Robot Power Plant

[Snaps]

Hey guys,

I've got a player in my game who is playing a robot, loosely modeled after the T-X Terminator in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Several times in the game the question has come up as to what kind of power output he might have.

The character comes from Steel, and is a prototype created by the Brisbane AI.

He can turn his arm into a 6dx11 Plasma Blaster. (Which is kind of a combination of the Tripod Blaster in 3e Robots and the Plasma Blaster variant in 3e Ultra Tech 2).

Right now we've worked out that he can can fire his weapon ten times before his batteries are depleted. And it takes 30 mins to recharge one 'shot'.

In 4e I guess he'd be TL 10 or 11 (I say 4e because the TL's are a little different in the 3e Reign of Steel book).

I'd love just a general idea of what kind of power plant he might have. Would his reactor be generating Kilowatts, Megawatts, 1.21 Jiggawatts? :D

[Zukoss]

Don't know about the output, but if we look into the Spaceships system: let's say he has a power plant that generates a 1PP (power point)
And a High energy active Capacitor system that stores up energy with 1pp/min, with max capacity of 300PP.
The plasma Blaster is using 30pp/shot.

So there's your formula
If you have a 1 KJ reactor inside of him
Capacitors would store 300 KJ of energy
The Blaster Would use 30 KJ for one shot

Everything is adjustable, just find out one of the needed margins.

[Langy]

Expanding on the previous post:

Going by the Spaceships energy weapons progression, the blaster is a three megajoule weapon. A 3MJ weapon uses 1PP at SM+4. If the weapon uses 30PP like Zukoss suggested, then a 1PP generator would be appropriate for something three SM smaller, or SM+1. Since your robot is SM+0, she's actually got a 3PP generator.

A Power Point is roughly equal to fifty kilowatts per ton of vehicle. A 200 pound human is 1/10 of a ton, so 1PP at SM+0 is equal to five kilowatts. Since you have a 3PP generator, it runs at 15 kilowatts.

[Zukoss]

Langy i agree, my calculations were rough.

[Snaps]

I actually had been looking at the Spaceships rules to figure it out as well, but wasn't able to form actual numbers. Looks like you guys have figured it out.

Isn't the weapon a 30MJ weapon though?

Looking at the chart in Spaceships, his weapon does the same damage, etc. as a SM+5 Beam Weapon at 30MJ, 6d d-damage or 6dx10 regular.

So at full power, his battery would hold 300MJ of energy, giving him 30 shots. It takes him 30 minutes to recharge one shot. So his reactor puts out 1 MJ per minute, or . . . 15 KWs. :D

Good to know the numbers match up!

[Langy]

It's a plasma weapon, however, so it gets double damage compared with a laser of the same power output. Check page 67 of Spaceships - plasma weapons (and antiparticle weapons) use the D-dam2 column, which has twice the damage of the D-dam1 column for a given power output.

[Snaps]

LOL, I missed that page entirely.

It actually counts as a Particle Weapon though (Blaster). It's a Plasma Blaster from the 3e Ultra Tech 2.

I think the difference in 4e is that now Plasma guns contain hydrogen pellet rounds. They basically use ammo, just like a slug thrower.

His doesn't, its all energy based, which means he'd need more power to produce the same effect. Which makes sense since he was made for long missions away from home, with now way to replace his ammo.

[Langy]

A plasma blaster from Ultra-Tech 2 3e is described as doing the same thing as a Plasma Gun in 4e. The only difference is the designers realised the plasma a plasma gun fires needs to come from somewhere when they wrote 4e and they made plasma guns do more damage than particle weapons accordingly.

Maybe your robot takes in water vapor and electrolyses it to turn it into the required hydrogen pellet. Doing that would increase his power consumption, and without knowing how much hydrogen is required to make the plasma I really can't determine how much it would increase his power requirements. As a complete guess, I'd just double them to a 30KW generator.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Snaps

H

He can turn his arm into a 6dx11 Plasma Blaster. (Which is kind of a combination of the Tripod Blaster in 3e Robots and the Plasma Blaster variant in 3e Ultra Tech 2).

Right now we've worked out that he can can fire his weapon ten times before his batteries are depleted. And it takes 30 mins to recharge one 'shot'.

In 4e I guess he'd be TL 10 or 11 (I say 4e because the TL's are a little different in the 3e Reign of Steel book).

I'd love just a general idea of what kind of power plant he might have. Would his reactor be generating Kilowatts, Megawatts, 1.21 Jiggawatts? :D

Well there's no need to drag Spaceships into this. Ve2 will answer your question simply and directly.

UT2 has Plasma Blasters built as particle beams and to get 66D out of a TL11 particle beam requires 740KJ of output and 2x that much of input.

That's 1480KJ per shot and 14,800 of storage for 10 shots. To recharge that in about 1800 seconds requires 8.22 KW of steady power supply.

From previous experience I'd guess that a robot of Terminator-like physical strength might need a similar figure to run its' arm motors and drivetrain as well.