Re: [Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions

by Harmony Ltd. Thu Oct 03, 2013 2:59 pm

I was addressing the real world use of these weapons (intercontinental cruise missiles), but yes, that is a good point to bring in the context of Equestria / Equus.

Remind me, at Mach 5 and from where they were likely to be launched, what was the average time the zebra cruise missiles would have taken to reach their targets ?

As for the fact I misremembered the possible friction there may have been regarding the question of ballistic vs. cruise missiles, I have to confess the fact that my presence in the comment thread is minimal, due among other things to the spoilers that may be thrown around from time to time.

by O. Hinds Thu Oct 03, 2013 9:27 pm

Harmony wrote:Remind me, at Mach 5 and from where they were likely to be launched, what was the average time the zebra cruise missiles would have taken to reach their targets ?

Well, for reference, a missile fired from Gallopoli would take about ten minutes to reach Canterlot if flying in a straight line. A lot of missiles were based on the southern coast of the Sea of Equestria, too, which was closer.

Harmony wrote:I have to confess the fact that my presence in the comment thread is minimal, due among other things to the spoilers that may be thrown around from time to time.

Oh, sorry.

by Harmony Ltd. Mon Oct 07, 2013 5:28 am

How difficult do you think it would be to make a steam engine boiler that can run on either alcohol or methane / biogas ?

I was thinking that to maximize the use it does of its organic wastes the NCR might produce both.

by O. Hinds Mon Oct 07, 2013 2:35 pm

Hm. Well, if the liquid injector can't be used with the gas for some reason, one ought to be able to simple mount a second injector.

by Frost Mon Oct 07, 2013 3:40 pm

Forgive me if I've missed it if it's cropped up earlier in the thread, but does the NCR make any significant use out of inexhaustible power like geothermal? It seems to me like that'd be a bit more reliable than solar (especially in the Wasteland, even after the SPP was activated) and, if what I've read is true, it can be fairly simple to set up facilities for a home or base to run on.

by Harmony Ltd. Mon Oct 07, 2013 4:20 pm

The trouble with eothermal is that it's very dependent on where you are, or more precisely, what kind of sources of subterranean heat there is in your area.

With modern technology you can exploit even relatively small thermal gradients in order to "produce" heat or cold, using sophisticated thermodynamic tricks, but wht is really happening is that you're injecting energy in the system in the form of electricity to get a bit more heat or cold out of it than you would have obtained by using electricity alone. And you generally don't get enough heat out of it to generate more electricity than what you used in the first place when the whole thermodynamic cycle is factored.

It's when you find a good source of underground heat, like a thermal spring, that you can start thinking about producing power out of it. But even then, you won't be getting much out of it.

It's only when the temperature gradient become significnt that you can start actually producing a steady amount of energy. But that happen in relatively restrained situation, mostly near areas of volcanic activities.

@ Hinds : do you think they could produce vehicles with modular fuel tanks, mounted on racks, in such a way that you could easily swap alcohol tanks for gas bottles ?

Also, I was wondering, can you make an internal combustion engine running on either alcohol or methane ? A multifuel engine. I was thinking of something based on sparkplugs.

It probably won't be efficient, though...

by Scienza Mon Oct 07, 2013 5:02 pm

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Also, I was wondering, can you make an internal combustion engine running on either alcohol or methane ? A multifuel engine. I was thinking of something based on sparkplugs.

It probably won't be efficient, though...

Well, that's literally what ethanol is, so yeah.

by O. Hinds Mon Oct 07, 2013 5:10 pm

Well, we know that there's a bit of geothermal in the Hoofington area, but of course I can't say even what little I know about what happens to it post-PH.

Harmony wrote:@ Hinds : do you think they could produce vehicles with modular fuel tanks, mounted on racks, in such a way that you could easily swap alcohol tanks for gas bottles ?

I think so, yeah. If you couldn't use common fuel lines, you could run two parallel lines with connectors in different places, corresponding to matching connectors on the different tanks.

by Harmony Ltd. Mon Oct 07, 2013 5:22 pm

I was thinking two or more parallel lines for simplicity's and reliability's sake.

@ Scienza : well, to be more precise, the question is : how hard is it to do without fancy electronics adjusting the various running parameters of the engine on the fly to adapt between liquid and gaseous fuel.

by O. Hinds Mon Oct 07, 2013 5:49 pm

Harmony Ltd. wrote:I was thinking two or more parallel lines for simplicity's and reliability's sake.

@ Scienza : well, to be more precise, the question is : how hard is it to do without fancy electronics adjusting the various running parameters of the engine on the fly to adapt between liquid and gaseous fuel.

Oh, you mean a single engine able to do both? ...Not sure. I expect that it would definitely be more difficult than just sticking an extra injector in a burner can, though.

by Scienza Mon Oct 07, 2013 6:03 pm

Harmony Ltd. wrote:I was thinking two or more parallel lines for simplicity's and reliability's sake.

@ Scienza : well, to be more precise, the question is : how hard is it to do without fancy electronics adjusting the various running parameters of the engine on the fly to adapt between liquid and gaseous fuel.

I'm not an engineer, so I'm probably wrong on this, but I don't think it's that difficult. I remember seeing a tutorial a few years back explaining how to convert your car's engine to ethanol.

A single engine running both might be rather difficult, as you'd have to precisely tune it to a specific mixture of the two or one specifically. In the Wasteland, standardization would probably be iffy at best, dangerous at worst. It'd probably be more practical to just run it on ethanol, since you can make it out of surplus food waste cheaply and relatively safely, while gasoline needs to be refined and is horribly toxic.

by O. Hinds Mon Oct 07, 2013 8:58 pm

Why would the NCR be using spark ignition engines instead of steam anyway?

by Scienza Mon Oct 07, 2013 10:24 pm

O. Hinds wrote:Why would the NCR be using spark ignition engines instead of steam anyway?

'cause steam power requires fuel, ideally wood or coal, the former is a rarity in the wasteland (or, you could say, a Fluttershy), and the latter made the whole world get blown up. If you're gonna be usin' fuel, an internal combustion engine's more compact and versatile.

by O. Hinds Mon Oct 07, 2013 10:50 pm

Scienza wrote:
O. Hinds wrote:Why would the NCR be using spark ignition engines instead of steam anyway?
'cause steam power requires fuel, ideally wood or coal, the former is a rarity in the wasteland (or, you could say, a Fluttershy), and the latter made the whole world get blown up. If you're gonna be usin' fuel, an internal combustion engine's more compact and versatile.

...? Why "ideally wood or coal"? The fuel flexibility of steam engines is one of their big advantages, quite possibly their biggest. As for internal combustion engines being more compact and versatile... I'd disagree there, too. Steam has simplified transmissions, can have the steam generation and steam use stages developed, produced, and maintained independently, can run off any heat source that can boil water, can produce full torque at zero rpm with no transmission, etc. It's also in-universe a more mature technology than spark ignition engines, I think.

Now, are Alliance diesels more powerful than NCR Doble-inspired steam engines? Yes. Alliance diesels are also precision-machined, often with alchemical materials, have onboard computers, generally utilized electric transmissions, and generally can run (without rebuilding) on a narrow range of fuels centered on Alliance petrodiesel. NCR engines are easier to build and maintain, are generally fitted with burners that can handled pretty much any flammable liquid or gas, and, if the burners can't also handle solid fuel, only have to have the heat generation stage swapped out to change that.

by Harmony Ltd. Tue Oct 08, 2013 5:40 am

O. Hinds wrote:Why would the NCR be using spark ignition engines instead of steam anyway?

They don't have a reason to, as we have discussed earlier. I was just wondering if it was possible. You know, if someone got into its head to compet with the Alliance on its own turf with internal combustion engines, while being able to use fuels produced locally by the NCR.

by Harmony Ltd. Tue Oct 08, 2013 9:47 am

"Ah sell methane an' methane accessories."

Sorry, couldn't help myself. Was at a gas station and saw the rows of little gas tanks (for household use), and it got me thinking again about the biogas idea.

by O. Hinds Tue Oct 08, 2013 10:43 am

Harmony wrote:
O. Hinds wrote:Why would the NCR be using spark ignition engines instead of steam anyway?
They don't have a reason to, as we have discussed earlier. I was just wondering if it was possible. You know, if someone got into its head to compet with the Alliance on its own turf with internal combustion engines, while being able to use fuels produced locally by the NCR.

...Yeaaah, I don't think that that idea would last too long. NCR spark ignition engines would be starting at an early stage of development in a rebuilding industrial society and using fuel not specifically designed for the task. Given what they're up against, the competition wouldn't last too long; the only way that they might possibly win would be in being cheaper due to NCR protectionism, but NCR steamers would probably still be more practical.
If the NCR really wanted to compete with Alliance internal combustion engines, I'd expect them to at least develop compression ignition engines instead of spark so that they had a bit less work to do. They'd still be starting a good ways behind, though.

Of course, the NCR could try building spark ignition engines for some other reason (though I'm not sure what that could be), which might be interesting.

Harmony wrote:"Ah sell methane an' methane accessories."

Sorry, couldn't help myself. Was at a gas station and saw the rows of little gas tanks (for household use), and it got me thinking again about the biogas idea.

Heh.

by Harmony Ltd. Wed Oct 09, 2013 7:57 am

Question :

Do we know when exactly in its history the Grand Pegasus Enclave adopted this name and set itself up as a distinct, independent power from the Old Equestria ?

Because I don't really think it did exist Pre-Holocaust, though I don't doubt the isolationist sentiment itself may have been strong among pegasi during the war, given they were those who paid the most heavy price in term of losses.

I mean, the pegasi retreating to the Skies after Cloudsdale went *poof* and putting up the Cloud Cover as the bombs were still falling is a pretty strong indicator that they were just waiting for the one spark to flip the bird (hah, joke) to the rest of Equestria.

by O. Hinds Wed Oct 09, 2013 3:10 pm

Somber wrote:Glory bit her lip. “It was an event… ten… twenty years after the bombs fell. The sun and the moon… they were in the sky together. And then… then they came together.” I gawked at her in shock. They couldn’t come together. How could they ever come together?! “Pegasi thought that it was some final zebra superweapon. That the moon would burn up, the sun would go out, and the world would end. But apparently, it was only temporary. The moon had moved between the sun and Equestria… but the chaos was terrible.”
Lighthooves nodded grimly. “In the end, it was the military that restored order. Martial law was declared. Neighvarro and Thunderhead dispatched troops to quell the rioting. And when it was over, the military formed into a unified force that’s persisted to today. The Enclave. The Grand Pegasus Enclave,” he said with a mirthless smile, “and its lie of democracy.”

by Harmony Ltd. Wed Oct 09, 2013 3:45 pm

Okay, thanks.

Interesting.

From that I could imagine solar eclipses as having their place in the symbology of the Enclave. I don't know.

Do you think they're the style to have things like secret society and the like ?

I was thinking something like a freemason lodge, with that symbol (the solar eclipse) figuring prominently / centrally in the various rituals.

Though i'm not sure it'd fit, thematically.

by O. Hinds Wed Oct 09, 2013 3:56 pm

Hah! Neat idea. But, yeah... I'm not sure how appropriate it would be.

...Hm. Though perhaps, after the GPE's fall, said secret society could emerge among the Remnants?

by Harmony Ltd. Wed Oct 09, 2013 4:01 pm

You mean, like, to bring back the good old days of the Enclave's glory, thus the reference to the founding moment of the Enclave with the Solar Eclipse, and the idea(s) it entails (control of the military over all aspects of society) ?

by O. Hinds Wed Oct 09, 2013 4:09 pm

I just wasn't sure how to phrase it, a problem that you have solved. :)

by Harmony Ltd. Thu Oct 10, 2013 1:07 pm

This may be relevant to this thread :

http://kta1540.deviantart.com/art/Old-glory-401682487

by O. Hinds Fri Oct 11, 2013 6:03 am

I've been working late on some homework so that I don't have to do it Friday (...though technically I have done it Friday, I suppose), and, during one of the periods in which I failed to stay focused, I had an idea: Perhaps the early NCR military, before they get motor vehicles working, might make use of tachankas. Of course, airborne pegasus-pulled versions suggest themselves, but even classic ground carts would be useful against raiders (or for making it harder for the Bitters to take out AAA by making the AAA a moving target).

by Harmony Ltd. Fri Oct 11, 2013 10:17 am

Interesting idea indeed.

(involuntary aliteration in I)

by O. Hinds Fri Oct 11, 2013 4:34 pm

Of course, NCR tachankas would only need the gun crew.

(And somewhere in here there's probably a joke about a newspaper with a horse-drawn horse-drawn gun cart.)

by Harmony Ltd. Fri Oct 11, 2013 4:38 pm

I suppose they would use photographs rather than drawings. I don't think cameras (most probably using film) would be that rare in the post-S&R wasteland. At the least it would be available to people who would be likely to use them in a professional manner. I guess ?

What do you think ?

by Harmony Ltd. Fri Oct 11, 2013 4:40 pm

O. Hinds wrote:Of course, NCR tachankas would only need the gun crew.

Depends on if they want to fire on the move, I guess ? If it's the case, they'll need at least one more more person to draw the cart.

by O. Hinds Fri Oct 11, 2013 5:52 pm

Harmony Ltd. wrote:
O. Hinds wrote:Of course, NCR tachankas would only need the gun crew.
Depends on if they want to fire on the move, I guess ? If it's the case, they'll need at least one more more person to draw the cart.

Oh, yeah, sorry; I mistyped. My mind was half in pony ("The pullers don't need a handler") and half out ("The crew consists of the gun crew and horse handler").

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