Quote:
Originally Posted by kcdusk
How do you recharge a thermal site in T2K? Questions in two parts;
1. what sort of connection is it? 3 pin 240 volt? USB? Proprietry type cable?
2. What power source could you use? Diesel generator? Battery pack?
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This is the great conceit of Twilight: 2000, that you can recharge your various bits of electronic gear. Fact is, you can't recharge many of the devices listed in the book. For sure some of them from the 1980s-1990s era (certain radios for example) make use of rechargeable batteries but most items of that time used disposable batteries.
I guess the designers figured the game was tough enough without having to scrounge for batteries ALL the time so they decided that everything was rechargeable.
As for the thermal imagers, many of them used disposable lithium cells set up in series and packaged inside a case such as the BA 5847 U battery pack shown below (note that the connector from the thermal imager is a two pin plug that plugs into the battery and that this battery weighs 0.38kg).
Some older batteries used a 6-pin connector (one is actually just a locating pin and these packs are referred to as using a 5-hole connector) such as that found on the BA 5598 battery shown below.
And the same type of connector is used on the BA 4386 U battery pack - those of us who've lugged a Prick 25 or 77 know these ones!
There is some hope for Twilight PCs however as some thermal weapon sights also had a standard military power connection to hook up the device to an external 6-24V DC power source. Plus many of the Western military lithium battery types have 6 to 10 year shelf life.
Later developments made some of these batteries rechargeable, there's a rechargeable version of the BA 4386 U battery pack, but I don't know if these would be available in time for the Twilight War.