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Power Plant

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odie:

--- Quote from: Destructavator on June 27, 2009, 04:24:44 pm ---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.

--- End quote ---

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 :P

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?.

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