I'd been led to believe that the extra power draw from clean drive tuning negated the drive's lower heat emissions, by causing other components on the ship (power plant?) to emit more heat. So compared with dirty drive tuning you end up with a slower, heavier ship and no real benefit because the heat is a wash. Sounds like your group has some real experience with this... what are your findings?
So you think that because the engine mod pulls more power, that the power plant emits more heat.. a good question, but flawed.
Because was are not in real life, and you could be asking "does my unicon run faster because it has more sparkles?"
But to answer you Faybs, nope.
As the mod takes this into consideration(more so given we can cherry pick secondary effects)Let me give you two examples
1. Stick a dirty drive one on to your ship, and yes it`ll run hotter, because, you know AFTERBURNER EFFECT!!!!!(+20 thermal increase) But then stick a thermal spread effect onto it and it takes off 12% thermal increase, meaning you gain the benefits of +1 DD, that only adds +8%(20% DD1 - 12% thermal spread secondary).
2. Now do the same with a clean drive 1 and you get -20% thermal load to start with, add the secondary thermal spread(-12%) and they stack, you get a instant -32% thermal load, so yea feel free to mash that boost button and not overheat your mamba, yes the ship will not move as "fast" as a dirty drive, but it will faster than a stock thruster, but also run a hell of a lot cooler and make it suitable for smuggling, black ops & illegal passenger missions.
NPC scans
Remember over 25% it it typical emission range(scanner range) under 25% heat then the scan range is about 1000m, under 20% heat and it is eyeball range only, so if you have a small, fast ship, and come into dock at 300m/s + then the chances of them scanning you are VERY LOW, even then, don't panic, just hit a heat sink(resets scan) and you will still have +10 seconds to get through the toast rack(this is also why docking computers are recommended for smuggling, as it will slow down prevent a crash(usually) faster than you can, and yes, dock it too!
Just go out and fight a dbx, and see when you can lock target onto it, if it drops a heat sink, it will "break target lock" and you will have to visually acquire(see it, click it, shoot it), the npc cops use the same principle, and as such, we the players can work round it, just like they can.
A lot of the information i use and give to others is under the smuggling thread, and there is a massive amount info there for you, should you wish to get into this type of activity, and the various ship build that go along with it.
Also remember any module that draws power
will ADD to your thermal image(as per Faybs initial impression of how Elite works) until you start to engineer cold running mods to off set this(notice the discovery scanner does not draw power at the moment).
You can offset this by turning off modules, and this will drop your heat also.
Additionally this is why i usually do not use guns on my smuggling ship- what it the point? As you will be faster without them and colder too, also killing the cops near a station is a quick way to get a rebuy and a hefty fine, on top of your other fine if you get scanned... yea...don't shoot the cops at a station
Also i use
https://coriolis.io/
This is a brilliant tool for working out ships stats, dps for combat builds, etc.
Alas it does not have a "thermal image" of how hot or cold your ship will run. Simply put the thermal increase / decrease of the mods will stack adding or decreasing the heat or "thermal image" of your ship- this is the bottom right hand side of you ui, watch it spike when near a star or boosting(just add heat!)
To get the "raw mod stats" from the site you need to mouse over the mod name itself, such as clean drive 5, dirty drive 5, thermal spread(secondary effect) wtc, etc. This will give you the stats, you can ofc theory craft with inra, and go from module to module, write it down and tally it up, but it is a lot more work and a lot slower than this site.
https://inara.cz/galaxy-blueprint/4/
I hope this helps you
And remember as Hicks said "Stay Frosty"
Ran
