Ships Best engineering modifications for low heat generation

[Saool]

I am very happy with my Asp. It is probably my favourite ship in my collection. It is build for jump range, but still has a shield and six class 1 pulse. It's current range is just over 50Ly on empty.

But I am wondering if I can have a better defensive set up and perhaps get more range by dropping the shields, remove four of the guns, engineering the armour to have better resistances (by without adding mass) and trying to lower heat generation so that it can go use silent running in short burst without incurring heat damage (if that is even possible without heat sinks). I would add sinks however, in place of the shield boosters, and replace the shield with a hull repair limpet controller.

I am good at engineering for low mass and range, and am pretty happy with what I can do with the armour, but engineering for low heat is an area I have no experience with.

Does this set up of low mass, no shields, two guns, engineered armour and low heat generation to make use of silent running sound feasible for a long range explorer that has enough about it to survive and disengage from hostile encounters?

Any advice on heat-centric engineering welcome.

 

[Ceekay]

Probably the best approach to achieve a low thermal signature is to reduce power consumption to a minimum, so efficient weapons (or kinetics), low power enhanced shield mod (if fitted) and once you've finished the build fit a power plant with just enough power to run the ship and then do a low emission modded power plant.

In Coriolis there's a compare function so you could compare your current Asp with a low heat variant, do remember that silent running doesn't make the ship invisible just hard to detect so if an NPC gets close enough he can detect you visually and then it's game over man!

 

[baqar79]

Best heat mechanics source to date:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/286628-Research-Detailed-Heat-Mechanics

I think efficient power plants can be a good way of reducing heat. With the current beta 3.0 values, a reduction of up to -68.5% to heat generation can be achieved.

The efficiency on the power plant (0.4 stock) refers to how much of the energy that your ship consumes is converted to heat, ie if you are using 20.0MW of power, then you are generating 8 Heat/sec (20*0.4 = 8) just from idle power plant usage alone. It isn't so important the overall capacity of the power plant, as heat is only generated from what you use.

On the other hand with maximum power plant efficiency (assuming beta 3.0 values stay), heat generated per second is reduced quite a bit 20*0.4*(1-0.685) = 2.52 Heat/sec, a saving of 5.48 Heat/sec.

This is the AspX cooling curve based on Frenotx's post above (thick blue line); I've used the stock efficiency values for the power plants (0.4):

Spoiler

Horizontal lines represent stock powerplant heat generated when fully loaded....it's a bit of a mess, but the idea here is where the horizontal lines hit the curve, that is your expected ship idle temperature eg if an AspX has a 2A stock power plant and it is fully loaded, the minimum temperature of the ship is around 22.

Increasing your powerplant efficiency reduces the amount of heat generated per MW of power used, and so your ship's temperature. This is especially helpful for ships with relatively high power usage, but low cooling capacities (FDL).

EDIT:Sorry about all the edits!