Clean Drives is completely broken and useless.

[DemiserofD]

Here's the problem. Clean Drives reduces the heat output of engines while under thrust. This sounds good! But Clean Drives also increases the power cost of your thrusters. This is bad.

Why? Because more power generates more heat, and this heat generation is passive, not just while under thrust.

To make matters worse, boosting is not affected whatsoever. All boosts generate the same amount of heat, no matter the engineering. Combined with the higher passive heat, Clean Drives (almost) universally generate more heat than any other engineering effect.

If you want a good example of the effect clean drives has, I did some testing with them. In Silent Running under full thrust, both engineered and unengineered thrusters took exactly the same amount of time to overheat. With constant boosting in silent running, 5 boosts took a normal thruster to 97% heat. It took Clean Drives 5 boosts to 94% heat.

Translation: Clean Drives is completely broken and useless. It's working exactly as designed, but it's designed poorly.

At bare minimum, it really should also apply to boosting. But to be frank, even that won't be enough. The problem is, tiny amounts of heat make a big difference at low heat. Just adding Clean Drives to my silent python raised my ambient heat from 19% to 21%; enough to make me visible to thargoids, and make the entire ship useless.

If we really wanted it to be useful, it really should REDUCE the power draw of the engines, hitting the problem from both sides, so to speak. Without that, I really can't see any way the engineering effect will ever be useful.

 

[Rat Catcher]

With constant boosting in silent running, 5 boosts took a normal thruster to 97% heat. It took Clean Drives 5 boosts to 94% heat.

So there was a reduction of 3% heat?

Not that I disagree with the premise that, technically, clean drives should use less energy, nor that they are, and have been, incorrectly configured for a long time.

I'll have to experiment with my titan crawler Chieftain, I have some normal (G5 dirty / drag) engineered drives handy, I'll have to take the revised build out to Hadid soon.

 

[Reggit]

...more power generates more heat, and this heat generation is passive, not just while under thrust...

...If we really wanted it to be useful, it really should REDUCE the power draw of the engines, hitting the problem from both sides, so to speak. Without that, I really can't see any way the engineering effect will ever be useful.

Yup!
They don't seem to make alot of sense - they should be THE choice for cool running ships.

 

[DemiserofD]

So there was a reduction of 3% heat?

Not that I disagree with the premise that, technically, clean drives should use less energy, nor that they are, and have been, incorrectly configured for a long time.

I'll have to experiment with my titan crawler Chieftain, I have some normal (G5 dirty / drag) engineered drives handy, I'll have to take the revised build out to Hadid soon.

Yeah, it took me about 2 seconds longer to overheat, or a difference of about 5% - in exchange for about 2% higher resting heat. Unfortunately, the biggest difference is only ever just before overheating, not down at the bottom where it would actually matter. The difference between 94% and 97% heat is insignificant. The difference between 19% and 21% heat is massive.

If it actually lowered my resting heat by 3%, that would be pretty massive.

 

[Rat Catcher]

The difference between 94% and 97% heat is insignificant. The difference between 19% and 21% heat is massive.

True indeed, the bottom end is the difference between being invisible & dogpiled

Nice bit of research!

 

[rootsrat]

Yeah, it took me about 2 seconds longer to overheat, or a difference of about 5% - in exchange for about 2% higher resting heat. Unfortunately, the biggest difference is only ever just before overheating, not down at the bottom where it would actually matter. The difference between 94% and 97% heat is insignificant. The difference between 19% and 21% heat is massive.

If it actually lowered my resting heat by 3%, that would be pretty massive.

That's pretty bad. Any experimental?

 

[Boone Lockley]

Cleans are really good if you don't need to boost or if you bring enough heat sinks to counter the boost, but yeah outside of that, they aren't that good. G1 Cleans are good for exploration, though.

 

[DemiserofD]

Cleans are really good if you don't need to boost or if you bring enough heat sinks to counter the boost, but yeah outside of that, they aren't that good. G1 Cleans are good for exploration, though.

Amusingly, I actually thought about just doing that, because G1 is the only one that does not increase your power draw. Ultimately, it's just easier to go dirty drives and use alternative cooling options with other ships, even though it does limit the choices I have.

That's pretty bad. Any experimental?

No, but unfortunately the only one that affects Heat only reduces the thermal load of the engines while they are active even further, there is no experimental to reduce the power draw. So my top heat would be a little bit better, but my bottom heat would be unchanged.

 

[Boone Lockley]

Amusingly, I actually thought about just doing that, because G1 is the only one that does not increase your power draw. Ultimately, it's just easier to go dirty drives and use alternative cooling options with other ships, even though it does limit the choices I have.

Out of curiosity do you have an EDSY link?

 

[DemiserofD]

Out of curiosity do you have an EDSY link?

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you mean. An EDSY link for what?

Clean Drives level 1 doesn't increase your power draw is all I meant. That being the case, it's the only one that actually does reduce your heat.

 

[Northpin]

Combined with the higher passive heat, Clean Drives (almost) universally generate more heat than any other engineering effect.

Only in supercruise
In normal space Clean drives are more "clean" than drag drives

 

[metatheurgist]

I wonder if someone reversed the sign on power draw for the blueprint.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Why are you boosting?
This runs at full thrust under 15%.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

That clean drives are actually worse for heat than dirty drives has been brought up many many times since engineering was first introduced. Nothing ever changed.

 

[aRJay]

I am not sure it is fair to describe Clean Drives as ”Broken” that implies they were once better.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

I am not sure it is fair to describe Clean Drives as ”Broken” that implies they were once better.

True, calling them DOA would be more fitting.

 

[HRDiagram]

In my head canon, when I think of the Clean Drives blueprint, and how pointless it is performance-wise, I always imagine that the thruster modules are in fact spanking clean and shiny at any time.
Which makes me think that they added this mod with ship interiors in mind.

 

[The Own of Noon]

Well maybe it's like a catalytic converter

Ah here it is the dirty engineering removes emissions controls chip and clean engineering fastens additional emissions processing. And they both put a cherry bomb in yr tailpipe

 

[Mako The Grey]

Translation: Clean Drives is completely broken and useless. It's working exactly as designed, but it's designed poorly.

That's not really the case. The Clean Drive engineering allows my to have a number of ships that are able to work around the Thargoid Titans at less than 20 heat without the need for heat sinks or thermal engineered lasers ....so I don't get attacked/noticed. Clean drives are very useful...in some situations

 

[Morbad]

Clean drives work as intended...to reduce the heat the actual generation of thrust produces. It would be nice if baseline power, and thus heat, was also reduced, but they decided against that for whatever reason.

I don't personally have much use for clean drives, but they can definitely help when maneuvering over high-g worlds--was a big deal on the Dolphin before they just decided to make the Dolphin one of the coolest running ships in the game because people couldn't figure out how to fly it--but applies to any ship in any situation where thruster heat itself is a limiting factor.