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All I'm saying is why risk major war over hundreds or thousands of kilos of 'scrap', when all you need is maybe a couple poundsto provide magnitudes more energy than you'll need even if you ramp up society and population by several magnitudes?

It's like fighting over air or sunlight on planet earth. . . makes no sense.

All this discussion about the physics and the 'reality' of the BZ universe made me remember a podcast at Thanksgiving with one of the biggest sci-fi authors of all time; Jerry Pournelle.

If you're familiar with HARD sci-fi genre and the top 10 writers of all time, one of which is certainly Larry Niven, Pournelle is Niven's buddy and co-writing  "science checker".  Of course...now...Pournelle has been a master writer in his own right for the last 20 years.

http://thisweekintech.com/223

[E=mc2]

It's all mass to energy and back again with no loss, no real mechanism, and no harmful radiation.  
-Av-

Basically full E=mc2 capability. . . matter-antimatter energies  Yeow!

The problem there is there's no real need to fight over it. All you need is a few pounds of it to provide the needs of the entire planet and any off-planet needs for, well. . . several lifetimes.

I may be off base here, but I have the feeling there wasn't a whole lot of back and forth with engineers and physicists when developing the models, weapons and propulsion systems.

I 'm thinkin it was a lot more "Damn, that looks cool." type modeling.  

Everything probably happens in between missions and such. Same thing as "you don't see comics characters taking a poo, now, do you?"

I think some are doing it in their ships.  I've sniped people then got into their ships, and many times it smelled like a mix of some college kid's dorm room dirty clothes bag and a baby's diaper after it ate 5 jars of stewed prunes.    

And that's the thing about BZ, how much tech does the NSDF and the Soviets 'get' to reverse engineer in the late 60's?  The game suggests it's a freaky mix of old tech and some advanced tech somehow gleamed from the scrap that was found.  Or...possibly an easy out. . "area 51" tech brought into the arena.

What are the limits, high AND low? Some are too silly to consider, i.e. being able to hit a golf ball further than any weapon on the battlefield? Then again, some limits are too generous, being able to have unlimited propulsion, both anti-grav AND propellants. Being able to load totally different weapon systems on the fly.  Being able to build 'unlimited ships' as long as you have scrap, and that scrap can take absolutely every single shape, conductivity, lattice structure, firmware element, tolerance, transparency, etc., etc., in a matter of seconds.

I've tried 'tighten' up on the wackiness, but the game throws too much of it at you, so the decision has to be made somewhere.

Yea, but the BDOG has a few aces.

The Grizz is 100% self contained. . can survive in a vacuum or submerged in liquid.  Can hover over water. . .or anything short of HII, can jump ravines of about 15 meters or more, and is framed/built with a few non-scrap element systems in about 8 seconds (at least in my reality  )

[An M1 Abrams is 120mm]

My BDOG has a 76mm round firing down a 3.5 meter barrel.

That's pretty intense. Easily as nasty as any medium to large conventional earth side tank. An M1 Abrams is 120mm. I've put on a longer barrel to reduce the acceleration of the round getting to its muzzle velocity.

But still, one thing to consider, the Grizz is not pseudo-anchored to the ground like an earth-side tank. Also, I'm assuming the Grizz doesn't have the luxury of weighing anything close to an Abrams' 135,000 lbs. to offset the F=MA of the round. The rearward thrust is going to be considerable as it is. . make the cannon obnoxiously large like in the game, and you might as well laugh at physics and say the tanks carry fairy dust around that they sprinkle on solid projectiles to negate the mass. And use the cannon as a ship thrusting system as well.

I've have 4 others, Wolverine, Flanker, Bird of Prey Falcon and somewhere on a backup disk, the NSDF Turret, but they are in the 15-30% range of completion.

I get about 25% done and in many cases can't figure out a way to make them work even in a fanciful-scientific way. . . and quit.  The Grendel was one of the extra painful ones, putting a turbo fan on a ship that moves around in a vacuum most everywhere it's used.  I did throw some token oxygen feed tubes on the intake cowling, but even that is stretching it like hell.

Here's my stable of BZ/E models and the comparative scales as I imagine them in a bit more realistic reality.

The graduation is in feet.

Hope you're not asking me Wall.  That's been more or less my point for the last 12 months.   

Was looking again at comparable scales and noticed the Flanker's cockpit. It may have the most ridiculous scale difference to a soldier .

Hehe maybe you could get one leg in there 

As to mass, in 'my' reality of the BZ universe, scrap is in the Titanium ballpark since it is a homogeneous mix of exotic, ultra light metals and nano sites or cells.

As to the soldier, he is grossly out of scale. . . on the order of at LEAST 2X.

Stand a soldier next to an obvious cockpit such as a Razor or or the Lander and it becomes humorous.

While I took this ss from around 400 'meters', there is some limited error because parallax projection, but the soldier will be >95% correct in relation to the Grendel behind.  

Then I vote for life size made of pewter.

No, no, no, no

If we are going full scale, I say fully functional as well.

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Also what I meant by 'dimensions' was, What do players think the Grizz is in the BZ universe?  I'm thinking "20 feet long by 10 feet wide and about 9 feet tall".

Very nice Wall, I see you've chosen to follow the Grizz close to the game's version.

You're right about the polys.  I remember being stunned when Dx told me how many polys the Grizz was in the game.

By the way. . . what do you surmise the overall dimensions the Grizz is. . . in its universe?