SuperScorpion Light Tank(Or:What Really Made the AFV Obsolete.)

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Retry
11/26/13 09:51 PM
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To begin with, the sole purpose of the SuperScorpion design is to prove that, at least in the beginning, AFVs were not inferior to 'mechs. In addition I will add my insight to what technology really made 'mechs the "king of the battlefield", and in consequence made AFVs seemingly sub-par in comparison.

Let's start the 'end' of the reign of Armored Fighting Vehicles with the birth of a new type of weapon of warfare, the Battlemech.

The very first battlemech to ever be constructed according to fluff is the Mackie. The prototype Mackie variant, the MSK-5S, was not exactly a looker, but it got the job done in the combat trials. More of a proof-of-concept to battlemechs, nowadays you could make a medium mech with more firepower than the Mackie.

The Mackie had to be tried out first, but on what? Four Merkava Mk.VIs were modified for use in the very ever combat trial in history. The Merkavas were decimated. The incredible victory paved the way for more research and monetary investments into Battlemechs, along with a bias towards them.

An incredible outcome! One mech blew up four Heavy Tanks! Clearly this proves the superiority of the battlemech... or does it?

Dig a bit more and the combat trial seems less enthralling. These particular Merkavas had only 4.5 tons of BAR 7 armor. This would be less than notable on a VTOL, let alone a 75 ton MBT! On top of that, in order to fit a remote controlled version the LRM/10 was sacrificed. It's only main weapon after that is an AC/5, making it drastically undergunned for it's weight class. The closest equivalent I can think of is this tank being a Charger Mech without the speed or the armor... In essence the combat trial was more of a new tech vs. old tech, unguided vs. guided missiles.

On that thought, why wouldn't someone make the first Makkies RC? Did no one figure that the test pilot was in danger to a swift hit to the cockpit?(Obviously this didn't happen, but regardless, NO ONE figured that this was an unnecessary hazard to the pilot?)

So milleniums go by, people get killed, life goes on. Tanks are sidelined for Mechs, often even subjected to salvage to benefit Mechs. All because everyone believes that Mechs are superior to Tanks. They will be soon, but only with the introduction of Double Heat Sinks. I will elaborate on that point later.

Why aren't tanks inferior to Mechs at this point? The simple answer is heat. Let's compare mounting fusion engines on tanks as opposed to a mech. The tank will earn 10 heat sinks, tonnage free. This is the same as a battlemech. The key difference is that the tank only counts energy weapons for heat, and thus only requires heat sinks to continuously fire the energy weapons. The battlemech, in contrast, has to take heat into account with every weapon, more heat to manage and balance! A tank can carry relatively high-heat AC/20s and pack multiple moderate heat LRMs and SRMs along with the energy weapons and fire all day provided they have ammunition. The Mech can't do the same, with single heat sinks they will be at risk for overheating.

So why exactly aren't tanks more prominently shown? Why don't they have a greater role? Apart from the obvious that this is a Mech game, the answers are short and simple. The commanders are thick and most AFVs of the era are god-awful in design.

Though by commanders I mean almost everyone in the Battletech universe. Commanders, engineers, priveledged mech pilots and whatnot all believe that the battlemech is a superior fighting machine and strip tank fusion engines to power their own mechs. This leaves the vees with the absolutely worst equipment available to them.

If that wasn't enough, these problems were compounded by horrific AFV design. Most 'mech designs without improved technologies like XL engines or ER PPCs have sufficient armor and an OK armament, often only worrying about heat. This would have been a perfect place for tanks and other vees to take the fray. This doesn't happen... one way or another primitive vee designs tend to be completely screwed up one way or another to the point they are hardly usable. Designs like the Bulldog MBT use energy weapons without a fusion engine, wasting hordes of tonnage and potential. It also lacks any significant armor, having less than half of max. You can cure this design with a fusion engine and an overall vehicle downsize to 40 tons, while still having enough spare tons to max the vehicle's armor protection.

The Ontos Heavy Tank has an insane ML array but also has dangerously thin armor. Stripping two MLs from the chassis is an easy way to double your armor protection without compromising your firepower. It may have a BV that is higher thanks to the substantially increased armor protection, but what kind of military thinks in those terms?

Fun fact:You can reduce the Ontos's tonnage from 95 to 90 without removing anything!

Below is my refit of a Scorpion Light Tank. A fusion engine allowed me to up the speed to 5/8 from 4/6, nearly double the armor protection, and exchange the AC/5 for a PPC with a similar range profile but x2 the damage and no ammo dependancy. Double the damage, near double the armor protection, and an increase in speed. Of course the upgrade isn't very cheap, about doubling the cost of a normal Scorpion, but you can still buy bundles of these for even a single light mech and probably outgun many mechs it's size.

Generally vehicles tend to equip themselves with energy weapons they are not refined to wield(non-fusion engines) or simply sacrifice significant armor protection(almost every low tech vehicle).

Vehicles seem to get more respect later on, but strangely that's the point where battlemechs take the lead. Double Heat Sinks are developed and 'Mechs gain heat efficiency. A four PPC energy boat mech may be unheard of back when the only heat sinks available were singles, but now they can be done viably.

Vehicles can't, getting the short end of the stick. Some handwavium tells us that the Double Heat Sinks are too bulky to be fit on a vehicle... Never mind 10 clan doubles are as bulky as 20 singles and vehicles have no problem fitting those in. Ultimately it was both a way to balance vehicles and to push Battlemechs ahead, balance because... well... Imagine a Schreck with max armor and 3 cERPPCs. Sure, tanks still don't have to worry about heat other than from their energy weapons, but now they can't come close to competing with 'mechs with energy weapons which are arguably some of the most powerful and compact weapons in the game.

In conclusion, battlemechs are not inherently superior to the AFV. The battlemech thanks to handwavium enjoys exclusive priveledge technologies, especially Double Heat Sinks. Perhaps if engineers and designers kept on focusing on vehicle technologies they may have actually gotten somewhere in terms of general technology, both civil and military...

You probably already figured this and this is probably nothing new, so I guess I'm just ranting.
----
SuperScorpion Light Tank
IS Introductory Box Set
25 tons
BV: 612
Cost: 654,167 C-bills

Movement: 5/8 (Tracked)
Engine: 125

Internal: 15
Armor: 112
Internal Armor
Front 3 34
Right 3 20
Left 3 20
Rear 3 12
Turret 3 26

Weapons Loc Heat
PPC TU 10
Accords12
11/29/13 02:13 PM
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I'd honestly still roll with the 4 regular scorps and change the cbills would buy me.
Retry
12/01/13 01:21 AM
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Hmm, don't like it? Other than the probability of fusion engines being rare most of the time, why not?(They would probably only need one facility to produce the 125 fusion engines though)

The normal IS PPC is pretty common and is albeit lowish tech, you won't run out of those. The PPC also unties you from logistical strains. You don't have to stop to refuel a fusion engine. A faster top speed lets you move around the tank better to where they need to be in a campaign setting.

The SuperScorpion can probably hold it's own well against similar tonnage mechs like the Commando, Stinger, Wasp, Owens, Locusts, and so on. If you are loading up vehicles on a dropship and don't have all the space in the world this may be something to consider.

The normal, AC/5 scorp has a movement profile of 4/6, 4 tons standard armor, and is limited in ammo(20 shots I think). The AC/5 has the PPC beat in the fact that the AC/5 has access to different ammunition types like precision ammo, but that's about it. Otherwise the origional scorpion is slower, less powerful, and not very well armored, certainly not something you'd place anyone you liked in.

IMO the SuperScorp is to the Scorp as the WWII Pershing was to the Sherman. You just know one pershing is worth more than multiple shermans.(IMO ofc)

As for spare change...
2 AC/5 scorpions cost 654,166. That means your spare change is a total of one C-Bill. Enjoy your cup of coffee sir!
Accords12
12/01/13 07:16 AM
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Hmm, I honestly remember the Scorp being 125ish thousand cbills. Oh well guess I was wrong there.
Retry
12/01/13 11:39 AM
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If the regular scorp was that cheap the SuperScorpion wouldn't look nearly as appealing, that's true.

So... will that be a SuperScorpion for you or two Scorpions and some coffee?
His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
12/01/13 07:12 PM
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Since one C-Bill is worth about $5 USC that would be an espresso coffee and not just a cup of Joe.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.

I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
Retry
12/01/13 07:15 PM
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It's still coffee, is it not?
TigerShark
12/01/13 07:33 PM
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Another option here are Fuel Cell engines. You can increase the speed of the unit to 5/8 or 6/9 after ditching the front-mounted MG + Ammunition. Or keep it at 4/6 with a Large Laser. Either way, you improve the vehicle for minimal cost (6/9 with an AC/5 runs you around 489,000 C-Bills; 450,000 at 5/8).
Retry
12/01/13 07:42 PM
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I thought about using a fuel cell, but then the PPC wouldn't fit. And I love PPCs so I guess I'm biased for them...
Accords12
12/01/13 10:23 PM
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I'd probably still roll with 2 Scorps, (not that the super is bad but) 2 Tanks are pretty useful and I'm a sucker for ballistic weapons on Combat Vees, Scorps with ACs also mean my PPCs and associated parts are freed up for mechs. I'd probably take a good cup of tea instead of that coffee though. *Britishness intensifies*
CrayModerator
12/02/13 06:16 PM
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Quote:
I thought about using a fuel cell, but then the PPC wouldn't fit. And I love PPCs so I guess I'm biased for them...



The fuel cell engine lacks the heat sinks for big energy weapons on a small chassis.

On another note, it's worth considering the operating costs of the vehicles. Fuel and (not very relevant here) ammo can rapidly make a fusion-powered, energy-armed vehicle more affordable than an ICE- (or fuel cell) powered, ammo-armed vehicle. The draft Force Operation rules and costs in prior publications (like MW3rd edition, AToW, and Tech Manual) indicate those consumables can burn up your savings pretty quickly.
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,25792.0.html
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Retry
12/02/13 06:35 PM
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Fuel cell engines don't have much of an issue, as long as something of yours has a fusion engine it can make you your fuel.
TigerShark
12/02/13 07:31 PM
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Yeah. Fuel cells run off of methanol or hydrogen; far more common materials than petroleum. Granted, you'd still have to have them on hand, but they don't require the same effort. ICEs are really impractical for military applications.
Retry
12/02/13 07:51 PM
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Hydrogen is a byproduct of the fusion reaction of fusion engines.
How convenient!
CrayModerator
12/03/13 06:58 PM
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Quote:
Retry wrote:
Hydrogen is a byproduct of the fusion reaction of fusion engines. How convenient!



BattleTech fusion engines do not produce a hydrogen byproduct, they produce a helium byproduct. Like most fusion reactor concepts, reactor experiments, and stars, BT fusion engines use hydrogen fuel. (The protium isotope, hydrogen-1, if you're curious.) For a 'Mech-scale fusion engine, the byproduct is a few grams of inert helium per year.

However, the energy required to separate hydrogen from water (cutting hydrogen-oxygen chemical bonds) is far, far less than the energy produced by the nuclear fusion reactions. So, BT fusion engines can easily power a water electrolysis unit and gas compressor to refuel themselves off water. They can even provide fuel cell engines and aerospace fighters with tons of liquid hydrogen. The rules for this are provided in Strategic Operations.

Quote:
Tigershark wrote:
Yeah. Fuel cells run off of methanol or hydrogen



BattleTech fuel cells run on hydrogen. See Tech Manual and Strategic Operations for details on fuel consumption in combat vehicles by engine type.

Quote:
far more common materials than petroleum.



Methanol is much less common in nature than petroleum, at least on Earth. Methanol is mostly a trace biological product in nature, so it has to be manufactured. It is primarily produced from coal or natural gas at 1% (27 to 29 million tons / year) of the production rate of petroleum. Meanwhile, petroleum sits in big puddles of dino juice underground that are being tapped at the rate of Billions of tons per year (at 1980 - 2013 production rates) with at least some decades left to those oil fields.

Complicating the comparison of methanol-vs-petroleum commonality, methanol can be converted to petroleum for little more effort than required to make the methanol in the first place. (See Mobil's methanol-to-gasoline process, an early 1970s technology.)

Hydrogen is abundant to the point of making up most of the universe's observed mass. However, like methanol, it's not in a convenient form on Earth. Currently, most hydrogen production is a byproduct of petroleum refining and natural gas extraction.

Now, speaking of BT...

Hydrogen, purchased on the open market, is the most expensive fuel in BT (per StratOps and earlier publications). Like in the real world, it is energy-intensive to produce, liquefy, and keep refrigerated at its ultra-cryogenic temperatures, and that's reflected in its high cost per ton (15,000CB).

Alcohol (methanol, ethanol, etc.), natural gas, and petroleum are all within a small distance of each other: 1200, 1500, and 1000CB per ton, respectively. In the 31st Century, it's still usually easiest to stick a straw in the ground to let out dead space-dinosaur juices, so that tends to dominate ICE fuel choices for budget-minded militaries. However, multi-fuel ICEs can make use of alcohol or natural gas.

Hydrogen has a price cheat, though: per Strategic Operations, a handy (military) fusion engine can electrolyze water. Per the pending StratOps errata, a fusion engine will be able to refill several fuel cell engines of its own rating per day, assuming you can find water.

Quote:
ICEs are really impractical for military applications.



ICEs work fine in areas with good supply lines, and they're easier to manufacture in BT than the alternatives. Their fuel is also cheapest in normal circumstances.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Retry
12/03/13 07:32 PM
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Massive mistake on my part, I was a bit tired that day. Thanks for the correction. Either way, end result is that the fusion engine can refuel fuel cell vehicles.
TigerShark
12/03/13 09:25 PM
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Yes, if you find worlds that went through 100% identical processes as the Earth's carboniferous period, then petroleum is common. If the planet is younger or never had this period of dense vegetation/high oxygen content, combined with the pressure and time it takes to condense these materials into fossil fuels, then it won't matter how many straws you stick in the ground. You get dirt.

Alcohol can be made from transplanted crops and is much easier to come by in a real-world sense. Where would you drill for oil on Mars, Venus, Mercury, etc.?
Retry
12/03/13 10:01 PM
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You could make algae farms to make biodiesal, one acre of algae for farming biodiesal allows you to harvest more often and overall have a much higher net yield than traditional crops.
TigerShark
12/04/13 02:13 AM
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That is very true. I forgot completely about biodiesel.
CrayModerator
12/04/13 07:46 PM
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Quote:
Alcohol can be made from transplanted crops and is much easier to come by in a real-world sense.



Well, speaking in a real world sense, once you've got crops making alcohols (which are hydrocarbons with a single oxygen atom added), you've got the basis for making petroleum, too. After all, if you can make a useful amount of alcohol, you can make an equal mass of petroleum thanks to the 1925AD invention of the Fischer-Tropsch process.

The Fischer-Tropsch process allows you to convert almost any source of hydrogen and carbon into heavier hydrocarbons. That includes biomass, which has been demonstrated by a number of pilot plants around the real world. If you've got crops, you can have petroleum. Heck, some companies - like Mobil I mentioned in my last post - have even demonstrated converting alcohols into heavier hydrocarbons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids#Methanol_to_Gasoline_process_.28MTG.29

(It's a wonderfully versatile process if you don't mind paying $60 a barrel or more for your gasoline at a time when you can get a barrel out of Saudi Arabia for $1-2.)

Stepping away from the real world, the Fischer-Tropsch process is explicitly mentioned in BattleTech (A Time of War, p. 372) as being a source of petroleum in BT, particularly for planets lacking natural petroleum deposits.

Quote:
Where would you drill for oil on Mars, Venus, Mercury, etc.?



Where ever you'd find enough carbon and water to grow crops for alcohol.

On Mars, that'd mean "most places." Mars has a cold but thriving biosphere (plenty of carbon) and sizable oceans, particularly the North Basin Ocean and the Hellas Sea, connected by the Grand Canal excavated by the Terran Hegemony. The Terran Alliance's Project Lowell was very successful in making Mars habitable.

On Venus, that's tougher. Venus had an extremely rich ecosystem from the 2200s to the 2900s, very rich soil that was exported across the Inner Sphere, large oceans, and deep beds of carbon and limestone that sequestered its enormously thick pre-terraforming atmosphere during Project Aphrodite. But Stephen Amaris wrecked the Sol-Venus L1 sunshield that was important to keep Venus cool ("Hur-dur, watch me burn SLDF WarShips with my giant mirror-dur!") and, by 3050, the planet was gripped by a nightmarish runaway greenhouse effect as its oceans steamed off. As of the 3070s, its surface temperature was over 200C and the atmosphere mostly superheated water vapor. The carbon and limestone beds were dissolving and reacting, turning back into carbon dioxide. But, anyway, Venus had plenty of carbon and hydrogen to turn into crops, alcohol, or petroleum.

Mercury? You're probably out of luck. I haven't heard of any large carbon deposits on it yet, though it seems to have some billions of tons of water frost in its permanently-shaded polar craters.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
12/05/13 08:35 AM
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Quote:
You could make algae farms to make biodiesal, one acre of algae for farming biodiesal allows you to harvest more often and overall have a much higher net yield than traditional crops.



Biodiesel is 95% to 80% Diesel. You need a source of diesel to make biodiesel.

You get ethanol fuel form crops.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.

I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
12/05/13 11:34 AM
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It does not make sense that Hydrogen would cost 15,000 Cbills since you can get two tons of Hydrogen from three tons of water. You would also have a ton of oxygen for use in drop/jump ships, space stations, and any other sealed place where people would live.

All one needs to do is mine a comet for water if there is none on a planet. I would bet there could be millions of tons of water in just one large comet.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.

I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
CrayModerator
12/05/13 06:50 PM
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His Most Royal Highass Donkey, you've proposed that a fuel being common must mean it should be cheap. Before I get into the specifics, let me pose you a question:

The US and Canada each have about as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Since these three countries have approximately equal oil reserves, why does it cost about $2 a barrel to get oil out of Saudi Arabia's sand when it costs $40-$80 to get a barrel of oil out of the giant US Green River and Canadian Cold Lake oil fields?

Quote:
It does not make sense that Hydrogen would cost 15,000 Cbills since you can get two tons of Hydrogen from three tons of water. You would also have a ton of oxygen for use in drop/jump ships, space stations, and any other sealed place where people would live.



(As an aside, 3 metric tons of water would give 333.3 kilograms of hydrogen and 2,666.7kg of oxygen. This is because hydrogen has an atomic mass of 1 while oxygen has an atomic mass of 16. (Check a handy periodic chart of the elements.) That means water, which is 33 atomic percent oxygen and 66 atomic percent hydrogen, is 89% oxygen by mass and 11% hydrogen by mass.)

On your main point, yes, you can get hydrogen from water. However, virtually all of the 65 million tons of hydrogen produced annually (as of 2010) comes from petroleum.

That's because it's much cheaper and requires much less energy to get hydrogen from oil than from water. The fact that there's billions of times more water on Earth than oil doesn't play into the equation. The fact that it's technologically simple to get hydrogen from water - you can do it with a car battery, a fish tank, and some jumper cables - doesn't play into the equation (much). The dominant factor is that it takes a lot of energy (in terms of joules, calories, BTUs, ergs, etc.) to get a useful mass of hydrogen from water.

The next issue for hydrogen is storage. When it's liquid hydrogen - and BT likes its liquid hydrogen - hydrogen has to be kept so cold that liquid oxygen looks like molten lava to it. The energy costs to keep it refrigerated are very high, or you face lots of boil-off in a planetary environment. Alcohol, oil, and compressed natural gas don't have that storage problem.

Quote:
All one needs to do is mine a comet for water if there is none on a planet. I would bet there could be millions of tons of water in just one large comet.



Oh, there's a lot more water than that in a comet. A small comet - of about 1 cubic kilometer - is mostly water ice. A cubic kilometer of water ice is about 900 million tons. A "large" comet may have tens or hundreds of cubic kilometers of water, and then you get into small ice moons like Enceladus, which have hundreds of millions of cubic kilometers and thus hundreds of trillions of tons of water.

Or your can look into your local planetary ocean. While BattleTech planets are notoriously poor in potable water, they have all sorts of filthy, toxic, and/or salty water. It's hard to avoid lots of water when hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and oxygen is the third most common.

But having lots of water doesn't get you lots of CHEAP hydrogen. Water is a very tough molecule that takes comparatively a lot of energy to crack into hydrogen and oxygen. By comparison, less energy is required to make alcohol, natural gas, or petroleum than hydrogen.


PS: Regarding your other post, biodiesel is available in 100% biodiesel blends, no real diesel involved. Older diesels tend to handle B100 biodiesel well, while fancy computerized cars get a bit bitchy about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Blends
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Retry
12/05/13 07:36 PM
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Quote fail.
----
His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey:
You need a source of diesel to make biodiesel.
----

False. The lipids of an algae's biomass contain oils that can be converted into biodiesel.

Honestly, if you need to use diesel to make biodiesel the purpose would be kind of defeated.


Edited by Retry (12/05/13 07:38 PM)
Karagin
12/05/13 07:46 PM
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Cray the reason the US doesn't tap it's known oil fields is political and economic/monetary. So really NOT part of the topic since it covers areas that can derail the thread...
Karagin

Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
CrayModerator
12/05/13 08:54 PM
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Quote:
Cray the reason the US doesn't tap it's known oil fields is political and economic/monetary.



Economic/monetary issues: exactly my point! I'm glad we agree. Hydrogen is expensive in BT for because it's energy intensive to produce, just like US oil reserves (in the form of oil shale) are expensive because they're energy intensive to work. A valid real world comparison between the expense of BT hydrogen and US oil that might be easier to relate to.

And, despite the expense, US oil is being produced. US oil production exceeded imports for the first time in 26 years in 2013, and we're on target to produce 76% of domestic needs from domestic fields in 2014, with production increasing through 2018. This is enabled because the price of oil is so high. (If oil prices dropped below $40 a barrel, North American tar sand and oil shale production would shut down.) The situation is highly analogous to BattleTech's hydrogen situation: hydrogen sounds great, hydrogen is common, but hydrogen's not cheap because it's not easy to extract. Despite that, if you pay enough, you can have hydrogen in BT.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.


Edited by Cray (12/05/13 08:58 PM)
Retry
12/05/13 11:34 PM
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I do wonder how much potential a vehicle lance + a fusion mech
The fuel issue would be(more or less) resolved with the fusion 'mech providing fuel periodically.
CrayModerator
12/05/13 11:41 PM
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Quote:
I do wonder how much potential a vehicle lance + a fusion mech
The fuel issue would be(more or less) resolved with the fusion 'mech providing fuel periodically.



If you can find the water and a fuel cell-powered vehicle design, you've got something. The draft Force operation rules emphasize all the logistical costs that prior publications mentioned, so liberating vehicles from long logistics tails is a very worthwhile goal.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Karagin
12/05/13 11:56 PM
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Unless you make the vehicle truly maintenance free there will always be a logistics trail, and the trail will also include the food and other needs of the crew, since I am not seeing AI run vehicles or mechs in the game, I guess the logistical part will always be there and gloss over that BT gives it will always be there.
Karagin

Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
ATN082268
12/06/13 12:38 AM
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<The US and Canada each have about as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Since these three countries have approximately equal oil reserves, why does it cost about $2 a barrel to get oil out of Saudi Arabia's sand when it costs $40-$80 to get a barrel of oil out of the giant US Green River and Canadian Cold Lake oil fields?>

I'd say a lot of it has to do with political and regulatory issues. But without knowing how difficult (minus political/ regulatory issues) it is to drill for oil in Saudi Arabia and in the United States, it is hard to know exactly how much the political/ regulatory issues cost. In general, is it really that much more difficult to physically reach oil in the United States than Saudi Arabia?
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