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Old 12-21-2018, 11:57 AM
mmartin798 mmartin798 is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: Michigan
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With the 4e timeline and potential for other vehicles, we may have to reevaluate what is a "standard" vehicle reactor. I am of a mind that they created a standard size for classes of vehicles to maximize the economy of scale in manufacturing.

In 3e, you could easily standardize on a 150KW for V-150's and smaller, 500KW for small aircraft like Bell 206 and OV-10, and a 3MW for larger aircraft like C-130 and CH-47 as well as smaller ships. This would supply power in the same range as their conventional counterparts.

But if we look at more modern versions of the Commando vehicles(1) and HEMTT that could be used in 4e, they are pushing upwards of 300-350KW power plants even with the diesel-electric hybrid HEMTT A3. We could still use the same standard sizes from 3e if we assume these newer vehicles use two reactors, much like a Project C-130 would have to house four 3MW reactors to match the conventional power. But this begs the question, can you fit in two reactors? There is clearly a minimum size and I assume that the physical size does not grow linearly with output, but rather is some kind of logarithmic increase in size. So in my world, a 300KW reactor would not be twice as large as a 150KW reactor.

So what is a "standard" vehicle reactor?
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(1) The Commando Select, which comes in configurations similar to the V-150, is slightly larger and is part of the reason I assume the power plant is larger. The Commando Select is 6.63m long, 2.74m wide and 3.02m tall and has a higher ground clearance at 0.66m. It has a higher max road speed of 100km/h and a larger turning radius of 10.65m. Handles the same 60% grade and has a slightly less vertical obstacle of 0.56m.
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