Heat sinks right now are appalling

I believe that heat management in ED is just (almost) perfect. The problem is that the NPCS don't react to heat, they can see you no matter what, only players have a problem.
I agree.

I like how Frontier have handled heat management in game.

The last remaining issue is the NPC's overpowered MK. I "Eyeball scanner" (that some how extends to scanners, gimbals, and turrets,    ).
 
I believe that heat management in ED is just (almost) perfect. The problem is that the NPCS don't react to heat, they can see you no matter what, only players have a problem.

Totally agree with the first bit. I've seen no evidence, personally, for the second bit. I've zipped into stations frequently under silent mode. In fact I recall a vid from Isadora where he sat inside the no-fire zone with cops all over the place and he calmly vacuumed up floating contraband - all by managing his heat. Getting heat down isn't 100% effective - it just reduces the probability of being spotted.
 
Totally agree with the first bit. I've seen no evidence, personally, for the second bit. I've zipped into stations frequently under silent mode. In fact I recall a vid from Isadora where he sat inside the no-fire zone with cops all over the place and he calmly vacuumed up floating contraband - all by managing his heat. Getting heat down isn't 100% effective - it just reduces the probability of being spotted.
That is all correct.

The issue with the way NPC's "cheat" the heat/sensor mechanic comes into play after you have been initially targeted. Once they do have sensor & visual lock on you, what would usually be sufficient to break sensor lock (SR + low heat + range ) becomes ineffective as the NPC's "eye ball" lock trumps their sensor lock and for some reason their tracking weapons and scanners still work.


So you are correct, to initially avoid detection the heat mechanic works against NPCs. Once you are detected, the rules go out the window.
 
To me the biggest issue with heatsinks is that we can't synthesise reloads for them so we are stuck with the crazy 3 reloads per utility slot utilized. If we can synthesize ammunition and fuel why can't we synthesize blocks of metal? [wacko]
 
There's nothing wrong with how ED portrays heat management.

The ships open up extra radiators that're shielded from solar radiation when your temps are hot. This is right.

Space is still very hard to radiate heat out into despite this. It's a good insulator. However, a 500lb lead alloy ingot wrapped in a tungsten shell would make a superb heatsink capable of absorbing huge amounts in seconds. Eject the ingot and the heat is immediately ejected from the ship.

The power is used for an emergency coolant flush. You'd need a second high velocity pump capable of cycling the coolant through the ingot several times in a few seconds. Not hard to grasp.

Heat management in ED is fine. Out of all of the mechanics regarding heat, you chose the least controversial to complain about. If you had challenged anything else a lengthy debate would have resulted, because everything else about heat management is circumspect.
 
0% heat means the ship is as cool as it gets. Whether this temperature is above, below, or equal to absolute zero is completely irrelevant.

I can't stand it when people try to give some sort of science explanation for why something in Elite should be changed. Elite is a sci-fi game and there are parts of it that don't really make sense compared to real life science.
 
The heat sinks made perfect sense to me

Have you seen a peltier junction?
[video=youtube;S8EzPOmhenE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8EzPOmhenE[/video]
They transfer heat from one side of the junction to the other when a current is passed through them.

The charge time before it fires is the 3300's edition peltier whacking every drop of heat into a chunk of ceramic and lobbing it out the back - I've been told you can confuse heat seekers by doing that and going silent running but been loathe to test it
 
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That is all correct.

The issue with the way NPC's "cheat" the heat/sensor mechanic comes into play after you have been initially targeted. Once they do have sensor & visual lock on you, what would usually be sufficient to break sensor lock (SR + low heat + range ) becomes ineffective as the NPC's "eye ball" lock trumps their sensor lock and for some reason their tracking weapons and scanners still work.


So you are correct, to initially avoid detection the heat mechanic works against NPCs. Once you are detected, the rules go out the window.

Once they do have a sensor lock on you, SR and low heat is too late. However distance, i.e. range, WILL do the trick. That's how we break a scan when smuggling - although that is a cargo scan of course. All this applies equally to weapons lock. Not seeing a problem here.
 
Thought this would fit in here just nicely.
Something like this is already possible:

[video=youtube;Pp9Yax8UNoM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9Yax8UNoM[/video]

Just imagine what technology will be available 1000(!) years into the future.
 
I don't want to complain
Yes you do :D

But... Have some constructive criticism:

EDIT: it doesn't cool you down to 0 kelvin, as pointed out below. My point doesn't change, so please don't talk about the current temperature in the comments correcting me.

So right now, to purge heat you fire out shrapnel or pieces of metal into space. Sure, it works fine. It uses power? Surely this wouldn't be mechanical or only uses a minute amount of power to flick a switch? It's not like it uses any more than an LED light to release a piece of metal?

Getting the heat into that tiny pieces of metal is the tricky bit that requires power.

Power aside, heat sinks reduce your heat to 0%. I don't think this is acceptable. 0% heat is close to absolute 0 (I assume) but your modules are always producing heat from the reactor, so reaching anywhere near absolute 0 is not possible.

As above posters, I'm not going to say again what they've said about 0% not being close to absolute 0 where nothing can move let alone use a joystick, throttle and breathe.

Next thing for me to complain about is the module itself. Launching metal/material into space is not very good or efficient heat dispersal. Animals like elephants have a VERY low surface area to volume ratio, which means elephants build up heat extremely quickly. The same goes for large ships (hence why Capital Ships have special modules to keep them cool). An elephant has large ears (not to hear stuff) to disperse their heat. A ship in elite dangerous in this year should be waaaaaay past launching heatsinks. We need a deployable module which opens up a very large, foldable radiator unit. A large panel with strips of metal running from top to bottom which can be deployed and retracted at will. The rods are for more surface area (heat dispersal).

Gameplay trumps Realism. The ability to put a ton of heat into a tiny pieces of metal is pretty high tech though, we do it with flares although thats a chemical reaction not energy transfer. For military ships radiator panel as you point out = weakness. Having a launcher for a worst case scenario will win a lot more handshakes at the military development board I can assure you :)

Another suggestion would be to fit a utility mount with a corrugated metal panel. This makes the ship look a lot nicer whilst still managing to disperse heat.
Deploying a foldable radiator module should reduce heating effects by 20%. If you would be on 100% heat for whatever reason, then you deploy this, it goes down to 80%.
The small panel should only decrease it by 10%, being considerably smaller. These modules also don't require ammo, this being cost efficient as well as realistic.

Ok now you have me sold as an addition and not as a change. Better passive heat reduction rather than instant. Perhaps both for those smuggler types. But seriously can you imagine a Python with an ISS style sail trying to cruise stealthily into a station?
Hey captain, Is that a small wedge ship over there? Nah son, your hallucinating...
Hey captain, what's that Yacht doing over there, is it trying to dock? Yacht.. sure... Wait what? Where?

Idea inspired by Kerbal Space Program and life on earth.
Feedback would be appreciated, thank you - have a nice day

And the crutch of the issue. KSP is great but this here is a combat game and MMO primarily, it just has simulator elements rather than KSP that's a simulator with some game elements attached. Right now heat sinks are needed as they are and work quite well. Combat, smuggling and exploring need them and I'd be shouting if they were removed (and I don't shout too often). As an addition, I'm sold, get me some radiator sails or panels or whatever for passive heat removal, but I'd argue why you can't simply route the cooling through your armour to the hull of your ship anyway if that's the case and have perfect cooling everywhere instead of having to buy a separate panel.
 
I killed a ship once using heatsinks..... Laughed until my face hurt.

Ok. It was his own heat seekers that killed him but you get the idea.
 
I scanned this thread only superficially, so please forgive, if the following was already mentioned.

Heat radiators are not only already used (as it was stated by other forum members), but they don't solve one specific purpose of the current heatsinks at all: They don't help to hide the ship from being revealed/targeted by heat sensors! Heatsinks not only get rid of surplus heat fast, but also mamange to dispatch the heat from the ship.

The game mechanic is fine as ist is!
 
It's a game mechanic. If you start going into the RL practicability of it...

A ship in elite dangerous in this year should be waaaaaay past launching heatsinks.

...then a ship in elite dangerous in this year should be waaaaaay past having a human fly it manually with a joystick.
 
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Dear OP, did you try to think of the heatsinks as a coolant purge system?
It does energy to power the pumps, switching out the hot coolant with fresh and cold,
then pumps the hot stuff into a disposable container and ejects that.

Isn't it possible the "heatsink" works this way?
I don't like your idea with having an extendable heat radiator,
how would you use that stuff when the ship navigates asteroid rings
or atmospheres. I think the friction of the atmospahere and the dust-particles will hurt the radiator a lot,
since the shield-system is not configured to overlay the extendable arm.
 
My readout says "0 %" not "0 K". If we're using your, ahem "math" then what does 100 % heat equate to in Kelvin?
 
Side note: Okay so it probably isn't near 0 Kelvin, but my overall point doesn't change

For those saying "this won't work":

Quoted from NASA:
But the thermal radiation is ALWAYS there, and that is what a spacecraft uses. To get rid of heat, you can point thermal radiators at the dark sky, and to warm up you can point at the Sun or Earth. The Sun warms the Earth through radiation, not convection or diffusion.

What NASA is saying is that the best way to rid heat is via radiation. Ejecting heat via heat sinks only stops the short term problem - you are bound to hear up again. If you use up all your sinks, you're done for. Which is why radiating heat via surface area is a great idea.

It does work in principle, but not like you imagine. The thermal radiation is very ineffective in space and you need large arrays for the spacecraft of today. The heat generated by the ships in ED would be even larger so you'd need even larger arrays much larger than the actual sh- so they came up with the discardable heat sinks.
 
Once they do have a sensor lock on you, SR and low heat is too late. However distance, i.e. range, WILL do the trick. That's how we break a scan when smuggling - although that is a cargo scan of course. All this applies equally to weapons lock. Not seeing a problem here.
That is correct. The dependency is, IIRC, that player scanners/weapons will loose lock due to SR at much closer ranges than NPC's. NPC's can track you out far beyond what a player could while maintaining a scan or a weapons lock.

Of course this is going from what I've read here, so anecdotal. I haven't done any real testing.
 
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