Zeon as a power in the Battletech Universe

[RhoOmicronMu]

It's really small. They're called 'ultracompact' for a reason.

Far larger than the small fusion engines seen in Battletech cars.

One ton targetting computers, anyone?

Oh no, mechanical compensators are heavy. Who would have thought? If you want to compare computers you can get the same effect with a cybernetic implant.

The actual lattice of Minovsky particles created also serves to insulate the mobile suit from the great heat generated by operation of the reactor, making it easier to radiate heat; if it wasn't for the I-field used to catalyse the reaction, mobile suits would melt.

How dose that square with Stark saying they don't use much energy at all? If they produce so little energy and their reactors run so cool, why would they melt with such a huge surface area? The only thing I can think of to combine little power use with great heat is if beam weapons put out a lot of heat.

Do you have any actual evidence that BT reactors produce more power for a given reactor system displacement?

So far I've learned that Minovsky reactors produce more energy than Deuterium-Helium3 fusion and run pretty cool. I haven't found anything that gives hard numbers to say for sure.
I know a typical 100 ton Battletech fighter produces about 4.6 terrawatts.

Assume a unit is accelerating at 1G / 2 thrust points. Knowing the 2 thrust points, you know fuel consumption of the unit per second. (For example, a fighter has 80 points per ton. A turn is 60 seconds long. 2 thrust points equals 1/40th of a ton per minute, or 1/2400th of a ton per second: 0.4167kg of fuel per second.)

Next, find the thrust of the unit in kilograms force (this only works assuming 1G). Basically, it's the mass of the vessel in kilograms. For a 100-ton fighter, that's 100,000kg.

Next, divide the thrust in kilograms-force by the fuel consumption. For a 100-ton fighter, that's 100,000kg / 0.416666666666666666666666666 66666 kg/sec = 240,000 seconds.

That number is the "specific impulse," (Isp) a term you'll find in common use in rocketry discussions. For comparison, the shuttle's SRBs have an Isp of about 275 seconds, while the main engines reach about 453 seconds. You can read specific impulse to mean, "The rocket engine consumes 1 pound (or kilogram) of fuel per [Isp] pounds (or kilograms) of thrust."

Exhaust velocity is equal to Isp times G (9.8m/s/s). The shuttle's main engines' exhaust velocity is 453 seconds * 9.8m/s/s = 4493m/s. A 100-ton fighter's exhaust velocity is 240,000 x 9.8 = 2,352,000m/s (not quite 1% of light speed). It's reasonable and plausible for fusion rockets to deliver up to about 1 million seconds of Isp.

Plug exhaust velocity into the jet power equation and you have an inkling of how many watts a fighter or warship is blowing out its tailpipe. A 100-ton fighter's exhaust - at 1G - is delivering:

[2,352,000m/s] * [980,000 newtons] * 0.5 / 1 (for 100% efficiency) = 1.152 terawatts.

A typical 100-ton fighter can crank up to 4Gs, quadrupling power output.

Here are some numbers on larger craft.

The real problem is the energy required. All Small Craft, Dropships, Jumpships, and Warships break thermodynamics by getting more thrust energy than hydrogen fusion can produce realistically. Hydrogen fusion produces 3.4 x 1018 ergs/gram or 340,000 terajoules/ton. Thus, your typical Military Dropship with a burn rate of 1.84 tons/day/G has an energy potential of 625,600 terajoules per day or 7.24 terajoules per second at 1-G of thrust if you could somehow get 100% efficiency. However, if you run the numbers on even a 500-ton Dropship you get the following:

Ship Mass: 500,000 kg
Thrust @ 1G: 4,903.325 kN
Base Fuel Rate: 0.021296 kg/s
Base ISP: 23,478,261 seconds
Base Exhaust Velocity: 230,243,087 m/s (76.8% of C)

After factoring in Lorentz transformation of mass at velocities approaching C we get the following:

Ship Mass: 500,000 kg
Thrust @ 1G: 4,903.325 kN
Base Fuel Rate: 0.021296 kg/s
Lorentz factor: 1.26093435
Relativistic Fuel Mass: 0.026853 kg/s
Relativistic ISP: 18,619,733 seconds
Relativistic Exhaust Velocity: 182,597,205 m/s (60.9% of C)

Now that we know the true Exhaust Velocity, we have to determine the energy cost. The basic thrust formula is not enough, as relativistic effects have to be considered. In addition to the kinetic energy cost, there is the energy cost of forcing the propellant up to over 60% of C. Thus:

Thrust x EV x 0.5 = 447.6667 gigajoules/second
Relativistic Fuel Mass - Rest Fuel Mass = 0.005556935 kg/s
0.005556935 kg/s x C² = 499,432.4317 gigajoules/second
Total Energy Cost: 499.88 terajoules/second
Efficiency: 6,903.71%

So even a 500-ton Dropship is getting 69 times the potential energy of hydrogen fusion to get the thrust necessary to produce 1-G of thrust. In fact, anything with a 1.84 ton/day/G fuel usage rate with a mass over 56.5 tons is operating at greater than 100% efficiency. A 500-ton Dropship would have to use 200 times the fuel it does (368 tons/day/G) to get to a realistic 40% efficiency. This does not account for mass reduction as fuel is burned, however... but that gets things even further complicated. Cheesy

Even if it were true, what actual benefits would there be, since Gundams instantly make the entirety of BT mechs obsolete?

Cost and ease of use. Also, your fixating on Gundams. I was primarily referring to spacecraft. Getting large amounts of water or hydrogen is far easier than getting large amounts of Helium-3. Since Battletech fusion engines scale down a lot farther than Minovsky fusion engines you can put them in a lot more things. Fusion powered drones, light vehicles, and missiles.

That raises a question. UC Gundam warships can fire missiles, but do we know if their fusion powered? If not, the ability to slap a fusion engine in their would be an improvement.

[Stark]

Oh man, if you're going to 'analyse' game mechanics to get ludicrous powerplant outputs, its not going to end well for BT. Dare we say 'heat sinks are not what BT thinks they are'? And how large is the radiative area of an UCMR? There's a small area on the back of a Gundam, but it never glows (or even appears to get warm).

Its a bit sad that ONCE AGAIN a mech-centric thread is derailed into minuatae (like reactors etc) because nobody wants to talk about how hilarious its going to be watching Zakus butcher assault mechs and turn the Clan society upside down. Where do BT powers keep their warships? How likely is it Zeon will be able to steal more? With extra resources, how long until Zeon gets access to the later ridiculous suits?

[SapphireFox]

but they can not do so without being significantly larger and heavier for the power output.

Evidence? Stark claims that mobile suits require much less energy than mechs.

They also produce far more heat then the Minovsky cycle reactors necessitating bulky and heavy cooling systems that further degrade the power/weight ratios.

Dissipating heat requires far more bulk than mass and mobile suits are already ridiculously light for their volume. Just use a smaller reactor that only produces the smaller amount of energy a mobile suit uses and thus less heat.

What part of ultra-compact ultra light weight did you not grasp from the article? Seriously, they are already using the smaller lighter reactor. Did that the insanely light weight of the Mobile Suit came from nowhere?

As for the evidence, simple intelligent reasoning would tell you that a potently more efficient reactor that requires heavy bulky cooling systems is going to be equaled by a slightly less potently efficient reactor that is both lighter for equal power output and does not require the extensive cooling systems.

My question to you is what exactly is the power outputs for a reactor or at least a BT mech of equal size and/or weight?

Not to mention the Minovsky cycle reactors emit far less radiation

Battletech reactors produce vastly more radiation than Deuterium-He3 fusion and can be placed in the family car. Radiation isn't a problem.

No one said that you could not scale a reactor down. Also no one said that having a potential rad source in a car would be a smart idea. Just because you can do a thing does not make it a good idea.

I'm not suggesting using multiple reactors on mobile suits. Mobile suits are usually to small to put out Minovsky fields and don't need to have Minovsky reactors to use beam rifles.

the most famous being the Beam rifle used by the titular mobile suit RX-78 Gundam which utilize a technology called E-cap, the mobile suit does not need to spend lots of energy in compressing the minovsky particles, instead, most of the compression was done by the mother-ship and the mobile suit only need to provide minimum energy for triggering the final degernaration energy.

If that technology scales up even the number of warships with multiple reactors could be limited.

Even if you don't the Minovsky reactor to FIRE a beam rifle, you can still use the MS reactor to charge the weapon between battles without needing a larger target like a warship. You can't do things like that if you only use the heavier BT reactors.

As for the MS not putting out large Minovsky fields, individually that is true but if you have a group of MS you can easily have enough to put out a field. The other method would be to put M-warhead equipped missiles or bazooka rounds on the MS for the purpose of field spreading.

M-Warhead

Due to the effect of the Minovsky particles of interfering with low-frequency electromagnetic waves, it is used in combat as a form of warhead on missiles. The M-warhead will spread Minovsky particles in the battle field and prevent all known wireless communication and enemy detection methods except visible light.

The M-warhead technology was used extensively in the One Year War, but after the war, a treaty (The Granada peace treaty and later treaties include this as well) was signed to stop the mass dispersal of the Minovsky particle because the dense Minovsky particle areas became a major disaster for civilian communications and the economy. The M-warhead became like the nuclear warhead and was banned from the battlefield. However, most warships were still equipped with M-warheads and the captains can use the warheads whenever they get the authorization from higher-ranked officers, and Minovsky particle-scattering mobile suits were still widely used.

[Ford Prefect]

For whatever reason, Zeon can't just stay in space, they'll need worlds to take and hold in order to keep building stuff.

Gee, the reason why they might be short of resources couldn't possibly be the limited number of asteroids they had available, and which they had strip mined in order to fund their war build up? They had to rely on planetside resources because they're closer, not because of some inability to use asteroid mining. You can't exactly nip off over to the asteroid belt and pick up a new one like it's a trip to the shops. With no immediate pressure to engage in a war with a super-state several times their size, they have the time to go asteroid hunting. Jesus, Zeon-in-exile spent ten years living on a bloody rock in the middle of the asteroid belt, and the people living at Jupiter had no real problem living without an earth-like planet for a hundred years.

EDIT:

With extra resources, how long until Zeon gets access to the later ridiculous suits?

It took Zeon about a year to go from Zakus to better-than-the-Gundam Gelgoog Jaegers.

[Stark]

And armies of Hildolfrs? Without Minovsky I guess they wont' get some of the EF ludicrousness (maybe they won't even get beam rifles without the need for them).

[Ford Prefect]

It's pre-OYW so a lot of the factors which went into developing MS as they did in the actual series won't be present. Rapid doctrinal change in the wake of the Antarctic Treaty, the Minovsky Effect, the success of Project V later on, etc informed warfare in the OYW (which lead on into later eras). Like in the last thread they'll basically operating on One Week War rules.

[Commander 598]

Yeah, I thought it was pretty irrelevant to be honest especially considering that Degwin is little more than Gihren's puppet. Furthermore this whole thing is a minor secondary issue and with primary issue being that there's simply no reason to go planetside.

Explain this then:

A replacement for the ground mod Zaku II that was cancelled after they decided to spend the money on Doms and keep using Zakus instead?

Jesus, Zeon-in-exile spent ten years living on a bloody rock in the middle of the asteroid belt

Weren't most of those ten years spent in transit from the asteroid belt?

In case you can't keep up, Gundams require far less power than Mechs (their rated power output is absurdly low) and have no heat problems such as dictate the entire design of Mechs.

That's not fair, they have heat problems just like everything else...however it's usually because of their thrusters and isn't exacerbated by sticking a dozen weapons that spew armor melting lasers inside the hull.

[Balrog]

That's talking about how they can't win a long war because (obviously) there is MORE resources on Earth.

It doesn't say their habitats are going to die out due to resources; just that the EF can out-produce them.

I never said they would die out; people were claiming they could just ignore planets and mine everything they need from other space objects. That's clearly not the case, otherwise they would have had no need for mining operations on Earth.

PS Balrog the OP gives Zeon WarShips.

Yeah, six troop transports. They're not going to be able to wage total interstellar war with that few, not when they can be swarmed by larger number of fighters and DropShips. Meanwhile their normal warships can't go anywhere, and are similarly vulnerable to said IS space forces. They're going to have to start building more bigger, better ships with K-F drives, which means retooling their shipyards in a pretty big way. There isn't going to be any Zeon Blitz going on any time soon.

Gee, the reason why they might be short of resources couldn't possibly be the limited number of asteroids they had available, and which they had strip mined in order to fund their war build up? They had to rely on planetside resources because they're closer, not because of some inability to use asteroid mining. You can't exactly nip off over to the asteroid belt and pick up a new one like it's a trip to the shops. With no immediate pressure to engage in a war with a super-state several times their size, they have the time to go asteroid hunting. Jesus, Zeon-in-exile spent ten years living on a bloody rock in the middle of the asteroid belt, and the people living at Jupiter had no real problem living without an earth-like planet for a hundred years.

Which is why they chose to set up mining operations in the middle of an active theater of operations instead of, you know, getting more asteroids. Which would've been a hell of a lot easier without having to fight the forces of gravity and the Federation. They don't even have to go to the main asteroid belt, we have plenty of them relatively close to Earth's orbit; never mind any other heavenly body that wandered through waiting to be snagged. The remnants of Zeon hiding out in a rock doesn't really mean all that much.

[SapphireFox]

So far I've learned that Minovsky reactors produce more energy than Deuterium-Helium3 fusion and run pretty cool. I haven't found anything that gives hard numbers to say for sure.
I know a typical 100 ton Battletech fighter produces about 4.6 terrawatts.

You do realize what is coming out of the engine exhaust is not what you are going to get in electrical power form the reactor? If you believe that then I have a slightly used MS-11 Act Zaku to sell you.

Since Battletech fusion engines scale down a lot farther than Minovsky fusion engines you can put them in a lot more things.

Fusion powered drones,

Wastefull

light vehicles,

expensive and wastefull

and missiles.

Why the heck you would want to put any kind of reactor in a missile? A reactor is not an engine, it only produces power not thrust. A fusion rocket engine would be a different matter entirely.

That raises a question. UC Gundam warships can fire missiles, but do we know if their fusion powered? If not, the ability to slap a fusion engine in their would be an improvement.

IIRC they are standard rockets. Personally I think that the fusion engine would be better suited to being put on a ship first, then the worry about getting H3 for the reactors would be moot as the craft could move about the system like a dropship/warship. From that point it is easy to get to a Jupiter type planet to get H3.

[Commander 598]

They don't even have to go to the main asteroid belt, we have plenty of them relatively close to Earth's orbit

Correction: WE don't have to to the main asteroid belt. Given the at least hundreds of enormous colonies present in 0079, I think it's not unbelievable to assume that they may have snagged all the NEAs worth getting.

[Stark]

Dude I don't think the EF would have sat around and let the Zekes just snag some more asteroids to break the sanctions; the war would have started and they'd have lost the initiative.

[Ritterin Sophia]

A replacement for the ground mod Zaku II that was cancelled after they decided to spend the money on Doms and keep using Zakus instead?

Good. Now why would they need a replacement for totally terrestrial MS if they have no strategic reason to desire Earth?

Hint: There's a game titled after the reason and it involves the guy pulling the strings.

[SapphireFox]

Jesus, Zeon-in-exile spent ten years living on a bloody rock in the middle of the asteroid belt

Weren't most of those ten years spent in transit from the asteroid belt?

If you are talking about Haman Karn's Neo-Zeon forces on Axis then no it did not take ten years for the transit. In fact during Zeta Gundam an early episode showed Quattro Bajeena receiving intelligence from an ex-Zeon friend that Axis had started moving. In later episodes Axis had arrived in the earth-luna area. Since Zeta Gundam spans less than a year (0087 to be exact) it is obvious that the transit of Axis from the asteroid belt to earth space was less than a year.

[Swindle1984]

Well, since you've given them specs on some unspecified dropship, you've just obsoleted Helium 3 fusion.

On a side note, does the ares convention say anything about poison gas? If not then Zeon would likely use it to equalize the infantry number disparity. Also it would easier to keep a conquered population subservient through fear if you actually have a WMD you can use without worry.

Nerve gas attacks are seen as quite unsporting. See Kali Liao's rogue nerve gas attack and the Word of Blake's nerve gas attack on the Knights of the Inner Sphere. Ass you can see all of these fellows just got nerve gassed.

The more atrocities Zeon commits the more the Warden Clans are going to be saying, "We told you so, but no you didn't listen."

Those folks look pretty lively for people who just got nerve gassed. Interesting that their eyes are bugging out and they're clutching at their throats. Nerve gas exposure generally results in people dying within seconds, and people who survive or take longer to die experience spasms, vomiting, heavy salivation, and spasms. The whole choking, gasping thing just doesn't tie in with nerve gas, even if victims do eventually die of asphyxiation because their nerves stopped sending the signal to breath.



I should point out that NONE of the Inner Sphere states have warships in 3050; only Comstar and the Clans have them, and most of Comstar's warships are in mothballs in 3050. All the IS has is a bunch of jumpships and dropships, most of which are armed but not heavily. If the Zekes can fit K-F Drives to their warship designs, they'll have a massive advantage over their neighbors. Even their slower-than-light ships would give them a serious defensive capability in-system. Add in the radar-fuck made by their reactors and particle beam weapons, and combat range against Battletech space forces will be even shorter than their lost technology has made it.

Dunno how Mobile Suits like the Zaku II would fare against battlemechs though...

All in all, I'd say Zeon would be able to carve itself a small state, like the Free Rasalhague Republic, with its ability to crank out Mobile Suits and warships, but it wouldn't have the manpower to expand further, at least not for a while. If the Zekes also declared a defense policy similar to France's, where any military invasion of their home system would invite retaliation with nuclear weapons, the Lyran Commonwealth and Free Worlds League would likely consider whatever tiny empire the Zekes carved out for themselves not worth retaking, especially once the Clans invade.

If Zeon lies in the path for one of the Crusader Clans, it may well be fucked if it doesn't resort to nukes and other superweapons, just because some of the Clanners are idiotic and "honorable" enough to throw themselves at the Principality over and over again for the challenge. The Clans have much better technology than the Inner Sphere at this point, so they'd be much more difficult to handle, even if they do fight like idiots and have limited numbers.

[RhoOmicronMu]

Damn You Multi-Post!!!

nobody wants to talk about how hilarious its going to be watching Zakus butcher assault mechs

Zakus without beam weapons are meat for mechs. They have one not particularly impressive projectile weapon. This is in comparison to a mech's high megajoule beam weapons based off melting and vaporization of armor calcs. A 125kg gauss rifle slug travels 360Km in space within at least 60s low end 5*125kg*6000m/s^2=2,250mj. The lowest possible calc would be using the bear minimum hypersonic quotes from a few sources.

and turn the Clan society upside down.

I think I'm the only one who has even mentioned the Clans before your post. I'll say it again to make you happy. If Zeon starts committing atrocities like nuking or gassing civilian populations the Clans, or at least half of them, are liable to attack Zeon based on the Warden philosophy which states that the Clans purpose is to defense the Inner Sphere from an outside invasion.

Where do BT powers keep their warships?

Comstar keeps them in various secret naval bases in uninhabited systems mostly close to Terra or in the Sol system. The Clans have some in their home systems, some patrolling the invasion route, and some in the Invasion Corridor.

How likely is it Zeon will be able to steal more?

Not likely.

Before Zeon gets to the Inner Sphere they have to go through a bunch of planets left over from the defunct Rim Worlds Republic and the Circinus Federation.

You do realize what is coming out of the engine exhaust is not what you are going to get in electrical power form the reactor?

Yes.

Fusion powered drones,

Wastefull

light vehicles,

expensive and wastefull

That entirely depends on how hard it is to make those fusion engines. Eventually, years later, it will be something to think about.

Why the heck you would want to put any kind of reactor in a missile? A reactor is not an engine, it only produces power not thrust. A fusion rocket engine would be a different matter entirely.

You do in open cycle engines. If it helps pretend I said engine as that's what I meant.

Personally I think that the fusion engine would be better suited to being put on a ship first, then the worry about getting H3 for the reactors would be moot as the craft could move about the system like a dropship/warship. From that point it is easy to get to a Jupiter type planet to get H3.

I was speaking of future developments not priorities, but I agree putting them on ships would be the priority.

but they can not do so without being significantly larger and heavier for the power output.

Evidence? Stark claims that mobile suits require much less energy than mechs.

They also produce far more heat then the Minovsky cycle reactors necessitating bulky and heavy cooling systems that further degrade the power/weight ratios.

Dissipating heat requires far more bulk than mass and mobile suits are already ridiculously light for their volume. Just use a smaller reactor that only produces the smaller amount of energy a mobile suit uses and thus less heat.[/quote]

What part of ultra-compact ultra light weight did you not grasp from the article?

What it actually means in a comparative sense.

Seriously, they are already using the smaller lighter reactor.

Rip out the mobile suits engine and replace it with a 25 Fusion from a Savannah Master if you want light.

Did that the insanely light weight of the Mobile Suit came from nowhere?

I've always heard the mass of mobile suits was completely ridiculous.

As for the evidence, simple intelligent reasoning would tell you that a potently more efficient reactor that requires heavy bulky cooling systems is going to be equaled by a slightly less potently efficient reactor that is both lighter for equal power output and does not require the extensive cooling systems.

I disagree with your assumptions. If you can cram a fusion engine into the tiny one man 5 ton Savannah Master that's powerful enough to run the thing and fire a medium laser, an engine to provide the power to run a mobile suit, that commonly in this era doesn't even have an energy weapon, would be much smaller than a mech engine expected to fire gigajoules of energy weapons.

My question to you is what exactly is the power outputs for a reactor or at least a BT mech of equal size and/or weight?

That question depends on how powerful you believe Battletech energy weapons are. A good example is the Starslayer it has a standard engine and uses basic weapons. It has 5 energy weapons that do a total of 29 damage. Laser damage calcs are usually based off of quotes about how they melt/vaporize armor. I pulled up two calcs and they both give around 100mj per point of damage low balling it. So with that, call it 2.9 gj just for the energy weapons as a low end. It's been years since I've seen a good calc on how much energy it takes to move a mech, but that of course has to be included as well.

Looking at armor ablation rates (62.5kg per point of damage), and
assuming that BT armor has the same heat capacity (419J/kg*C) and melting point of cheap steel (1500C), and
assuming that BT armor has the same heat of fusion as steel (247,000J/kg), and
assuming that BT lasers melt off half the armor they destroy in a shot (30kg/pt), and
assuming that BT lasers waste no energy in doing anything but melting target armor, and
only measuring the energy coming out of the muzzle of the laser, not what's going in through the power cord,

Then you get about 30 megajoules per point of damage, if I didn't drop a decimal. A small laser thus delivers 90-100 megajoules in less than 10 seconds, most likely in a tiny fraction of a second. Power (in watts) is equal to energy (in Joules) divided by shot time (in seconds). A 100-megajoule shot in 1 millisecond thus calls for a 100 gigawatt laser. (Watts are sneaky like that: they don't say how much energy is delivered, just how fast you're delivering energy. A 1-joule laser with a 1-microsecond discharge is thus a 1-megawatt laser, but a very different megawatt laser than the ABL's.)

Anyway, 90-100 megajoules is a low ball value, noting all the overly-generous assumptions above. A few inefficiencies in the process could drive it up by a factor of 100.

As always, Cray, I enjoy your calculations. For those interested, a similar analysis for boron nitride, a likely candidate for the ceramic component (edit: haha, looking back at the TechManual, the ceramic armor component is boron nitride. Excellent!).

BN:
C_p = 794 J/(kg*C)
T_m = 2967 C
H_f = 3,263,760 J/kg
Again, assuming only 50% of the armor actually needs to be destroyed to effectively remove the rest, and that we start from 25 degrees C (that last part barely makes a difference, on this scale)...

gives 175 MJ/point of armor. As to the ratios of these components in the armor, I have no idea. To say nothing of the titanium honeycomb and polymer layers. If I make the gross assumption that out of every 62.5 kg of armor, 30kg is 'iron' and 30 kg is boron nitride, then we have to defeat 15kg of each to take out a full point of armor...

Fe:
Cp = 449 J/kg/C
T_melt = 1538 C
H_f = 247,292 J/kg

starting from 25C (subtract from each temperature change)...

Fe component: 14 MJ/point
BN component: 84 MJ/point

Total: 98 MJ/point = ~100 MJ/point

No one said that you could not scale a reactor down. Also no one said that having a potential rad source in a car would be a smart idea. Just because you can do a thing does not make it a good idea.

They've been doing it for at least a good 3-400 years without problem. Radiation shielding isn't an issue.

Even if you don't the Minovsky reactor to FIRE a beam rifle, you can still use the MS reactor to charge the weapon between battles without needing a larger target like a warship. You can't do things like that if you only use the heavier BT reactors.

Doesn't seem that critical if it takes that long. Go back and get ammo from the mothership like everyone else.

The other method would be to put M-warhead equipped missiles or bazooka rounds on the MS for the purpose of field spreading.

Notice how this isn't reliant on the reactor.

[Commander 598]

A replacement for the ground mod Zaku II that was cancelled after they decided to spend the money on Doms and keep using Zakus instead?

Good. Now why would they need a replacement for totally terrestrial MS if they have no strategic reason to desire Earth?

Hint: There's a game titled after the reason and it involves the guy pulling the strings.

Gihren's Greed aside, there was the matter of annihilating the Federation and later occupation to consider anyway. The problem is that there isn't a planet bound mortal enemy preparing to annihilate you and everyone will know that. I don't think many people are going to buy Gihren's Contemporary Footnotes Edition of Mein Kampf when there's nothing but neutral parties who probably can't even launch a satellite to get porn access across their nation facing you for the foreseeable future.

This is of course also disregarding that in the time it will take them to even achieve contact with Btech "civilization" there are countless things that could happen to the Zabis.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Gihren's Greed aside, there was the matter of annihilating the Federation and later occupation to consider anyway.

Why would we put Gihren's Greed aside? It's the cause of the entire war, Deikun had already gained his Republic's freedom from the Federation, there was no reason to start a war except for Degwin and Gihren's desire to control the entire Earth Sphere.

[Ritterin Sophia]

A 125kg gauss rifle slug travels 360Km in space within at least 60s low end 5*125kg*6000m/s^2=2,250mj. The lowest possible calc would be using the bear minimum hypersonic quotes from a few sources.

Mind giving a source for 6km/s? How about explaining what these range squares mean if we're using game mechanics.

[Ford Prefect]

Why would we put Gihren's Greed aside? It's the cause of the entire war, Deikun had already gained his Republic's freedom from the Federation, there was no reason to start a war except for Degwin and Gihren's desire to control the entire Earth Sphere.

Yeah, but that doesn't indicate any actual requirement for going to Earth, just that Degwin and Gihren are, surprise, greedy.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Why would we put Gihren's Greed aside? It's the cause of the entire war, Deikun had already gained his Republic's freedom from the Federation, there was no reason to start a war except for Degwin and Gihren's desire to control the entire Earth Sphere.

Yeah, but that doesn't indicate any actual requirement for going to Earth, just that Degwin and Gihren are, surprise, greedy.

That's what I'm saying. Why would Degwin and Gihren not attempt to attack other planets despite no need when that is exactly what they do? I'm disputing that HitlerGihren would not attempt to expand out of space despite no need to do so.

[Commander 598]

Deikun had already gained his Republic's freedom

If you count being stuck under a trade embargo by the only other real power so that your colonies become giant orbiting slums just to hold an ever increasing population as "freedom", sure. Even if Gihren had never been born they'd probably still go to war.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Deikun had already gained his Republic's freedom

If you count being stuck under a trade embargo by the only other real power so that your colonies become giant orbiting slums just to hold an ever increasing population as "freedom", sure. Even if Gihren had never been born they'd probably still go to war.

I'm sorry, I don't see a nation that can raise a military with fleets of ships and fighting vehicles capable of contesting a united Earth government's control as being entirely resource strapped. Zakus and Musai do not magically fucking appear from the ether.

[SapphireFox]

Evidence? Stark claims that mobile suits require much less energy than mechs.

The Minovsky Craft System, in use on such ships as White Base and Zeon's Adzam. The reactors in those craft are powerful enough to FLOAT the craft on subatomic particles. Do have any idea how powerful a reactor needs to be to put out enough electromagnetic force to defy gravity? As for Stark's claims I am quite sure he is right, but you don't put in more reactor than you need. More reactor means more weight and remember these are MOBILE Suits not mechs, mobility and maneuverability are paramount to survival.

Rip out the mobile suits engine and replace it with a 25 Fusion from a Savannah Master if you want light.

I'll see your savannah master, your car, and your fucking clan elemental and raise you a junior mobile.

suit

cockpit

Junior mobile's hyper beam gun

junior mobile suit
Even before the introduction of the mobile suit, powered suits and worker pods were used for mundane tasks like space colony construction. In later years, as military mobile suit technology makes its way into the civilian sector, scaled-down mobile suits are developed to fill this role. The smallest of these worker machines are known as junior mobile suits. These machines stand about two meters tall and lack an enclosed cockpit, requiring the operator to wear a normal suit when using the machine in space or on the lunar surface.

As you can see the Minovsky cycle reactor scales just as well as the BT style fusion reactor. Just to note the weapon of the junior mobile suit is capable of damaging and/or destroying an MS

That question depends on how powerful you believe Battletech energy weapons are. A good example is the Starslayer it has a standard engine and uses basic weapons. It has 5 energy weapons that do a total of 29 damage. Laser damage calcs are usually based off of quotes about how they melt/vaporize armor. I pulled up two calcs and they both give around 100mj per point of damage low balling it. So with that, call it 2.9 gj just for the energy weapons as a low end. It's been years since I've seen a good calc on how much energy it takes to move a mech, but that of course has to be included as well.

Your friends calcs leave out a few things that need to be mentioned for reactor calcs and I can not agree that that all the damage is being done over only a millisecond. Everything I have seen indicates that the damage would be done over a quarter of a second not a millisecond. which would bring it down to around to ~360-400 megawatt discharge. Not to mention that the power is coming from the CAPACITOR not the reactor directly. If the reactor was powering it directly at that power level then you could auto fire the weapon constantly.(within heat tolerances) This means that the charge must be built up to rather than judged from the discharge alone. This means it is pulling over several seconds reducing the demands on the reactor. We divide the output by the 3-4 seconds needed to get output means that the reactor is pushing in the 100 megawatt range to power the weapons. Given the numbering scheme for the reactor power It might be reasonable to assume that the power output of the reactor is the reactor number in megawatts.

They've been doing it for at least a good 3-400 years without problem. Radiation shielding isn't an issue.

So if they have a car crash and break the reactor you are telling me it won't go up? Bull, every reactor I have ever seen on a mech that gets trashed and doesn't safe itself by character shield and the like goes up in a nuke like explosion. Even if you put the most safety features you can on it there will always be a significant risk of rad poisoning if you either damage it or don't maintain it properly.

Doesn't seem that critical if it takes that long. Go back and get ammo from the mothership like everyone else.

They are call field options for a reason, you don't always have that option to return to a larger craft in the field especially in a terrestrial environment. The more options you can give your troops in the field then there will be a greater chance to get your people home safe.

The other method would be to put M-warhead equipped missiles or bazooka rounds on the MS for the purpose of field spreading.

Notice how this isn't reliant on the reactor.

Notice how it was supposed to be an other side look.

[PainRack]

The Minovsky Craft System, in use on such ships as White Base and Zeon's Adzam. The reactors in those craft are powerful enough to FLOAT the craft on subatomic particles. Do have any idea how powerful a reactor needs to be to put out enough electromagnetic force to defy gravity? As for Stark's claims I am quite sure he is right, but you don't put in more reactor than you need. More reactor means more weight and remember these are MOBILE Suits not mechs, mobility and maneuverability are paramount to survival.

? IIRC, isn't White Base and Adzam running on repulsor type technologies?

As you can see the Minovsky cycle reactor scales just as well as the BT style fusion reactor. Just to note the weapon of the junior mobile suit is capable of damaging and/or destroying an MS

Errr....... say what? The Btech fusion equipped car is literally the same size as your Toyota, and has min speed of 150kph.

Not to mention that the power is coming from the CAPACITOR not the reactor directly. If the reactor was powering it directly at that power level then you could auto fire the weapon constantly.(within heat tolerances)
This means that the charge must be built up to rather than judged from the discharge alone. This means it is pulling over several seconds reducing the demands on the reactor. We divide the output by the 3-4 seconds needed to get output means that the reactor is pushing in the 100 megawatt range to power the weapons. Given the numbering scheme for the reactor power It might be reasonable to assume that the power output of the reactor is the reactor number in megawatts.

The reactor power don't have a linear scaling based on movement speeds.

I won't comment on Cray and etc calcs since I always felt there were some points they missed out, yet, I'm uncomfortable challenging more than I ever did on CBT due to their status as well as technical training. I mean, Cray's an engineer. I'm not going to point my A level physics and say your reactor calcs don't make sense. Its more likely however that they were using it to show order of magnitude capabilities rather than accurate counts.

So if they have a car crash and break the reactor you are telling me it won't go up? Bull, every reactor I have ever seen on a mech that gets trashed and doesn't safe itself by character shield and the like goes up in a nuke like explosion. Even if you put the most safety features you can on it there will always be a significant risk of rad poisoning if you either damage it or don't maintain it properly.

They don't..... Seriously. The wham bam exploding mech was explictly pointed out in mutiple publications as Stackpole mistake and all such incidents were mechwarriors setting their reactors to explode and then ejecting. It even earned its own FASA term in canon literature.
After Microsoft got their hands on the franchise, TechManual even addressed the new incidents by pointing out how such incidents were actually "mistaken" nuke explosions. Part of the example was how the gas was actually just superheat steam/plasma being released into the environment.
My personal retcon was that the Blakists convinced the Feddies to switch over to Microsoft.

The funny part is, this is more accurate and plausible than wham bam exploding mech. A nuclear reaction isn't that easy.

TechManual does address the issue of irradiation of shielding material, but given the known safety record, this ONLY illustrates how effective such safety measures are.

A 125kg gauss rifle slug travels 360Km in space within at least 60s low end 5*125kg*6000m/s^2=2,250mj. The lowest possible calc would be using the bear minimum hypersonic quotes from a few sources.

Errr.... No. That's the ACCEPTED timeframe. The min time frame is 10 minutes, not 1.

The problems with BattleSpace calcs have been pointed out before. Its literally impossible to reconcile all the range possible. Remember, the NAC is a MT level weapon, yet, the nukes don't scale properly. And that's ignoring the nuke crit, which screws up all plausible scaling.

[Zinegata]

The original setting notes for Mobile Suit Gundam stress that the colonies required quite a number of precious resources that could only be collected on Earth (heavy metals like uranium being mentioned), without which the long-term viability of life in a space colony would be doubtful even with extensive asteroid mining.

The concentration of uranium in asteroids may be quite low; it'd be hard to sift it out. Since the mass of such you require is so small, launching it up from Earth is more cost effective.

There's also some question about some life sustaining elements being rare in asteroids. It was known that they weren't available on the moon, and they were unsure about the asteroids.

Today, we're fairly convinced that the asteroids do provide these elements, but in 1979, they weren't so sure. The space colonization papers conservatively said they would be taken from Earth, and Gundam surely followed their lead.

Probably. Note that the original setting notes do refer heavily to the space colonization papers - which is they the space colonies follow a real-life proposed design.

But, the papers point out: the mass of such minerals is a very tiny fraction of the total, and they can be recycled perfectly. Thus, it is a small, one off cost to launch it from Earth, which doesn't hurt the cost estimates much.

The problem though, is the growing population. The series make it pretty clear that Side 3 was suffering horribly from overpopulation, and had to resort to "sealed" colonies. So while colonies may continue to survive, they can't expand and they will certainly have a hard time making more nukes.

In any case though, hitting Earth during the war was certainly due to reasons other than lack of potassium and uranium.

I would think being able to mine resources on Earth was indeed reason enough to go there. But if we're gonna look at the political reasons, look no further than Char's dad - Zeon Deikun.

It has become very popular nowadays to depict the One Year War as a "War of Zeon Independence", but the original goal of Zeon Deikun wasn't independence. Contolism's main premise was that Spacenoids should be the one deciding the fate of humanity as a whole, as opposed to the existing structure where Earthnoids dictated policy to the colonies. The setting notes also point Deikun as the one being worried about potassium running out, but as you mentioned they were working off 70s research papers, and to be blunt Deikun is a politician anyway and he might not have understood the concept fully.

When the Zabis took over, they exerted great efforts to legitimize themselves as Deikun's successor (which may or may not be sincere). Ghiren's "Master Race" speech in the timelines, which proclaimed Spacenoids a superior species vs Earthnoids, was in many ways just the logical conclusion of Contolism's basic premise.

Hence, invading Earth and ensuring domination over it was part and parcel of Zeon ideology.

That doesn't change the fact that invading Earth was ultimately tactically sound however. The Federation built an entire battlefleet from a single military base that was enough to bring the war back to Zeon's doorstep. If other bases - i.e. the massive California Base - had remained in Federation hands, one could only imagine the mind-boggling numbers that could have been deployed against Zeon.