Power Plant

[odie]

In light of this perhaps we should change the scale of all the amounts of antimatter in the game, meaning UFOs would have less, the amounts the facility would hold would be less, etc.  The devices that use and contain them could stay the same though, and the argument and reasoning for that would be that a lot of shielding and effort to safely contain antimatter would be necessary.  I've heard in real life of dangerous materials where a huge, special container and lots of machinery is needed to hold and/or transport a tiny amount of the stuff.

Yupz its logical.

And yes, in real life, hazardous materials are actually stored WELL AWAY from populations. And prob heavily guarded.

See that thread for more inputs from me.

[romanovzky]

Hello people,

I'm in a physics major and I just want to say somethings.

First of all, AM is really difficult to contain, with or without technology way ahead of us. But for the sake of the game we are considering that the alien technology is really a good one

Second, the anti-matter related "explosion" comes from the annihilation of matter by anti-matter, the numerical values are easy to obtain: E=MC^2 . I say "explosion" since there is no chemical reactions, it is not an explosion per se.

Joining these two points, assuming the existence of a way to "consume" AM in order to produce energy, explosive material, etc, we are considering different levels of magnitude, example: a grenade should not have more than a little amount, although AM thrusters might use more.

Nevertheless, let's assume that the AM storage keeps AM for all the usages possible and imaginary, we are talking about a considerable amount of AM per base, which consists of a considerable potential of danger. In fact, I assume that any storage has the enough AM to produce really messy shit.

With this I can only see to possible options:

1) shutting down the power plant leads the AM storage to fail and AM consumes all of the base, plus both invading and defending teams and aircraft. Big explosion, no one gets to tell the story, base get's destroyed.

2) for the game's sake, and to keep the strategy interesting: shutting down the power plant leads the AM storage to fail and AM consumes the storage and/or the nearby facilities and/or soldiers.

I guess if we would want a game 100% scientifically correct we would have to change a lot and risk the game to loose interest.
On the other hand why do a game with real scientific nomenclature and references?

I let you to continue the debate.

Just on more thing, keep up the awesome work!

[Hertzila]

IMO AM-storage should have a backup generator/power in case of main power failure. If and when aliens first knock powerplant out or you shut it down the storage goes to backup power. Since the AM-storage itself is well shielded it would be pretty stupid to try to blow it up directly. So instead aliens would try to blow the backup power making the AM-storage lose containment and AM explode with the base/part of it.

@slothlord: So then 10 grammes would make a 470 kiloton explosion, right?

[odie]

Okie,

We also need to consider this:

Lets stand in the shoes of the aliens.

Do we want to destroy the humans (and possibly us - the aliens) altogether (aka kamikaze mission).

Do we want to capture the aliens' facilities (and gain more insights) and possibly rescue our POWs?

Either way will decide if aliens want to kamikaze, rescue and capture, or rescue and goof off.

Then we can decide if they wan to blow up the place at all..... and if AM is 'destroyable'.

Yupz.

[slothlord]

no wonder the original x-com team decided to make elerium as the alien power source. 

maybe you could say that the antimatter building in the base is just the "access point" for the REAL storage facility which is buried way, way deep down.  i dont think theres any practical way to shield the base from an antimatter reaction of any scale (10 grams, 100 grams, whatever.).

unless...wait a sec, what do the aliens use to store antimatter?  cant Phalanx just copy whatever the aliens use?  we should stop thinking in terms of earth tech, since Phalanx is using the antimatter to power alien tech therefore alien tech should be used to store it.  hell, it doens't even matter that the engineers don't understand how it works so long as it can be reproduced and made to work for us.  simple, elegan't solution dont you think?.

[Hertzila]

It all depends in which way they decide. If the container itself is at the normal height along the other base, it should defianetly have backup power instead to be destoyed (this also solves what happens if you shut down the powerplant before the mission). This would also destroy the base/part of it in case both power sources are knocked out.
If it is deep underground and the "facility" is no more than entry point, a power failure means "only" lost antimatter but the base is safe. Backup is recommended but not necessary, since a beforehand shutdown of powerplant doesn't mean your base will get destroyed in the ensuing explosion.

Personally I like the former suggestion more. [/IMO]

slothlord, if I remember correctly, alien containment means basically the way they keep AM from touching matter (ie. very strong magnets/how they are made). And their solution to AMs dangerous nature is to jettison it when necessary which obiviously isn't an option.

Edit: And even then they only keep a minimum amount of AM in their "fuel" tanks which again isn't really an option for PHALANX.

[homunculus]

alien containment, as far as i remember, is where you store live and dead aliens, not antimatter, huh.

someone here said the am storage would be shielded and the aliens would rather attack the backup power source.
but then, the backup power source could be shielded as well.

maybe the backup would have enough power tho enable getting rid of the am in the am storage without an explosion, and in that case, when power plant fails, and you switch am storage to backup power, you will loose am.

and while we are at it, i think we might want to consider renaming the game from ufo-ai to ufo-am.

[Hertzila]

I'd rather have a timelimit in which you must restart/rebuild the powerplant in case it fails (remember that, while not stantard procedure, you can shut the powerplant off yourself as a precaution) and in case you are not able to you will lose it all. If it's rare, it should not be lost too easily IMO. And if they are even going to hope to block the explosion they are going to make the storage itself as shielded as heck but in-game you can say that thanks to cooling problems the backup power needs to be more lightly armored or else it would probably break.

What we/I referred here as alien containment was the thing aliens use to store their antimatter in-flight, not the facility in which you keep your captured aliens.

Also, was that last line a joke or something? If it was, I didn't get it.
E: Or was it meant to poke fun at all this talk about antimatter? If that's the case then .

[homunculus]

afaik, people usually pay most attention to the beginning and the end, and the middle part is mostly skipped.
that's why the beginning and the end is the best place for (friendly) insults, (friendly) deliberate misunderstandings and some (friendly) sarcasm.
the downside is that those could create some real confusion, and i should be sorry for that.

the last remark (ufo-am would be short for ufo-antimatter) was about the many pages long discussion splitting hairs about the details of how the am storage should blow up, although you can see i am contributing to the spam myself.

the reason why i think backup power should just enable to dispose of the antimatter safely is because building a new power plant would take a long time.
and you might not even have the finances to start building the power plant right away.

i think the countdown on tactical screen after switching off am-storage would be extremely cool and all, but then the game as it is now would become somewhat am-storage centered imho, and i would suggest to call it ufo-am accordingly.

[Hertzila]

I get what you mean. That might be what you get when you aim to do hard scifi/realistic stuff. The only thing I really would like to see as much as gameplay is concerned is the antimatter being safe even if you shut your powerplant down. Backup power seems to be the most convinient for this. (Also I do realise that I'm continuing talking about AM.)
Also sorry for being slow, as I sometimes might be.

[Borsti67]

May be we should think about some self-containing shield...
Let's say, normally the AM-storage is powered by the base's plant.
In case of a power outage, the storage will behave like an AM-reactor - it will consume AM to hold up the shield (and ONLY that) until external power is restored or the antimatter is exhausted.
This way we'll never see "KA-BOOM", only the amount of AM will drain.

[slothlord]

Our only major successes have come from studying how the aliens store their antimatter. We're confident we can employ the same magnetic storage techniques, creating special facilities for safely storing up to ten grammes of antimatter. I've sent you a set of blueprints in a separate message to peruse at your convenience. We've also designed antimatter fuel tanks that should fit in our interceptors given some major overhaul. Of course we'll need a full understanding of the alien engines before we can begin incorporating it.

that's an excerpt from the wiki(ufopaedia) on antimatter research.

The Antimatter Storage facility is designed to safely store antimatter for later use, at least as safely as antimatter can possibly be stored. It is based around an advanced magnetic containment system we've derived from alien antimatter technology, which we call the 'inner shell'. The 'outer shell' consists of several radiation airlocks over the main passages, a heavily-armoured control room, and a host of other security and containment measures -- all designed to keep any radiation inside the outer shell.

The outer shell's design borrows heavily from that of UN nuclear ammo dumps. In case of problems in the inner shell, there's an automatic security system which will lock down the instant containment drops below safe levels. The facility will first close its blast doors, then secure every airlock with tungsten locking rods, fill the outer shell atmosphere with radiation-retardant gas and inject anti-shock foam behind the walls, and then try to contain the inevitable blast.

This procedure will not give any personnel caught inside time to escape, but that's the price we'll have to pay if we want to have a chance of saving the entire base.

To understand how dangerous this facility really is, building an Antimatter Storage at one of our bases will require us to list that base with the UN nuclear site register. At full capacity -- 10 grammes of antimatter -- just one storage facility will be containing the equivalent of nearly half a megaton of TNT. While this isn't much compared to modern thermonuclear weapons, it's enough to turn the entire base and everything inside to cinders in less than a second. It's difficult to 'blow up' antimatter, but under the wrong circumstances, it can happen.

Even if no explosion occurs, a loss of containment would result in the annihilation of the stored antimatter with the normal matter of the containment system. If there were any fault or damage in the outer shell at this point, then the ensuing blast of gamma radiation and high-speed particles would escape and strip the area clean of life. The base would be poisoned and rendered uninhabitable for centuries to come.

and that's from the wiki(ufopaedia) on the antimatter storage base facility.

seems like the safety measures (what little possible that is) are already built in...what was the point of this thread again?

the only way to shield the base would be to create some kinda force field or alter the curvature of space (like a black hole) around the antimatter storage building. 

although it might be possible to simply purge the antimatter a microgram at time into a sealed blast room made of alien alloy. 

but frankly, if you didnt bury the antimatter building in a corner of your base then let the aliens blow it up...you probably deserved it.