Energy Unit Scale

[:1]I was looking at my hydrocarbon power plant and my generators and was wondering: "How powerful are these things?". The game doesn't say how many gigawatts the generators are or how many KwH of storage you have AFAIK, but maybe someone could give a guess? Did Chris Taylor have a value in mind? What's a vanilla SupCom2 energy unit in real life values?|||You could get a rough idea in joules by estimating the mass of all of your units in a mass conversion game and multiplying by the speed of light squared. I couldn't give you an actual value. I can only say that it would be unrealistic to obtain those colossal quantities of energy from hydrocarbons or wind. In any case, guessing from Supcom 2's apparent energy requirements, a real life version of a pgen would probably go up like a nuke if destroyed. I would doubt CT had realism in mind.|||SCEU = Supreme Commander Energy Unit
If the 100 SCEU per second hydrocarbon plants are about 1 GW then...
1,000,000 Joules = 100 SCEU
1 SCEU = 10,000 Joules?
That would make a T3 pgen more powerful than Three Gorges Dam!
Sorry, I meant Forged Alliance not SupCom2.|||5ENW|||800 SCEU runs the monkey laser (i think) so Quite A Bit of energy! |||Here's some helpful math
Thanks to E=mc^2, one kilogram is roughly equal to 9*10^16 joules of mass-energy.
let's assume that one mass unit is equal to 10 metric tons. That's 9*10^20 joules of mass-energy.
A T2 mass fab surrounded by 4 T3 Pegens produces 1 mass for 37 energy.
With perfect efficiency that means that 1 energy unit is, at most, equal to about 2.4*10^19 joules.|||Just to put things in context the energy released by the largest nuclear bomb is about 84000TJ. To produce one unit of mass by mass conversion at 100% efficiency it would take
2400000000TJ going by your assumption. With those quantities of energy involved, why bother with the intermediate of actually building units? Why not just rig a pgen to explode near the enemy base and watch the continent be incinerated? The method of warfare used in Supcom 2 makes no sense whatsoever if we apply real life numbers.|||DeadMG|||Zako248|||Theres nothing that says massfabs create mass out of pure energy, right?
Its just as plausible that massfabs use an alternate, more energy intensive method to extract mass from the environment, that doesnt require a mass point.
So in your pointless hypotheticals, theres no real need to stick to e=mc^2 either :)|||AdmiralZeech|||Retarded double post...|||First, double post deletion denial.
Secondly, what Zeech is referring to is transmutation. What you do is grab a bunch of atoms that you have, which aren't the atoms you want. Using that famous E = m.c^2 relation, you simply turn your atoms into the right ones by dumping a bucket load of energy into them (usually via blasting them with neutrons, or fusing them with very light atoms).
I think you're assuming that mass fabs. operate by taking nothing but energy and making mass out of it. It's certainly possible to do that, but there's better alternatives, and transmutation is one of them.|||It doesnt even have to be that complicated.
Already, mass can be reclaimed from trees and rocks. So "stuff present on the surface" contains mass.
Perhaps massfabs just grabs low-quality dirt and sand and turns it into mass, via a process which takes a lot of energy.
Whereas a mex pulls out high-quality mass directly from deep within the earth or whatever.
Anyways, the point is, e=mc^2 will give ridiculous energy figures, and there's plenty of fluff ways that can explain why it doesnt apply in this situation.|||and??
Its the only thing you have.
Just see what it is by e=M(C*C) standards, its a starting point.|||DeadMG|||The mass fabs might be more efficient than E-mc^2 if they do something futuristic like transport the mass in from somewhere else (or just suck in air). Estimating the energy density with E=mc^2 and a 10 ton mass unit gives a very dense SCEU (2.4*10^19 J)!
At 2.4*10^19 joules per SCEU, a t1 pgen is powerful enough to supply the entire planet! In fact, a single t1 pgen would be able to meet the energy demands of over 30 million Earths!!