Ships Heat Management

[Darth Wonko]

I've built dozens of ships with various builds with and without engineering.

Some of my builds run super-hot and some are super-cool.

How do I determine heat generation/dissipation when I'm putting together builds?

 

[CMDR Saigon]

I've built dozens of ships with various builds with and without engineering.

Some of my builds run super-hot and some are super-cool.

How do I determine heat generation/dissipation when I'm putting together builds?

o7 CMDR, the question is very general and cover a complex topic and you yourself would have to experiment as you have done with the various builds mentioned. On balance these are the stuff in my opinion should be considered:

• Powerplant (this is the most heat intensive module)
• Insofar as Engineering then Clean, Low Emissions, Thermal Spread, Therman Vent are your friend but the latter is "on target basis"
• In Flight operation then turn off unneeded modules, heatsinks, silent running are your friend

See you in black...when you are visible CMDR,

 

[Untilting]

Also each ship type has its own thermal profile, before you make any changes via modules and engineering - Dolphins run much cooler than Type 7s. I don't think it's a stat you can see anywhere in-game, but investigations have been done by the community e.g.

A table of all of Edsy's ship thermals.

I made this table to get a more comparative overview for my own purposes, but it occurred to me I might as well share it. AFAIK none of this has been listed before, at least not comparatively other than in the research thread which is sadly out of date and has some unverified data. Thanks to...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Greasetrap42]

All of my ships are super cool.

 

[Robert Rockbite]

Use Edsy to check your build instead of Coriolis. Edsy's estimate of heat is pretty good. For more detail, dig in the edsy thermals thread linked by Untilting above.

 

[Northpin]

I've built dozens of ships with various builds with and without engineering.

Some of my builds run super-hot and some are super-cool.

How do I determine heat generation/dissipation when I'm putting together builds?

heat depends on power plant efficiency (smaller better), total power consumption (more power used more heat generated) and a fixed and hidden per ship heat capacity

If you build ships using Inara, it can offer accurate heat levels

 

[Cmdr Dreamer]

And do clean drives and thrusters with thermal spread of any help ?

 

[Northpin]

And do clean drives and thrusters with thermal spread of any help ?

sometimes yes, but the speed penalty might not worth it...
However clean drives are a heat trap for explorers since they use more power so they generate more heat in supercruise

 

[Rebel Yell]

Heat is good! For the God of Plasma!

 

[AEBRAM]

Your power plant effectively determines your baseline thermal load with minor % variance due to engines and FSD. The armoured blueprint will be your best friend when using high thermal costing weapons.

You want to keep an eye on hardpoint choices that have a high thermal load per shot. There are different engineering options to reduce the thermal loads without regressing to using thermal vent beam lasers.

Also, the baseline thermal load influences how quickly you are able to drop heat at higher than 50%. As your heat threshold lowers, the rate of reduction reduces. This works to your advantage where you can push the 100% threshold by using the increased heat loss drop rate due to the lower resting baseline heat level. Knowing this tidbit than you may alternate weapons or peel away to let your ship cool. Remember, this method of cooling your ship means that you do not need heatsinks but cognizant awareness to switch hardpoint choices to keep pressure on your target.