Brainbender: MD vs. Water?

[Nekira Sudacne]

ok. Say we're looking at a small pond of water.

the pond is in your way.

so you take a plasma rifle and shoot the water.


considering the heat, how much water would a 1d6x10 plasma rifle vaporize?

[DrBeau]

I don't think it would flash boil the pond, if that's what you're asking. It would probably make a lot of steam as it rushed its way to the bottom, burrowing itself into the lake bed. Maybe the shore would go down an inch or two (depending on how big this pond is).

[Killer Cyborg]

Well, the APS: Liquid super power is the only source I know of that lists SDC for water.
In the largest water behemoth size, the character takes up about 3535 gallons and has +500 SDC added to his base SDC (and the +30 for water form in the first place).
Round that up to 600 SDC.
Water takes 1/2 damage from energy attacks, so this would be the equivilant of roughly 12 MDC per 3535 gallons of water.

[Jimmy Crat]

I don't like where this question is going.
How much MDC/SDC does dirt have? How far down does dirt exist beneath the earth's crust? How much damage would it take to destroy a planet, or at least blow a hole through it? Off topic, how much MD do you think an asteroid would do? You know if it hit the earth?

[DrBeau]

"Dirt" is only about the first few feet (depending on where you are). Anywhere from 1' to 6' usually. After that you get rock. Sedimentary rock (which makes up most of the stuff under the "dirt" around the world) could be considered a mega-SDC structure only because it is chippable with sdc weapons.

[Jimmy Crat]

And so we all take another step down the slippery slope of global destruction.

[Killer Cyborg]

I don't like where this question is going.
How much MDC/SDC does dirt have? How far down does dirt exist beneath the earth's crust? How much damage would it take to destroy a planet, or at least blow a hole through it? Off topic, how much MD do you think an asteroid would do? You know if it hit the earth?

The Robotech books cover that.

[Killer Cyborg]

I wouldn't that would be possible to vaporize a large body of water with a laser/energy weapon. Weapons are designed to punch hole through the target not vaporize them. Case in point
Throw a white hot piece of metal into a bucket what happens. Sure you get lots of steam but it doesnt totally evaporate all the water unless you sustain the heat over a substantial period of time.
The laser/energy beam coming out of a hand held weapon is relatively thin and effectively instanstaneous. You'd get lots of steam but the pound or whatever would still be there. I'm not saying it cant be done, just that you would need energy weapons off of a battleship.

Any Mega-Damage energy weapon has enough power to reduce a LOT of water to steam instantaneously.

[Jesterzzn]

I don't buy it. I would think that the damage potential to water by energy weapons would be an exponentially proportional relationship. Maybe as the amount of water doubles the amout of energy must increase by a factor of 10 in order to "flash fry" all the water. This is of course just my personall opinion.

[Killer Cyborg]

I don't buy it. I would think that the damage potential to water by energy weapons would be an exponentially proportional relationship. Maybe as the amount of water doubles the amout of energy must increase by a factor of 10 in order to "flash fry" all the water. This is of course just my personall opinion.

I think that's generally covered by water taking only half damage.
But it could be house-ruled a lot better.

[Marrowlight]

But does the water have to make it's save first to take half damage?

[cornholioprime]

Does it get a PP bonus to its saving roll?

But does the water have to make it's save first to take half damage?

Boot to the Head for the BOTH of youse!!!

[SkyeFyre]

MDC bugs, MDC clothes, MDC underwear, MDC money... hrm...

Is it MDC water?

[The Beast]

I don't like where this question is going.
How much MDC/SDC does dirt have? How far down does dirt exist beneath the earth's crust? How much damage would it take to destroy a planet, or at least blow a hole through it? Off topic, how much MD do you think an asteroid would do? You know if it hit the earth?

That is a good question that I have yet to see addressed. Just what kind of damage is delt from various natural disasters?

[PigLickJF]

I don't like where this question is going.
How much MDC/SDC does dirt have? How far down does dirt exist beneath the earth's crust? How much damage would it take to destroy a planet, or at least blow a hole through it? Off topic, how much MD do you think an asteroid would do? You know if it hit the earth?

That is a good question that I have yet to see addressed. Just what kind of damage is delt from various natural disasters?

You could always extrapolate a bit from the various spells out there that mimc natural disasters.

PigLick

[R Ditto]

I did some estimates. If the plasma weapon (in this case, an NG-E12 from Mercs) has 6 shots from a standard e-clip (which holds an estimated 54,000 watthours of energy), that means it uses about 9000 watthours worth of energy, which translates to roughly 30,700 BTU (British Thermal Unit, the only measurement I know of relating to cooking and boiling water and such).

Looking that up I found that BTU is the amount of energy needed to heat one pound of water 1 degree fahrenheit.
I think that means a plasma blast doing 1D6x10 MD might only boil around 200 gallons of water (if the water was about 60 degrees and was taken to boiling point). Or it might just vaporize a few dozen gallons before the plasma has had all of its heat wasted on the water.

This doesn't include any energy lose between use of energy and the creation and acceleration of the plasma, or of how efficient the energy might be transferred to the water.

As for how someone like me figured out how many BTU were equal to how many watts, well, I love this site.
http://www.onlineconversion.com/

[Prince Cherico]

I did some estimates. If the plasma weapon (in this case, an NG-E12 from Mercs) has 6 shots from a standard e-clip (which holds an estimated 54,000 watthours of energy), that means it uses about 9000 watthours worth of energy, which translates to roughly 30,700 BTU (British Thermal Unit, the only measurement I know of relating to cooking and boiling water and such).

Looking that up I found that BTU is the amount of energy needed to heat one pound of water 1 degree fahrenheit.
I think that means a plasma blast doing 1D6x10 MD might only boil around 200 gallons of water (if the water was about 60 degrees and was taken to boiling point). Or it might just vaporize a few dozen gallons before the plasma has had all of its heat wasted on the water.

This doesn't include any energy lose between use of energy and the creation and acceleration of the plasma, or of how efficient the energy might be transferred to the water.

As for how someone like me figured out how many BTU were equal to how many watts, well, I love this site.
http://www.onlineconversion.com/

ditto that was absoulutly brillent

[Nekira Sudacne]

I did some estimates. If the plasma weapon (in this case, an NG-E12 from Mercs) has 6 shots from a standard e-clip (which holds an estimated 54,000 watthours of energy), that means it uses about 9000 watthours worth of energy, which translates to roughly 30,700 BTU (British Thermal Unit, the only measurement I know of relating to cooking and boiling water and such).

Looking that up I found that BTU is the amount of energy needed to heat one pound of water 1 degree fahrenheit.
I think that means a plasma blast doing 1D6x10 MD might only boil around 200 gallons of water (if the water was about 60 degrees and was taken to boiling point). Or it might just vaporize a few dozen gallons before the plasma has had all of its heat wasted on the water.

This doesn't include any energy lose between use of energy and the creation and acceleration of the plasma, or of how efficient the energy might be transferred to the water.

As for how someone like me figured out how many BTU were equal to how many watts, well, I love this site.
http://www.onlineconversion.com/

that only appllies if you used the actual electricity in the clip to vaporize the water.

the electricity is used to make plasma, so the electrical calculation means nothing.

[Nekira Sudacne]

I don't like where this question is going.
How much MDC/SDC does dirt have? How far down does dirt exist beneath the earth's crust? How much damage would it take to destroy a planet, or at least blow a hole through it? Off topic, how much MD do you think an asteroid would do? You know if it hit the earth?

there's already one recorded case in palladium cannon when the planet took in excess of 10 trillion MD and didn't even get though the planet's crust. you don't really have to worry

[Jimmy Crat]

I don't like where this question is going.
How much MDC/SDC does dirt have? How far down does dirt exist beneath the earth's crust? How much damage would it take to destroy a planet, or at least blow a hole through it? Off topic, how much MD do you think an asteroid would do? You know if it hit the earth?

there's already one recorded case in palladium cannon when the planet took in excess of 10 trillion MD and didn't even get though the planet's crust. you don't really have to worry

Thank KS for small favors.

[Rimmerdal]

But does the water have to make it's save first to take half damage?

Depends.. Is the water surprised?

[Rimmerdal]

I don't like where this question is going.
How much MDC/SDC does dirt have? How far down does dirt exist beneath the earth's crust? How much damage would it take to destroy a planet, or at least blow a hole through it? Off topic, how much MD do you think an asteroid would do? You know if it hit the earth?

there's already one recorded case in palladium cannon when the planet took in excess of 10 trillion MD and didn't even get though the planet's crust. you don't really have to worry

Thank KS for small favors.

Unless it's on a fault line or Volcano...

[Nekira Sudacne]

I don't like where this question is going.
How much MDC/SDC does dirt have? How far down does dirt exist beneath the earth's crust? How much damage would it take to destroy a planet, or at least blow a hole through it? Off topic, how much MD do you think an asteroid would do? You know if it hit the earth?

there's already one recorded case in palladium cannon when the planet took in excess of 10 trillion MD and didn't even get though the planet's crust. you don't really have to worry

Thank KS for small favors.

Unless it's on a fault line or Volcano...

actually, several fault lines and volcanos WHERE hit during said bombardment

[Dead Boy]

ok. Say we're looking at a small pond of water.

the pond is in your way.

so you take a plasma rifle and shoot the water.


considering the heat, how much water would a 1d6x10 plasma rifle vaporize?

Did no one look at my Origins of Mega-Damage post? If you follow that simple logic there, you can easily solve this problem. Since human flesh and water vaporize at the same temperatures and same levels of energy, that would mean that the 1D6x10 MD blast (averaging 35 MD) would vaporize 35 kg of water, or 35 liters.

[RainOfSteel]

I did some estimates. If the plasma weapon (in this case, an NG-E12 from Mercs) has 6 shots from a standard e-clip (which holds an estimated 54,000 watthours of energy)

Ditto,

How did you estimate the power of the e-clip? 54,000 watt hours = 54 Kilowatt hours. A 1600 watt hairdryer (1.6 kilowatt drain) would drain that in 33.75 hours.

I think six 1d6x10 MD blasts contain rather more energy than that needed to run a hairdryer for a day and a half.

[Nekira Sudacne]

ok. Say we're looking at a small pond of water.

the pond is in your way.

so you take a plasma rifle and shoot the water.


considering the heat, how much water would a 1d6x10 plasma rifle vaporize?

Did no one look at my Origins of Mega-Damage post? If you follow that simple logic there, you can easily solve this problem. Since human flesh and water vaporize at the same temperatures and same levels of energy, that would mean that the 1D6x10 MD blast (averaging 35 MD) would vaporize 35 kg of water, or 35 liters.

didn't know they vaporised at the same rate! thank you

[Nekira Sudacne]

I did some estimates. If the plasma weapon (in this case, an NG-E12 from Mercs) has 6 shots from a standard e-clip (which holds an estimated 54,000 watthours of energy)

Ditto,

How did you estimate the power of the e-clip? 54,000 watt hours = 54 Kilowatt hours. A 1600 watt hairdryer (1.6 kilowatt drain) would drain that in 33.75 hours.

I think six 1d6x10 MD blasts contain rather more energy than that needed to run a hairdryer for a day and a half.

dunno if this is it, but Psyscape lists the charge of 1 e-clip to equal 10,000 car batteries

[PigLickJF]

that only appllies if you used the actual electricity in the clip to vaporize the water.

the electricity is used to make plasma, so the electrical calculation means nothing.

Still, unless there's some kind of reactor in there that ignites and produces energy, the energy coming out of the gun will be the same (actually less, most likely) than what was put in. Darn those Laws of Thermodynamics again.

Of course, I know you're not a big fan of realism, so maybe your plasma weapons go beyond the laws of physics as we know them, which would render this little sub-discussion irrelevant anyway.

PigLick

[BigLEE]

I did some estimates. If the plasma weapon (in this case, an NG-E12 from Mercs) has 6 shots from a standard e-clip (which holds an estimated 54,000 watthours of energy)

Ditto,

How did you estimate the power of the e-clip? 54,000 watt hours = 54 Kilowatt hours. A 1600 watt hairdryer (1.6 kilowatt drain) would drain that in 33.75 hours.

Unless it's an ATL-7 hair dryer....

[RainOfSteel]

When water is instantaneously (or nearly so) heated into steam, this results in a steam explosion. This can be pretty nasty.

Anyone silly enough to march up to a pond, point their MD gun at it, and fire would receive a nasty surprise as they woke up a few rounds later, with a few MDC off their armor, having been knocked out and back by the explosion.

(Ok, I might not have them be knocked out, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't think about it.)

[RainOfSteel]

Unless it's an ATL-7 hair dryer....

Do you have stats for that?

[R Ditto]

On a side note, I got similar results using joules instead of watts when converting to BTU.

I did some estimates. If the plasma weapon (in this case, an NG-E12 from Mercs) has 6 shots from a standard e-clip (which holds an estimated 54,000 watthours of energy)

Ditto,

How did you estimate the power of the e-clip? 54,000 watt hours = 54 Kilowatt hours. A 1600 watt hairdryer (1.6 kilowatt drain) would drain that in 33.75 hours.

I think six 1d6x10 MD blasts contain rather more energy than that needed to run a hairdryer for a day and a half.

I used Psyscape mainly, from the entry of the Power Leech IIRC. It listed how much "energy" stuff like car batteries and e-clips had in MD (2 MD worth for car battery, 200 for e-clip, 300 for long e-clip). The e-clip basically had 100 times more effective power than a car battery.
I then did some searching online, found some estimated weights and effective power output of car batteries, averaged it out, multiplied it by 100, and came out at 54,000 watthours.

A car battery (12 volt) 30 watthours per kilogram.
average car battery is 40 pounds (18kg) for an average power output of 540 watt hours.
e-clip (in Rifts) has 100 times the power capacity of a car battery, so it comes out to 54000 watt hours, or 194,400,000 watt seconds, of energy.

E-clips are likely capacitors that can hold a large charge for a long time, and unlike batteries, they can discharge much energy in such a short period of time, sort of like a tazer.
Also explains how the one spell (sub-particle acceleration?) can charge e-clips and even accidentally cause them to overload and explode from what I've seen on the boards. (don't have the book the spell is in)

It comes out rather well IMO. 9000 watthours translates to 32,400,000 watt seconds. Seems like a good number to me.

A laser which did 2D6 MD with 20 shots from an e-clip uses enough energy to light 97,200 individual 100 watt light bulbs for a second.
Seems like more than enough energy to blast a big hole through a living target by turning water to steam in a millisecond, or barely enough to shoot clean through several inches of armor grade steel armor of an SDC tank. Seems good considering the amount of energy likely lost just creating the laser.

[RainOfSteel]

R Ditto,

Well, it looks like your estimate is great.

It looks like the information it was based on it, the Psyscape cite, escaped from the looney bin.

What the heck are they doing comparing e-clips to car batteries?

"Well, everyone must understand how much electrical potential there is in a car battery, we'll use that for the example."

And anyway, since I don't know which page that came from, can someone tell me whether it's 10,000 car batteries per e-clip or 100 car batteries per e-clip?

[Dead Boy]

How did you estimate the power of the e-clip? 54,000 watt hours = 54 Kilowatt hours. A 1600 watt hairdryer (1.6 kilowatt drain) would drain that in 33.75 hours.

I used Psyscape mainly, from the entry of the Power Leech IIRC. It listed how much "energy" stuff like car batteries and e-clips had in MD (2 MD worth for car battery, 200 for e-clip, 300 for long e-clip). The e-clip basically had 100 times more effective power than a car battery.
I then did some searching online, found some estimated weights and effective power output of car batteries, averaged it out, multiplied it by 100, and came out at 54,000 watthours.

A car battery (12 volt) 30 watthours per kilogram.
average car battery is 40 pounds (18kg) for an average power output of 540 watt hours.
e-clip (in Rifts) has 100 times the power capacity of a car battery, so it comes out to 54000 watt hours, or 194,400,000 watt seconds, of energy.

E-clips are likely capacitors that can hold a large charge for a long time, and unlike batteries, they can discharge much energy in such a short period of time, sort of like a tazer.
Also explains how the one spell (sub-particle acceleration?) can charge e-clips and even accidentally cause them to overload and explode from what I've seen on the boards. (don't have the book the spell is in)

It comes out rather well IMO. 9000 watthours translates to 32,400,000 watt seconds. Seems like a good number to me.

A laser which did 2D6 MD with 20 shots from an e-clip uses enough energy to light 97,200 individual 100 watt light bulbs for a second.
Seems like more than enough energy to blast a big hole through a living target by turning water to steam in a millisecond, or barely enough to shoot clean through several inches of armor grade steel armor of an SDC tank. Seems good considering the amount of energy likely lost just creating the laser.

Ya know, after reading through the Power Leech RCC, it seems to me that there are a few flaw in your reasoning.

In addition to car batteries, it also mentions that the little tikes also absorb 0.25 MD from regular batteries like those in flashlights and radios. Well the radio by me right now takes six D-cells each producing 1.5 volts, and the back says it sucks down 14 Watts (joules per second), so by that logic assuming the batteries can run for 14 hours straight they produce a total of 705,600 Joules. Divide that by six, and that means that one battery can produce 117,600 Joules. Factor that into the Mega Damage rating of 0.25 and we can say that the energy in a D-cell battery can produce a 0.041666 MD blast. Work that backwards and we can say that 1 MD = 2,822,404.5 Joules, which equals 674,570.9 calories, or just 784 watthours. That’s a far cry from the 9,000 your other figure shows.

If that weren’t bad enough, the Power Leech section also says that a long e-clip holds 300 MD’s worth of damage potential. But wait a second there. If you have a basic 2D6 MD laser rifle like the C-10, CP-40, L-20, TX-30, JA-9… and take the maximum potential of 12 MD per hit, that works out to 360 MD per e-clip. If instead you go by the averages and only produce 7 MD per shot, that comes out to be 210. Either way you’re not hitting that magic 300 MD mark. Now admittedly if you go off the average of a 3D6 MD blast (10.5, and round down to an even 10) then you hit it on the money. But still, inconsistencies plague this whole thing.

Another though too. The Human body does not absorb every bit of potential energy abtained through our food. How are we to assume that the Power Leeches can get all the equivlent MD out of the various items they consume? In other words. How do we know that the MD they absorb is the actual amount that battery actually has to offer and so much isn't sluffed off as waste?

[RainOfSteel]

Ya know, after reading through the Power Leech RCC, it seems to me that there are a few flaw in your reasoning.

[...]

How do we know that the MD they absorb is the actual amount that battery actually has to offer [...]

When there is no open playtest of products to spot these inconsistencies, then such contradictions will continue to infest all products.

Basically, the author should have realized what would happen when people started reading the numbers included in the RCC, that they would attempt to use that as a universal basis across the game, even though that's probably not what was intended.

[Killer Cyborg]

CB1, p 47 (under the Energy Absorbtion super power)
"Draining Touch: The character can drain the energy out of an item like a car battery or enery pack by touching it. Maximum absorbtion capacity is one gigawatt per level of experience. That's the rough equivilant of 10,000 car batteries or 10 E-Clips."

Don't know what Revised CB1 has to say on it.

[RainOfSteel]

CB1, p 47 (under the Energy Absorbtion super power)
"Draining Touch: The character can drain the energy out of an item like a car battery or enery pack by touching it. Maximum absorbtion capacity is one gigawatt per level of experience. That's the rough equivilant of 10,000 car batteries or 10 E-Clips."

A gigawatt what? Second . . . hour . . . year?

Frankly, I really, really, really don't like that overly simplistic comparison.

[Rimmer]

"How much water could a plasma gun steam, if a plasma gun could steam water ?"

"As much water as a plasma gun could steam, if a plasma gun could steam water"

"Or at least untill the Greater Water Elemental killed him"

[Rimmer]

Sorry, but the absurdity of all of this just got to me, I cracked.

[RainOfSteel]

Sorry, but the absurdity of all of this just got to me, I cracked.

Obviously, he needs a head-exploding smiley.

[Rimmer]

Sorry, but the absurdity of all of this just got to me, I cracked.

Obviously, he needs a head-exploding smiley.

Please, with a cherry on top ?

[RainOfSteel]

Sorry, but the absurdity of all of this just got to me, I cracked.

Obviously, he needs a head-exploding smiley.

Please, with a cherry on top ?

You will have to add a suggestion calling for that variant of the head-exploding smiley to the smileys topic on your own.

[Dead Boy]

CB1, p 47 (under the Energy Absorbtion super power)
"Draining Touch: The character can drain the energy out of an item like a car battery or enery pack by touching it. Maximum absorbtion capacity is one gigawatt per level of experience. That's the rough equivilant of 10,000 car batteries or 10 E-Clips."

Don't know what Revised CB1 has to say on it.

It says the exact same thing, but instead on pg. 49. Thanks for pointing that out. I've been trying to remember where I read that for years now.

A gigawatt what? Second . . . hour . . . year?

Frankly, I really, really, really don't like that overly simplistic comparison.

A "watt" is a joule per second, so in this case a Gigawatt would be a billion joules of energy per second.

[Guest]

I was gonna say, isn't a single Watt a measure of an amount of Electrons that pass one point in a second?

So a Gigawatt (Jigga Who?) would be a billion times that number passing the same point in a second, right?

A Joule would be the actual Amount of Electrons.

A Joule's worth of Energy will heat water by a certain about, which translates into a BTU, right?

Oh, and Palladiums Estimations could definitely use some consistency at least...

[R Ditto]

100,000 car batteries per e-clip is insane. 4 e-clips could run a nuke sub for an hour.. and those things have power outputs of 20+ megawatts.

As for Energy Absorption...
Wow...
Looks like I need to halve the energy amount I thought was in an e-clip.

1 gigajoule for a second = 277,777.777(and so on) watts for an hour, /10 = 27,777, roughly half of the 54,000 watt hours of my previous estimates.

Yet another estimate having to be redone thanks to inconsistency in Rifts.



Funny... my estimates of car batteries would put 10,000 of them at 19.44 gigawatts for a second...

Oh, wait, this stuff isn't supposed to make sense all of the time...