Matrix Games Forums

A friend and I had a conversation yesterday involving ToS. The second half is a lot more interesting. Also Larkin, I was running off memory when I was talking about weapons; was I correct? Also are MG round 20mm shaped-charge explosive shells, like AC shells? Or are they just solid slugs?


guardsheep2000 (9:32:36 PM): I laugh at your squashes
TheSquashMonster (9:33:03 PM): I laugh at your devestating weapons of mass destruction.
TheSquashMonster (9:33:09 PM): ...mama always said I had a strange sense of humor
guardsheep2000 (9:34:41 PM): ToS has weapons that fire 200mm shells
guardsheep2000 (9:35:02 PM): I don't even know how big that is... but aren't bullets generally like .5mm?
TheSquashMonster (9:35:37 PM): 200mm is .2 meters. Or not quite 8 inches
guardsheep2000 (9:35:51 PM): Yeah... that is a fucking hugeass shell
TheSquashMonster (9:36:04 PM): bullets are generally between 5mm and 20mm
TheSquashMonster (9:36:14 PM): I want a 2000mm >_>
guardsheep2000 (9:36:18 PM): Lmao
guardsheep2000 (9:36:34 PM): 200mm... that's like artillery shell size isn't it
TheSquashMonster (9:36:53 PM): yeah
guardsheep2000 (9:37:10 PM): would NOT want to get hit with that
TheSquashMonster (9:37:13 PM): 2000mm, on the other hand, is as big as a fairly tall man
guardsheep2000 (9:37:31 PM): regardless of whether I'm in a 19m tall mech plated in titanium
TheSquashMonster (9:37:37 PM): haha
TheSquashMonster (9:37:42 PM): agreed, nonetheless
guardsheep2000 (9:38:47 PM): a 19m tall mech plated in 117mm of duranium... which is something burlier than titantium... i geuss
TheSquashMonster (9:39:36 PM): hah
TheSquashMonster (9:39:41 PM): I'd prefer to be in the titanium one
guardsheep2000 (9:39:48 PM): lol
TheSquashMonster (9:39:52 PM): 'cause I've no bloody clue what duranium is
guardsheep2000 (9:40:31 PM): I think it's some sort of ... I don't know. It's fictional. It's pretty much the best armor in ToS
guardsheep2000 (9:40:39 PM): though it sucks for heat dissapation
TheSquashMonster (9:41:30 PM): ah
TheSquashMonster (9:41:37 PM): it's actually a material they made up for Startreck
TheSquashMonster (9:41:43 PM): all the ships are made of it
guardsheep2000 (9:41:45 PM): Heh
TheSquashMonster (9:41:53 PM): ToS steals from everything
guardsheep2000 (9:41:57 PM): Lol
TheSquashMonster (9:42:00 PM): with panache
guardsheep2000 (9:42:09 PM): I dunno. Ever heard of the Black Ray Gun from anything else?
guardsheep2000 (9:42:33 PM): a weapon that "makes a hole so perfectly round" that it can knock a titan over
TheSquashMonster (9:43:12 PM): can't say that I have
TheSquashMonster (9:43:25 PM): googling returns random comic book characters
TheSquashMonster (9:43:36 PM): but I don't get how making a perfectly round hole is more likely to knock a titan over
guardsheep2000 (9:43:55 PM): I dunno.
guardsheep2000 (9:43:59 PM): It's pretty cheesy
guardsheep2000 (9:44:01 PM): but hey, the weapon works
TheSquashMonster (9:44:04 PM): heh
TheSquashMonster (9:44:06 PM): suppose so
TheSquashMonster (9:44:10 PM): let me check something
TheSquashMonster (9:45:30 PM): yeah, if I did my physics right, the best weapon to knock a titan over would be something heavy that bounced off
guardsheep2000 (9:46:00 PM): What if the titan was running at about 60KPH (that's the slowest titan running full speed)
guardsheep2000 (9:46:09 PM): all you'd need to do is destabalize it
guardsheep2000 (9:46:17 PM): which is what the BRG is supposed to do
TheSquashMonster (9:46:52 PM): shooting it in the foot with the weapon I mentioned still would work better
guardsheep2000 (9:47:00 PM): man... can you imagine a 19m 200ton mech going 60kph crashing to earth?
guardsheep2000 (9:47:02 PM): skid mark
TheSquashMonster (9:47:06 PM): hahah
TheSquashMonster (9:47:15 PM): yeah, I was thinking about that
TheSquashMonster (9:47:30 PM): and then, the game's slow, but when you think about how long everything takes, and how big stuff is
TheSquashMonster (9:47:33 PM): it's bloody scary
guardsheep2000 (9:47:44 PM): yeah
guardsheep2000 (9:48:31 PM): I mean hell
guardsheep2000 (9:48:40 PM): a recon titan taking a nose dive is scary to think of
guardsheep2000 (9:48:44 PM): those things only way 40 tons
guardsheep2000 (9:48:53 PM): though they do move at like... 70 miles an hour or something
guardsheep2000 (9:51:50 PM): yeah
guardsheep2000 (9:51:53 PM): how fast is 120 KPH?
TheSquashMonster (9:52:14 PM): imagine two stacks of 34 cars strapped together going at freeway speeds, then image it falling over
TheSquashMonster (9:52:22 PM): (recon titan getting knocked over)
guardsheep2000 (9:52:35 PM): Yeah
guardsheep2000 (9:52:36 PM): Ouch
guardsheep2000 (9:52:40 PM): Woudl NOT want to be inside
TheSquashMonster (9:52:44 PM): and 120kph is 75mph
TheSquashMonster (9:52:48 PM): haha
TheSquashMonster (9:52:49 PM): yeah...

(...)(This is where it gets interesting. And scary.)

guardsheep2000 (10:41:35 PM): now imagine this
guardsheep2000 (10:41:49 PM): the previously mentioned 40-ton, 9-meter, 75-MPH mech
guardsheep2000 (10:41:52 PM): collideing
guardsheep2000 (10:42:01 PM): with another 40-ton, 9-meter, 75-MPH mech.
guardsheep2000 (10:42:31 PM): and these things don't have the same 117mm of armor as the bigger ones... more like 17mm
TheSquashMonster (10:44:43 PM): 44 million joules of energy each
guardsheep2000 (10:45:05 PM): I don't even know what that means, but it sounds dangerous
TheSquashMonster (10:45:11 PM): hmm
TheSquashMonster (10:45:32 PM): that's their kinetic energy. How much stuff you could do with the same amount of energy it would take to try to stop one of them
TheSquashMonster (10:45:53 PM): I'm trying to think of something to put it into context
TheSquashMonster (10:45:56 PM): what're they made of, steel?
guardsheep2000 (10:46:01 PM): Well I understood that, but I don't know how much 44 million joules would be
guardsheep2000 (10:46:28 PM): Steel, wires, probably some glass of some sort for the lenses on lasers... Titanium, duranium, millenia (whatever that is)...
guardsheep2000 (10:46:30 PM): *shrug*
TheSquashMonster (10:48:08 PM): heh
TheSquashMonster (10:48:19 PM): it's enough to raise the temperature of each by 3 degrees celsius
guardsheep2000 (10:48:29 PM): Lol!
TheSquashMonster (10:49:20 PM): which doesn't sound like much, but it's only that little 'cause they're huge
TheSquashMonster (10:49:32 PM): it's enough to melt 66kg of steel
guardsheep2000 (10:49:32 PM): heh
guardsheep2000 (10:49:36 PM): holy damn
guardsheep2000 (10:50:33 PM): what about the 60KPH 200ton 19m ones
TheSquashMonster (10:50:41 PM): one sec
TheSquashMonster (10:51:22 PM): still with the original "little" titans, that's enough to /boil/ 35kg of iron
guardsheep2000 (10:51:37 PM): Boil?!?!
guardsheep2000 (10:51:51 PM): as in evaporate?!
guardsheep2000 (10:52:00 PM): as in i am breathing iron steam?
TheSquashMonster (10:52:42 PM): yeah
guardsheep2000 (10:52:51 PM): fuck
guardsheep2000 (10:52:55 PM): magneto would be happy
TheSquashMonster (10:53:39 PM): hah
TheSquashMonster (10:54:03 PM): of course, most likely, only a tiny bit, if any, would boil, then a decent bit would melt, and the rest would just go up in temperature
TheSquashMonster (10:54:19 PM): I don't know enough about materials science to give the exact details
TheSquashMonster (10:55:44 PM): anyway, onto the bigger ones...
TheSquashMonster (10:56:03 PM): well, the amount of energy is enough to throw my calculator into scientific notation
guardsheep2000 (10:56:10 PM): lol
TheSquashMonster (10:56:36 PM): I'm pretty sure the temperature raise version will be less
guardsheep2000 (10:56:47 PM): yeah
TheSquashMonster (10:57:42 PM): wait, did that wrong
TheSquashMonster (10:57:50 PM): total energy is 56 milion joules
guardsheep2000 (10:59:08 PM): Hmm
guardsheep2000 (10:59:17 PM): I lied... looks like they go... Hmm
guardsheep2000 (10:59:23 PM): Takes 105 seconds to go 1KM
guardsheep2000 (10:59:27 PM): not sure how many KPH that is
TheSquashMonster (10:59:39 PM): think it's about 40
TheSquashMonster (10:59:43 PM): I'll calculate.
guardsheep2000 (10:59:51 PM): 34?
TheSquashMonster (10:59:57 PM): keep this number for reference: 122910.521 kg * K
TheSquashMonster (11:01:36 PM): and yeah, you're right, 34 kph
TheSquashMonster (11:02:23 PM): 200 tons moving at 34 kph has 18 million joules of kinetic energy
TheSquashMonster (11:04:48 PM): so, all told, nowhere near as impressive
guardsheep2000 (11:04:54 PM): yeah
guardsheep2000 (11:05:04 PM): just a lot bigger.
TheSquashMonster (11:05:30 PM): yeah
guardsheep2000 (11:05:44 PM): there's also 70, 100, and 140 ton versions
guardsheep2000 (11:05:52 PM): I dunno about their speeds off the top of my head though
TheSquashMonster (11:05:59 PM): yeah, I dunno
TheSquashMonster (11:06:06 PM): it's mass * velocity ^ 2
TheSquashMonster (11:06:27 PM): if you word it right, plugging it into Google will calculate it out for you
TheSquashMonster (11:06:38 PM): (34 kph)^2 * 200 metric tons
TheSquashMonster (11:06:44 PM): in the search field
TheSquashMonster (11:08:46 PM): I hope nobody runs numbers like this on the mechs from the game I'm designing
guardsheep2000 (11:09:20 PM): lol

Comments:
1. it's NOT called duranium, but Dullaroy, and it's not stolen from anywhere that I know of, it was made up I guess.
2. It's NOT the perfectly round hole that's responsible for the instability, maybe you guys should read a little closer, it's the sudden disappearance of the huge chunk of mass that throws the titan off balance. It's pretty explicit IIRC.
3. The interesting part, well, not that interesting, it's out of context. And isn't kin.en = 0.5 * m * v^2 ?

OK so my memory's off. Realize that I havn't read the weapon descriptions since before we left the old forum. That was like five or something years ago. And I was sorta close, wasn't i? They both start with Du.

Glad to see that there still is some interest in this game after all these years. I fire it up occaisionally but I'm so busy with other games I can't really put the time in it too often. 

it's windowed and you can play a few game minutes before needing to do something else, so for me it's a good solitaire replacement

BRG destabilizes moreso than other lasers for two reasons. First is that, as I recall, it fires a particle stream. Think of a laser, which is photons... Now, a particle stream is a laser made of atoms instead of photons. Quite a bit more mass getting chucked around, all told. (This is also why it heats a good bit more than other lasers, and why its 'black ray') The other reason is as the Iceman said, it's more the loss of that 'hole' of stuff that throws the mech off, more than just the hole itself. It would be like...

A laser is like a sword, in that you slash with it, and it burns off a good chunk of armor.
ACs, Missles, just about anything else, are more like sledgehammers, you just bash them really hard.
Black Ray Guns, on the other hand, are more like a rapier or a fencing foil. They're used for more precise strikes, and are more likely to hit a spot that will make you go 'Ow!' and bend over/flinch/recoil/*fall down* than a normal laser is. Is that a good enough analogy?

-bump-

Yay for physics!

How exactly do "meson guns" work? Does it actually involve real live mesons, or are they just a sort of armor-penetrating round with a delayed blast fragmentation/corrosive charge?

I assume the Tesla Bolt is probably an electron (lightning) beam guided along either a wire or a path of ionized air such as a UV laser could make.

Conventional lasers probably operate in the infrared spectrum (co2?) as that seems like it'd be best for melting slices into metal.

Neutron blasters, well, probably fire hard x-rays or gamma rays and not neutrons since all you need for those is a good old-fashioned cathode tube thingama jig.

What is a Cold Light Gun? is it some sort of freeze-ray, or is it just a sort of directed-energy weapon that because of it's unique construction doesn't generate much heat? If it is a freeze-ray, you should be able to use it to freeze water hexes solid so small titans can walk across them on ice.

Why are there no sonic-based harmonics weapons? That would be fun, I think... probably limited to flamethrower-equivalent range though. Also, an electro-whip for close combat that has an emp/destabilization effect?

A plasma gun is probably a type of laser that uses superheated plasma instead of gases, this makes more sense than trying to "throw" plasma at things far away.