MWLL Advent Calendar - Door 92

[Loonatic]

Lava is actually over 1000 degrees, and is quite capable of melting many metals.  That being said, I'd have to agree with Heretic.  I'd imagine that mech armor is highly heat-resistant, and could likely withstand molten lava for at least a few moments.  Of course the heat would be the real killer, as it would likely overwhelm a mech's heatsinks quickly.  But if you weren't firing, I can't see why lava couldn't be crossed fairly easily in a mech.

Of course the real problem might be what happens when the lava dries on the mech.  It'd be really, really heavy and hard, and might cause actuator problems or add weight, both of which could slow a mech down or interfere with piloting.  Just being silly now though.  Don't think the devs need to waste time on something like that.  Just sort of an academic point I suppose.

[(TLL)KitLightning]

It should not be possible to cross a lava stream. The heat build-up in the Mech would blow it´s core reactor within minutes, the Heatsink however good they may be at dissipating heat from weapons cannot possibly dissipate a constant heat source (as magma/lava is). The armor and core structure of the Mech would not hold long if the Mech were standing right inside a stream. However it is more than possible to walk above the crust of the lava as long as the weight does not break through the crust itself.

No your not silly Loonatic, the hardened lava becomes rock solid when it hardens and cools down, and any part clustered with lava becomes immobile or that much heavier, and due to the fact that the lava will bind itself to any Metalloid heated up it will become a trial by itself to shake it of, exposing the parts damaged.

[Loonatic]

Eeeew.  I didn't even realize that Kit.  Wow.  I thought it would come off relatively easily, maybe with a jackhammer if nothing else.  Didn't know it would actually bond to the metal on a molecular level.  That would SUCK.  Remind me to keep my fat, metal butt out of molty, hot, liquid rock stuff.

[Perigren]

add my 2 cents about heat sinks: heat sinks in general take internal heat build up and dump it to the exterior atmosphere. in this case if the exterior of the mech is as hot or hotter than the heat trying to be dissipated you have a net gain in internal heat not a loss.

my suggestion is to vacate the area asap.

[Zomby]

Well with a big air-conditionning system inside your mech (yay a mech filled with heatsinks/air-conditioning systems with one small laser !!), you could manage to loose some heat even in that temperature but that wouldn't keep you safe from lava.

But the best way to deal with this situation would be to have ships in orbit and dumb loads of ordnance on the enemy mechs before they get near your installation in that region, but thats my solution to every problem.

[PanzerBoxb]

Well with a big air-conditionning system inside your mech (yay a mech filled with heatsinks/air-conditioning systems with one small laser !!), you could manage to loose some heat even in that temperature...

Not really as an air conditioner works on a heat exchange principle as well. 

[Askis]

Hmmm, most (but by no means all) flamers are directed jets of plasma straight from the reactor...near surface of the sun temp which is why they damage ferro fibrous armour as well as spike the targets heat, most lava sitting around on the surface is only a few hundred degrees so though it'd eat through the armour I think the BA would survive longer than a 'mechs reactor in such circumstances.  Would be nice if BA could travel across lava for a few moments at least where the big guns would really suffer from point of contact.

If surface Lava did the same damage as Flamers then I think it'd be a little overpowered IMHO.

To get this out of the way first:
"Lava is molten rock (...) at temperatures from 700 °C to 1,200 °C (1,300 °F to 2,200 °F)"
"Temperatures of most magmas are in the range 700°C to 1300°C (or 1292°F to 2372°F)"
[Wikipedia ;P ]

This is on earth, maybe it's even hotter on other planets, but that's not what this is about :>

A mech can only take a certain amount of heat before it's reactor blows, that's what heatsinks are there for.
And as long as MW2-4 were somewhat up to fluff, being in a desert already reduces their effectiveness noticeably.
So standing on lava or magma would be even worse, as Kit already pointed out.

Now, the surface temperature of the sun is around 5500°C (freezing compared to core and corona btw ), if flamers really fired jets of plasma around 4000-5000°C, they wouldn't just spike a target's heat (assuming the armor doesn't melt instantly at that temperature (today's steel melts at ~1500°C), they'd heat up the air around the mech, probably giving it an imminent meltdown.

So I always assumed, that flamers were kinda like today's flamethrowers, although bigger and more awesome

Coming back to the elementals, even if standing on lava/magma wouldn't melt their suits, I'm guessing they'd be thoroughly cooked in seconds, as they don't have the advantage of big heatsinks.

Yumyum, elemental cooked in his own juices

[KorJax]

You guys also have to realize that Heatsinks work by taking what's hot in the inside, and pushing it out.

If the mech is surrounded by lava, then the heat going in would be greater than the heat being pushed out by a fapp ton, seeing as pushing out "hot stuff" doesn't work to well when there's no where for the hot stuff to go except in even hotter stuff.

Which is why standing in water cools you faster, because the hot stuff can be removed from you quicker if you are standing in a body of water that is colder than the surface temperatures.

[Defender]

DON'T U BE BRINGIN' UR SCIENCE FACTZ INTO THIS DISCUSSION FOOL.

[(TLL) Heretic]

Nice work Askis!  Made me check the Wiki entry to see if I could find any numbers to help pick holes in your reasoning!  I could'nt so what follows is the "common sense" approach to argument

I would say that 700-1200 Celsius is the molten magma range, like you'd find in the caldera,  not the slowly/rapidly solidifying surface lava rock temperature, that's going to be significantly lower in most cases (unless the lava was fresh that morning).  Thats why I stated that (going on the maps lava flows) mostly it's only going to be a couple of hundred C. not enough to melt through armour but enough to clog and thereby destroy leg & ankle actuators etc.  As some-one already pointed out, the crust on a lava flow isn't going to support a lot of weight, so a 'mech would be doomed to stick in the lava after just a few seconds of contact with the leg actuators.....

BA weighs in at much less, so I would expect them to walk on the top of a cooling flow, plus their human parts are tucked up a foot or so into the suit, so it's not necessarily true that they'd burn to death immediately.

As for flamers, its true is a 'mech faced a continuous stream of reactor plasma then it would melt in minutes, however a 'mech plasma flamer is actually only a small amount of reactor matter (otherwise the 'mech shooting would go boom long before the enemy 'mech melts), and that's why it has a recycle timer (to build up more mass to squirt out, without fatally impacting on the owners 'mech).

Conventional flamers are used quite frequently (the Firestarter, and IIRC Vulcan, spring to mind) in BTech, they do equivalent damage and heat buildup but are limited by the fuel they carry and have all the hazards that carrying a tank of napalm comes with.  So the fusion flamers are considered safer, more reliable (not reliant on hose's, mixers and ignition mechanisms) and just plain superior in every way generally.

[Askis]

@ Defender

I would say that 700-1200 Celsius is the molten magma range, like you'd find in the caldera,  not the slowly/rapidly solidifying surface lava rock temperature, that's going to be significantly lower in most cases (unless the lava was fresh that morning).  Thats why I stated that (going on the maps lava flows) mostly it's only going to be a couple of hundred C. not enough to melt through armour but enough to clog and thereby destroy leg & ankle actuators etc.  As some-one already pointed out, the crust on a lava flow isn't going to support a lot of weight, so a 'mech would be doomed to stick in the lava after just a few seconds of contact with the leg actuators.....

BA weighs in at much less, so I would expect them to walk on the top of a cooling flow, plus their human parts are tucked up a foot or so into the suit, so it's not necessarily true that they'd burn to death immediately.

I can live with BA being able to move over a cooling flow and mechs crushing through (although that'd probably hard to do, so I'm not expecting it^^), but glowing and flowing lava/magma should'nt be harmless to mech or BA, that's why I got into the wikipedia frenzy 

As for flamers, its true is a 'mech faced a continuous stream of reactor plasma then it would melt in minutes, however a 'mech plasma flamer is actually only a small amount of reactor matter (otherwise the 'mech shooting would go boom long before the enemy 'mech melts), and that's why it has a recycle timer (to build up more mass to squirt out, without fatally impacting on the owners 'mech).

That explains alot, although it makes me wonder... What would happen if you equipped an Assault mech with a load of flamers (think flamer-boat^^) and fired them all at once?
Core shutdown because of insuffiecent reactor mass? :>

[snip]
So the fusion flamers are considered safer, more reliable (not reliant on hose's, mixers and ignition mechanisms) and just plain superior in every way generally.

As I said, bigger and more awesome

[(TLL) Heretic]

Well, all those Flamers would try to draw on the reactor at once, and it'd respond by pushing more plasma into the chamber, weakening the magnetic shield......so too many and it'd be like firing all the Warhawks PPCs at once, or all of the Novas 12 ERMedLasers at once..........Booommm!

Hehe, where Karuik when you need a Boom emphasized