Newcomer / Intro Can anyone shed light on this? Ship destruction question.

WesBrook77 · Feb 4, 2015

I just got exploded in space and would be grateful of some advice, to hopefully try avoid this occurring again.

I'm running a low level Federation message delivery mission. Jump to the next system, lock the desired station, and continue on in super-cruise, fairly close to a (purple) sun. Next thing I know, the screen gets interrupted, almost like an interdiction, and the internal heat starts to rocket up. Ship emergency drops from SC, takes damage then steadily cools, so I try re-engaging SC to the station and be on my way. Problem is, no sooner have I entered SC, the ship temperature raises to 300% in no time, obviously taking damage, and I get the "align with escape vector" message. There is no interdiction occurring. I line up with the vector, but the ship emergency drops from SC again and I'm stuck in the loop. I try break free but eventually the ship succumbs to excessive heat and that's it, game over.

It looked like a glitch, but I don't want to say that just yet, as there may be something "obvious" that I'm missing.

This destruction annoyed me. Yes, I am a low level pilot so not lost much, but all pilots start this way. I am particularly frustrated as I had 2 Federation missions on-going, both of which were marked incomplete and I lost standing with the faction for something that I could not identify as being my fault.

I would be happier if this was my fault, through something I did wrong, and learn from it.

Painkiller · Feb 4, 2015

I think you got too close to the sun, temperature rised and while you were melting inside the cabin, you activated FSD that also rised temperature of your ship. You got too hot for a cold space ...

Kyle Brennan · Feb 4, 2015

Yes the FSD super-cruise engine has a safety cut off when you get too close to a high gravity object. This will happen with any celestial body, even asteroid fields.

andyraptor · Feb 4, 2015

Engaging FSD was your down fall... it's not a glitch

when FSD is engaged and building, before going to jump, ... heat is produced.... flying close to a sun and going to FSD is not good

when u engaged FSD so soon (the 2nd time) you sealed your fate

next time cancel the jump... by hitting J twice

point away from the sun and cruise away slowly at 25 or 50% thrust

your temps should come down gradually

when at between 50 - 60 C you can then try to go to jump again

If it makes you feel any better I've gone down once to this and managed to slowly cruise away the 2nd time .... I did suffer 47% damage and had a hefty repair bill when I finally limped into a Starport.....

Evyl Minkey · Feb 4, 2015

Those type of suns are a bit of a nightmare. Stay as far as you can from them. Also if you get pulled out of SC by a sun point away and keep an eye on your temp. You will get heat damage as you try to jump again so you have to balance speed of escape with keeping your temperature down.

carlisle · Feb 4, 2015

You got too close to the star.

You can't actually crash into celestial bodies because the FSD is affected by gravity wells, go to deep into one and you will drop out. This is the same as what happens when you get interdicted, so it will look very much like an interdiction. The heat also rises for the same reason, though with the cooling systems kicking in it will then cool, but only to a point. The problem then is that charging your FSD will increase the heat again, very much.

Then, if you try to re-enter super-cruise after getting too close to a celestial body you get the same kind of escape vector as when being interdicted. Breaking free when you've got too close is pretty difficult so I hear, I don't know exactly why you were unsuccessful and dropped again, but the heat is the main problem. As far as I've heard if you get too close to a star and have no heat-sinks, you're almost totally screwed. It's probably possible but very difficult.

Do you throttle down to zero when you enter hyperspace. If you don't then you should as it will stop you flying toward the star when you exit hyperspace. If you're already throttling to zero then just be careful where you're pointing before throttling up again. If you're sure that you did throttle to zero before exiting hyperspace and then pointed clearly away from the star before throttling up then it is possible there is some sort of bug.

WesBrook77 · Feb 4, 2015

Superb replies and information, thank you all for the advice.

It was the "escape vector" reference that made me think the game was maybe at fault, as I wasn't being interdicted. I should assume however that the vector was in fact my quickest route of escape from the gravity affects of the star.

This situation then is my error. Riding too close to the star (not close enough for the fuel scoop to engage though), and mis-management of my FSD, combined to result in a lesson learned.

Thanks again for the advice, appreciated.

carlisle · Feb 4, 2015

CMDR Brook said:
Superb replies and information, thank you all for the advice.

It was the "escape vector" reference that made me think the game was maybe at fault, as I wasn't being interdicted. I should assume however that the vector was in-fact my quickest route of escape from the gravity affects of the star.

This situation then my error. Riding too close to the star (not close enough for the fuel scoop to engage though), and mis-management of my FSD, combined to result in a lesson learned.

Thanks again for the advice, appreciated.

Not sure you can scoop those kind of star.

BishopC · Feb 4, 2015

CMDR Brook said:
This situation then my error. Riding too close to the star (not close enough for the fuel scoop to engage though),

There are loads of suns that are not scoopable. Do not rely on the "Fuel scoop engaged" message to measure distance, or you will burn again.

SpydersByte · Feb 4, 2015

CMDR Brook said:
It looked like a glitch, but I don't want to say that just yet, as there may be something "obvious" that I'm missing.

No glitch, yes something stupid: you flew to close to the sun. How was that not obvious??

FYI - As others have said, some stars aren't scoopable, and your escape vector was to escape the star's gravity, not an interdiction.

Painkiller · Feb 4, 2015

@ CMDR Brook: Found your selfie before the explosion

igor37 · Feb 4, 2015

carlisle said:
As far as I've heard if you get too close to a star and have no heat-sinks, you're almost totally screwed. It's probably possible but very difficult.

No, not that difficult I think. It happened to me once in a sidewinder, and after 2 failed attempts to escape(because I was confused) I managed to get the heat a bit lower by waiting and then engaged SC with over 100% heat(but below 150%), so I could continue. But I had no idea what was going on and it definitely was risky. So now I just throttle down to zero during every hyperjump and have had no problem since that time.

Abil Midena · Feb 4, 2015

There is something broken though. I've entered hyperspace to travel to the next system, and as soon as I dropped out of hyperspace, I started taking damage from heat. The game dropped me out of hyperspace too close to the star. THAT has to be a glitch.

cmdr lowest · Feb 4, 2015

andyraptor said:
Engaging FSD was your down fall... it's not a glitch

when FSD is engaged and building, before going to jump, ... heat is produced.... flying close to a sun and going to FSD is not good

when u engaged FSD so soon (the 2nd time) you sealed your fate

next time cancel the jump... by hitting J twice

point away from the sun and cruise away slowly at 25 or 50% thrust

your temps should come down gradually

when at between 50 - 60 C you can then try to go to jump again

If it makes you feel any better I've gone down once to this and managed to slowly cruise away the 2nd time .... I did suffer 47% damage and had a hefty repair bill when I finally limped into a Starport.....

It's slightly trickier in his situation because he was forcably ejected from supercruise by the failsafe on the FSD for being too close to the sun. So he's in normal space, i.e. travel will be too slow to get any distance from the sun. Certainly not going to get anywhere near 50C by going 25/75% thrust in normal space anyway.

All you can do in this situation is wait until your ship cools down as low as it will go (until the temp gauge stops) and then consider shutting off unnecessary modules like the scanner, weapons etc. Anything you don't need to jump out (I would hesitate to advise you to turn off your shield module - I just don't know if they are protecting you from the heat). Wait for the temp gauge to stop again and that's about as cold as you are going to get it.

Then approximate where your escape vector will be (directly opposite the big sun) and hit your FSD and pray you can jump before you cook as you temps will rise while your FSD is charging.

This can happen from time to time when you are exploring and come across those really nasty hot suns.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Abil Midena said:
There is something broken though. I've entered hyperspace to travel to the next system, and as soon as I dropped out of hyperspace, I started taking damage from heat. The game dropped me out of hyperspace too close to the star. THAT has to be a glitch.

No, there are some seriously dangerous hot suns. Was it white and very tiny? The heat from those things goes out very far. I get the fear whenever I come out of a jump and see them.

I've heard of worse still but I've not seen them yet...

SpydersByte · Feb 4, 2015

I've been yanked out of supercruise near suns a few times, I've never had it turn into a fatal incident so whoever is saying you can't escape without a heatsink is wrong. Each time I've been dropped for proximity I've immediately boosted away from the star and waited for my heat to drop to at least 80% before engaging FSD. It has always worked fine for me :/

Painkiller · Feb 4, 2015

Elite Dangerous Sun types ...

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Stars

Undecided · Feb 4, 2015

Here is my procedure for escaping from a star without cooking.

1. Disable all systems except for life support, thrusters and FSD to reduce heat buildup.
2. Fire up the FSD and align with the escape vector.
3. Cancel the jump as soon as you are aligned or your heat gets too high.
4. Once aligned, throttle up to full.
5. When you reach full speed, disable flight assist and throttle down to zero.
6. Disable thrusters (even idle they generate a lot of heat).
7. Charge the FSD.
8. Just before the countdown starts, quickly power up thrusters (you can enter supercruise without thrusters, but you will be immediately forced back out).
9. Cross fingers.

cmdr lowest · Feb 4, 2015

Painkiller said:
Elite Dangerous Sun types ...

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Stars

Interesting guide.

White Dwarf stars. That's the ones I think I was talking about I think.

Scary business. They look very tiny and unassuming but can kick you out of SC even when they look really far away...

Abil Midena · Feb 4, 2015

cmdr lowest said:
It's slightly trickier in his situation because he was forcably ejected from supercruise by the failsafe on the FSD for being too close to the sun. So he's in normal space, i.e. travel will be too slow to get any distance from the sun. Certainly not going to get anywhere near 50C by going 25/75% thrust in normal space anyway.

All you can do in this situation is wait until your ship cools down as low as it will go (until the temp gauge stops) and then consider shutting off unnecessary modules like the scanner, weapons etc. Anything you don't need to jump out (I would hesitate to advise you to turn off your shield module - I just don't know if they are protecting you from the heat). Wait for the temp gauge to stop again and that's about as cold as you are going to get it.

Then approximate where your escape vector will be (directly opposite the big sun) and hit your FSD and pray you can jump before you cook as you temps will rise while your FSD is charging.

This can happen from time to time when you are exploring and come across those really nasty hot suns.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

No, there are some seriously dangerous hot suns. Was it white and very tiny? The heat from those things goes out very far. I get the fear whenever I come out of a jump and see them.

I've heard of worse still but I've not seen them yet...

Um. So what you're saying is the game is smart enough to drop you out of hyperspace far enough from the star when going from system to system...sometimes. Huh?

By the way, the method you described is the exact way I escaped when this happened. Amazing considering I was in panic mode, angry, and wondering what just happened, all at the same time.

SpydersByte · Feb 4, 2015

Undecided said:
Here is my procedure for escaping from a star without cooking.

1. Disable all systems except for life support, thrusters and FSD to reduce heat buildup.
2. Fire up the FSD and align with the escape vector.
3. Cancel the jump as soon as you are aligned or your heat gets too high.
4. Once aligned, throttle up to full.
5. When you reach full speed, disable flight assist and throttle down to zero.
6. Disable thrusters (even idle they generate a lot of heat).
7. Charge the FSD.
8. Just before the countdown starts, quickly power up thrusters (you can enter supercruise without thrusters, but you will be immediately forced back out).
9. Cross fingers.

But it's nowhere near as complicated as that. If you simply boost away from the star and let your heat cool to 80/90 tops before you engage FSD and you'll be fine.