Ship Builds & Load Outs How _exactly_ does Heat work?

Kayvan

Kayvan
Been meaning to post this question for days. My problem is that I know A: the basics of heat management in game, B: the science and maths behind real heat management in space, but I don't know a lot of the details how thermal load and heat rejection are implemented. This is unfortunate bc the game tells us specifically how much heat this and that weapon generates per shot or per second, but it doesn't tell me what to do with that number.

  • how is the heat capacity of a particular ship calculated?
  • at what rate is heat shed through the radiators? Is this rate the same for every ship?
(Scientific side note: the orange colour which the radiators glow suggests they run at almost 3000K. At that temperature they should shed about 4.5MW/m². But in reality it would be impossible to run radiators that hot, for various reasons.)
  • how is the base heat of every power-using module calculated? And for instance the thermal load of engines at full thrust?
  • the power plant is the only module that actually gives us an efficiency value (which is "the wrong way round" -- higher eff should be better -- but whatever) -- so it should be possible to calculate a thermal load from actual power produced and efficiency. Does it indeed work that way?

Anyone who can shed some light on these questions?

Basically I want to be able to calculate in advance, before spending a ton of engineering mats for making weapons and experimenting, how well the ship will actually cope with the heat.
 

sinisalo

sinisalo
I prefer Coriolis, despite it's inaacuracies, due to the layout. But EDSY is essential for heat analysis. With Inara's export function (and EDMC too) it's a snap to check your heat. Of course that doesn't help in the theory-crafting stage, but it's easy to export your current ship and just engineer the changes in EDSY to see how your idle, weapons and jump temps are affected.
 

Cookie Smuggler

C
Kayvan said:
(Scientific side note: the orange colour which the radiators glow suggests they run at almost 3000K. At that temperature they should shed about 4.5MW/m². But in reality it would be impossible to run radiators that hot, for various reasons.)
Click to expand...
most likely what is happening is the radiators are coated in something that emits light as it is heated.
that number for shed heat is probably inaccurate, it seems like that is a convection number and not a radiation number.
space is actually a very very good insulator due to there being next to nothing to conduct heat (it does have a temperature, but the density is so low that that doesn't matter in this context), therefore the only functional method to get rid of heat is to radiate it in some form of energy (in this context).
thankfully we don't have to deal with the fun that how your paint job effects your ship's heat absorption (even here on earth IRL there are limits on what color a jetliner can be due to this), going by the SR-71 spy plane the best color might actually be black.
 

Dragsham

Dragsham
I'm not savvy on the math.
But l do know the mechanics.
Weps, thrusters, powerplant, distributor, fsd,(when engaged) all generate lots of heat.
In fact any module that uses power has a latent heat signature.
The ones above differ in that their heat rises upon demand.
It's worth noting that heat rises as you reach the lower end of a given capacitors output. More pips negates that. But you can't have 4 pips in all so heat is always going to climb upon excessive use.
Beams & rails generate huge amounts of heat. Whereas frag cannons and multicannons don't (unless incendiary experimental is used).
To offset heat you can deploy heatsinks (my pvp fdl railer has 16 of em), or simply zero thrust and stop firing.
I have a corvette all multicannons incendiary rapid firing except one small one that's corrosive. 1 pip it'll fire all day. Except the heat generated means sinks are a requirement hehe.
Having an engineered powerplant low emission or armoured is essential to combat heat.
Also flow control on distributor fsd powerplant goes alongway to cooling by not demanding as much power.
The drawback with engineered cool modules is their output is drastically dropped. No chance of using prismatics hehe. Biweaves work well especially low draw. But again at a huge cost in shields cap.
All compromise.
For me personally. All my combat ships have armoured powerplants. Hard to snipe and pound for pound the best output based on combating heat.
Only 1 ship I have has a ultra low signature of just 7%. 10% in sc. But she's a scout/smuggler. Nuff said hehe.
Rail guns which I use alongside frag cannons & pacifiers with drag experimentals work well. One wep type has extreme heat (short range rails/imperial hammers), the other virtually none.
If there is a specific formula for heat within this game l certainly do not know it.
But l do know how to offset it.
Use coriolis but it doesn't give sufficient detail regarding latent/under load heat.
Only way to check your build out is under fire. Then the shortcomings as a result of your build become apparent.
Some ships can handle far more heat than others. The corvette and fdl are very good. Not sure on the worse ones but all ships have their quirks.
Module reinforcements do not protect against heat. But they do divide the heats damage amongst lower priority modules.
Make sure you prioritise when deploying for attack, the cargo bay, fsd, fsd booster, interdictor etc to 4. Thus shutting them down and reducing the load on the powerplant and distributor.
Hope this ramble helps.

o7
 
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