Power Plant

[nerf5000]

Hey guys, from the description it looks to me that the AM containment should be able to lock itself down and if it does blow up it only takes itself out. I would however propose this:

Powerplant is damageable and may have to be repaired if aliens get to it, this is part of the original concept
If the powerplant is destroyed then the AM containment building gets destroyed as well (needs to be rebuilt)
If the aliens get to the AM itself then they can wipe out the base
If the powerplant is shutdown properly (lets call this just "securing the base"), the AM gets put on backup/droppeed down/secured/flooded with foam/whatever and can at most be destroyed, but it won't blow up the whole base

so:

base online:
powerplant destruction will destroy both buildings and they will have to be rebuilt (maybe an active powerplant can also destroy some adjacent buildings)
AM destruction will eliminate the base

base offline:
powerplant destruction hard/impossible to accomplish, and will only destroy that building (maybe set it to only damage it 50% max?, we can say everything gets flooded with impact foam and then has to be cleaned out for 5 days or so, this is already in the storyline for the AM [impact foam injections into the walls])
AM destruction will eliminate the AM building and nothing else

this introduces some cool choices and good reasons to turn the base off
there should be some penalties for turning the base off in-mission, but maybe the cooldown penalties are sufficient

[criusmac]

I'm not a physics person or anything, but I thought nothing we know could stop a proton anti-proton or electron negatron reaction, which is probably what the antimatter is, a bunch of anti-protons and negatrons.

So, if whatever energy barrier we're using to try to keep antimatter from contacting any matter fails, we probably lose a lot more than just the base.. I don't know how foam could stop it, or anything else.. like burying the thing.. An AM storage would probably always be running on its own (internal) power, so I think we can leave out any connection between the power plant and AM storage. Or, uh, is it something we're creating that we say can stop it? Which I guess is ok now that I think about it.. Who knows what the future will bring... but right now, as far as I've ever heard, there's no way to stop it, not even theories. anti-matter will basically react with any matter, of any type... I think.

I guess, if we really would to figure this out, we can find the explosive power generated by a single anti-proton proton reaction, we know the exact weight of the anti-proton, and we can simply calculate if there is enough power there to destroy the base. If there isn't, we simply destroy whatever percentage of the base the reaction would destroy, and place the center of the explosion on the anti-matter storage. Well, it will be quick to look up all this information anyway, and quick to calculate the damage.. I guess the only long part would be to calculate how much hp a base would have...

[vedrit]

From what I understand, anti-matter or not, it still reacts to magnetic fields, which is why strong magnets can contain in and prevent contact with non-anti-matter. Ofcourse, it has to be in a vaccum or else oxygen will cause the reaction.
But this is where the biggest thing comes from. The magnet is stronger than any that is naturally found on earth (Its an electro-magnet), and so it needs a constant supply of power, or else it will loose magnatism. Any naturally-ocuring magnets probably wouldnt even be strong enough in an emergency

[criusmac]

I think the best idea I have is destroy the anti-matter by using it. You can do whatever you want with the energy. If you want it to be controlled, it can't be instantaneous, but we could calculate how long it would take to safely consume the amount of anti-matter we have stored, and then during the mission, we start the countdown from when the order to consume the anti-matter is given.

If the anti-matter storage gets destroyed before the timer is up, we can then calculate the explosive power that remains, and.. err... I'm making this too complicated, aren't I?

[BTAxis]

Yes.

[Hertzila]

If the AM storage is made out of alien materials I'd imagine it could hold more or less of the explosion, at least with all the extra shielding the article talks about. And if only for gameplay purposes only AM storage should blow itself up if the powerplant is lost. 470 kilotons worth of TNT does make a big explosion but it would be really stupid otherwise.
Also Destructavators idea of covering it with more shielding to make it even more secure seems like a good idea to implement.

PS: It's positron, not negatron .

[criusmac]

Oh yeah, it is. XD Hehe. Positrons, only heard of those from Data's brain. >.>

I wonder how they contain the explosive power.. Granted, they have an extra few hundred years on us.

I actually have no idea how much explosive power anti-matter can produce. Nor do I know how much explosive power 1 kiloton of anything produces. I figure if you make the shielding strong enough to withstand an anti-matter explosion, the aliens aren't going to destroy it by randomly shooting it anyway.. Not even if they throw anti-matter grenades at it...

[Hertzila]

Well, 1 kiloton is about the amount our smallest nukes would make when detonated. I'd think with lots of stuff to block the explosion they could contain it to some extent but with 470 kilotons of TNTs worth of force I doubt it could be contained enough to save the base. However IMO, if only for purely gameplay reasons, it should only destoy itself if power is lost or otherwise it should have a backup power that lasted enoufg time to get power plant back up (this would actually also make more sense if aliens attack AM storage, instead of trying to make the container swiss cheese they would shoot the backup power and make it lose containment). Or is it meant to become the most important building in a base?

[slothlord]

um, a 1 kilogram antimatter/matter reaction generates 47 MEGAtons of energy, not 470 kilotons.  That's about the equivalent of 9 of the largest thermonuclear bombs.  I'm not sure if it is enough possible to shield against that much power...

*numbers from wikipedia articles on antimatter and nuclear bombs.

[Destructavator]

um, a 1 kilogram antimatter/matter reaction generates 47 MEGAtons of energy, not 470 kilotons.  That's about the equivalent of 9 of the largest thermonuclear bombs.  I'm not sure if it is enough possible to shield against that much power...

*numbers from wikipedia articles on antimatter and nuclear bombs.

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.

[BTAxis]

Note that antimatter in the game isn't quantified anywhere. There's just a number, but that doesn't say anything about how much it actually is. And, in my opinion, it should stay that way.

[Another Guy]

Actually it does. UFOpaedia says an antimatter storage facility holds up to 10 grammes of antimatter. Simply divide 10 grammes per antimatter storage facility max units and u have urself an exact quantity per unit.

[BTAxis]

Should have known. Maybe we need to take that out then.

[Another Guy]

Or let antimatter storage hold an ulimited amount of antimatter, thus u'll never know how much (anti)matter each unit represents and give the impression that it is a tiny one. It's beeing discussed on this topic.

[BTAxis]

Yeah, sounds okay to me.