really shouldn't do much more damage than that.

"damages anything within 90 meters" does not sound like a few jets of flame. generally to get equal coverage within an area you need an explosion. also consider the fact that the reactors are always in the middle of the mech. other components and armor would interfere with and direct simple jets of flame limitting their effects to just a few directions. a sufficient explosion would destroy most blockages and provide roughly equal coverage.

i am not suggesting that this obliterate any nearby mech but i think the damage should be enough to make most players run away when they see the reaction start.

also

what determines an explosion is the rate of expansion. if air were suddenly sucked into a vacuum (like exists around the fusion material) then is superheated rapidly enough it could explode very violently. according to sarna mech reactors are actually using plain hydrogen and not deuterium (which was my original assumption). this means that the fusion material needs to be kept at temperatures in excess of 2,500,000kelvin. just for perspective i am pretty sure temperatures on earth in a natural setting never go above 400kelvin. even our current hydrogen bombs cannot create those temperatures.

our hydrogen bombs use dueterium which only needs 100,000kelvin to initiate fusion.

sorry for repeating if you have already seen this but it got buried before i finished editing it in.

Edited by blinkin, 03 February 2013 - 01:34 AM.

[sC4r]

well i played mw3 and mw4
if i remember the mechs didnt explode when i killed then with normal weapons, yes there were some minor explosions but thats comparable to what is here

however the mechs did explode if you overheated them way too much (6 ER large laser, or PPC alpha did the job well)

and i think it should stay as it is... man there are 16 mechs on battlefield... now imagine that in each match there will be at least 8 nuclear explosions... yea funny for once or twice but terrible if repetitive

[blinkin]

sC4r, on 03 February 2013 - 01:38 AM, said:

well i played mw3 and mw4
if i remember the mechs didnt explode when i killed then with normal weapons, yes there were some minor explosions but thats comparable to what is here

however the mechs did explode if you overheated them way too much (6 ER large laser, or PPC alpha did the job well)

and i think it should stay as it is... man there are 16 mechs on battlefield... now imagine that in each match there will be at least 8 nuclear explosions... yea funny for once or twice but terrible if repetitive

you should read at least some of the thread before you start keyboard spamming.

blinkin, on 28 January 2013 - 11:39 PM, said:

and the reactor explosions should be fairly rare. i think an average of 1-2 per match would be good.

Idgit Galoot, on 29 January 2013 - 12:10 AM, said:

I agree with it being rare, it could even be more prominent to certain models, or the way the player configured their heatsinks.

canned wolf, on 29 January 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

Every mech exploded in MW4. As a result they had to make the explosions tiny to minimize griefing issues. MWLL has a perfect system as far as I'm concerned. You can't grief with it because the explosions are far too rare, but you can't ignore them either because they do a lot of damage if you are in close. I think one explosion every two or three matches is the ratio I would go with, but opinions vary on the subject.

focuspark, on 29 January 2013 - 11:45 AM, said:

If we're talking about just a big boom 2 - 5% of the time when a mech dies due to engine death, then sure why not, I can go along with it - so long as we're not talking about setting of a nuclear bomb.

canned wolf, on 29 January 2013 - 04:05 PM, said:

2-5% chance of explosion sounds pretty good to me. 5% gives you 1 in 20, which would be about once a match, 2% would give you once every other match. I might even go a little lower, just to make sure it can't be exploited.

Max Fury, on 29 January 2013 - 05:11 PM, said:

Instead of random, make is predictable, but rare.

canned wolf, on 29 January 2013 - 05:40 PM, said:

In response to Asakura, more power to you if you want to try and exploit an event that happens roughly 2% of the time when you destroy a mech.

blinkin, on 30 January 2013 - 12:34 AM, said:

except everyone who seems to be advocating this is saying they should be extremely rare. so your suicide bomber is probably going to die 10 times (at least) for every 1 time he manages to go critical.

there are plenty more.

Edited by blinkin, 03 February 2013 - 02:34 AM.

[CG Oglethorpe Kerensky]

blinkin, on 03 February 2013 - 12:56 AM, said:

sarna disagrees. around here sarna seems to be have the final say in any debates.

that was direct copy pasta from the fusion engine page. i even gave a link if wish to make sure i didn't edit anything.

what determines an explosion is the rate of expansion. if air were suddenly sucked into a vacuum (like exists around the fusion material) then is superheated rapidly enough it could explode very violently. according to sarna mech reactors are actually using plain hydrogen and not deuterium (which was my original assumption). this means that the fusion material needs to be kept at temperatures in excess of 2,500,000kelvin. just for perspective i am pretty sure temperatures on earth in a natural setting never go above 400kelvin. even our current hydrogen bombs cannot create those temperatures.

our hydrogen bombs use dueterium which only needs 100,000kelvin to initiate fusion.

Thermonuclear weapons, specifically your 'hydrogen bomb' use the neutrons released by the fusion reaction to cause additional fissile material to undergo fission. In essence it is a turbo charger, and unless you lined your reactor with uranium 238 (which would never be done to a reactor) you are not going to get a bomb.

You are just not getting this.

Once the reaction is destabilized it STOPS, the fusion STOPS, the energy production STOPS.

Let me provide some documentation.
http://www.generalfu...ear_fusion.html

Quote

The fusion mechanism is such that it only acts on a small amount of material and can only occur if suitable conditions can be created and maintained for a sufficient time. If any part of the process does not work perfectly, fusion does not occur. It is for this reason that a nuclear fusion meltdown is not possible: in fusion, a small amount of fuel is added to a device and conditions are created to enable fusion to occur; in fission, fuel is added in bulk, and the reactor controls the rate at which the chain reaction occurs.
The final by-product of the fusion reaction is helium, which is a safe, stable and environmentally friendly gas. As a result, fusion does not have any of the long-lived radioactive waste problems associated with nuclear fission.

Edited by CG Oglethorpe Kerensky, 03 February 2013 - 05:54 AM.

[sC4r]

blinkin, on 03 February 2013 - 02:31 AM, said:

you should read at least some of the thread before you start keyboard spamming.

i did read your "post" dont worry buddy and i stand by what i said in my earlier post so ill say it the way you MAY understand

NO ITS A BAD IDEA FOR CORED MECHS TO EXPLODE

[Hellboy561]

This has gone a bit crazy. I think it should be a rare thing. It would make brawling a little more interesting when it happens (I play primarily on the frontlines) But even Sarna says that they can "explode" per se, but it is extremely rare as the safety functions of the engine kick in to stop it.

"Fusion engines usually will only shut down if damaged, and they are absolutely no risk of being a fusion bomb. There have been a number of cases of fusion engines being "over revved" and exploding with devestating force, but this is more akin to a boiler explosion than a true nuclear explosion. More often a destroyed engine will be punctured by weapons fire. Because the plasma is held in a vacuum chamber (to isolate the superheated plasma from the cold walls of the reactor; contact with the walls would super-chill the plasma below fusion temperatures), a punctured reactor can suck in air where the air is superheated. Normal thermal expansion of the air causes the air to burst out in a brilliant lightshow often mistaken for a "nuclear explosion". The Thermal Expansion damages anything within 90 meters of the destroyed 'Mech."

"Such dramatic failures are rare, though. It is difficult to sustain the fusion reaction and very easy to shutdown. Safety systems or damage to containment coils will almost always shut down the engine before such an explosion occurs. The massive shielding of the engine (in the case of standard fusion engines, this is a tungsten carbide shell that accounts for over 2/3 of the weight of the engine) usually buys the safety systems the milliseconds needed to shutdown the engine when severe damaged is inflicted." http://www.sarna.net...i/Fusion_Engine

I believe this deserves to be in the game. And whats everyone complaining about, we have super ECM so why not super explosions!!! lol

[canned wolf]

Noth, on 03 February 2013 - 01:11 AM, said:

That is not blowing the mech apart. That is basically the heat from the flame causing the damage, the same way a flamer does damage and really shouldn't do much more damage than that.

Troll

sC4r, on 03 February 2013 - 01:38 AM, said:

well i played mw3 and mw4
if i remember the mechs didnt explode when i killed then with normal weapons, yes there were some minor explosions but thats comparable to what is here

however the mechs did explode if you overheated them way too much (6 ER large laser, or PPC alpha did the job well)

and i think it should stay as it is... man there are 16 mechs on battlefield... now imagine that in each match there will be at least 8 nuclear explosions... yea funny for once or twice but terrible if repetitive

Troll

CG Oglethorpe Kerensky, on 03 February 2013 - 05:46 AM, said:

Thermonuclear weapons, specifically your 'hydrogen bomb' use the neutrons released by the fusion reaction to cause additional fissile material to undergo fission. In essence it is a turbo charger, and unless you lined your reactor with uranium 238 (which would never be done to a reactor) you are not going to get a bomb.

You are just not getting this.

Once the reaction is destabilized it STOPS, the fusion STOPS, the energy production STOPS.

Let me provide some documentation.
http://www.generalfu...ear_fusion.html

Mega Troll

[Volthorne]

canned wolf, on 03 February 2013 - 10:39 AM, said:

Troll

Troll

Mega Troll

Fail troll.

[blinkin]

CG Oglethorpe Kerensky, on 03 February 2013 - 05:46 AM, said:

Thermonuclear weapons, specifically your 'hydrogen bomb' use the neutrons released by the fusion reaction to cause additional fissile material to undergo fission. In essence it is a turbo charger, and unless you lined your reactor with uranium 238 (which would never be done to a reactor) you are not going to get a bomb.

You are just not getting this.

Once the reaction is destabilized it STOPS, the fusion STOPS, the energy production STOPS.

Let me provide some documentation.
http://www.generalfu...ear_fusion.html

2,500,000kelvin <-this is a crap load of energy. this energy has to go somewhere according to Sir Isaac Newton. even if no more energy is produced something still has to be done with the energy that was already there.

on earth with all of our current technology we CANNOT produce temperatures of 2,500,000 kelvin. 4,762kelvin is the melting point of diamonds. to create temperatures of 100,000kelvin needed for our deuterium based hydrogen bombs we must wrap the bomb with a series of nuclear fission bombs.

when that shielding breaks down the subsequent vacuum will suck material (most likely air) into close proximity with that super heated material. that air will then absorb some of that heat. according to the laws of thermodynamics that gas will then expand in proportion to the energy recieved. at those temperatures anything near the core when the shielding fails will be almost instantaneously converted to plasma. even if the air only absorbs 10% of that heat it is still an energy increase of around 50,000%. rapid expansion is known as an explosion.

ok lets look at a much smaller scale real world example to give everyone some perspective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder :
The temperature inside the lightning channel, measured by spectral analysis, varies during its 50 μs existence, rising sharply from an initial temperature of about 20,000 K to about 30,000 K, then dropping away gradually to about 10,000 K. The average is about 20,400 K (20,100 °C; 36,300 °F).^[2] This heating causes it to expand outward, plowing into the surrounding cooler air at a speed faster than sound would travel in that cooler air.

^^this is why i say the shear temperature change alone could easily cause an explosion. at it's peak a lightning bolt produces slightly over 1% of the energy contained within these reactors. lightning is capable of creating explosions (rapid gas expansion) that are easily heard for miles.

Edited by blinkin, 03 February 2013 - 12:32 PM.

[blinkin]

http://www.youtube.c...d&v=9X5LP4hJu9k

Edited by blinkin, 28 February 2013 - 11:43 AM.

[focuspark]

blinkin, on 03 February 2013 - 12:29 PM, said:

2,500,000kelvin <-this is a crap load of energy. this energy has to go somewhere according to Sir Isaac Newton. even if no more energy is produced something still has to be done with the energy that was already there.

on earth with all of our current technology we CANNOT produce temperatures of 2,500,000 kelvin. 4,762kelvin is the melting point of diamonds. to create temperatures of 100,000kelvin needed for our deuterium based hydrogen bombs we must wrap the bomb with a series of nuclear fission bombs.

when that shielding breaks down the subsequent vacuum will suck material (most likely air) into close proximity with that super heated material. that air will then absorb some of that heat. according to the laws of thermodynamics that gas will then expand in proportion to the energy recieved. at those temperatures anything near the core when the shielding fails will be almost instantaneously converted to plasma. even if the air only absorbs 10% of that heat it is still an energy increase of around 50,000%. rapid expansion is known as an explosion.

ok lets look at a much smaller scale real world example to give everyone some perspective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder :
The temperature inside the lightning channel, measured by spectral analysis, varies during its 50 μs existence, rising sharply from an initial temperature of about 20,000 K to about 30,000 K, then dropping away gradually to about 10,000 K. The average is about 20,400 K (20,100 °C; 36,300 °F).^[2] This heating causes it to expand outward, plowing into the surrounding cooler air at a speed faster than sound would travel in that cooler air.

^^this is why i say the shear temperature change alone could easily cause an explosion. at it's peak a lightning bolt produces slightly over 1% of the energy contained within these reactors. lightning is capable of creating explosions (rapid gas expansion) that are easily heard for miles.

Just as a note, assuming giant robots with nuclear reactors were possible and somebody bothered to actually engineer and produce them... there would only be a gram or two of material heated at anyone time. No need to have kilograms of hot hydrogen swirling around - which means even when released into nominal temperature atmosphere, the heat is easily dissipated. You might get a big flame out but, I doubt even that.

Sarna says a couple of kilos of hydorgen powers a reactor of decades. Which is spot on with my assessment of how the imaginers thought fusion in BT would work.

[blinkin]

focuspark, on 28 February 2013 - 12:10 PM, said:

Just as a note, assuming giant robots with nuclear reactors were possible and somebody bothered to actually engineer and produce them... there would only be a gram or two of material heated at anyone time. No need to have kilograms of hot hydrogen swirling around - which means even when released into nominal temperature atmosphere, the heat is easily dissipated. You might get a big flame out but, I doubt even that.

Sarna says a couple of kilos of hydorgen powers a reactor of decades. Which is spot on with my assessment of how the imaginers thought fusion in BT would work.

you also have the fact that things at these temperatures do not like to stay compressed like that if they are not forced to. i find it likely that the material would also rapidly decompress, but that would likely only be enough to shred the engine.

[focuspark]

blinkin, on 28 February 2013 - 12:14 PM, said:

you also have the fact that things at these temperatures do not like to stay compressed like that if they are not forced to. i find it likely that the material would also rapidly decompress, but that would likely only be enough to shred the engine.

Exactly and make a pretty fireworks show, but not do significant damage to a BattleMech. So honestly, I think PGI has done a good job so far.

[blinkin]

http://youtu.be/9X5LP4hJu9k?t=2m12s

Edited by blinkin, 14 March 2013 - 09:48 AM.

[BATARA KALA]

We want small, spectacular explosions once in a while, with the iconic mushrooming cloud, and soaring, drifiting mech debri.

You know you want it.

Make it happen.