Measured SCO Fuel/Hour and Speed Rates

[V'larr]

Hey V'larr, this might give you some ideas. I've been doing some in-game recording with SCO heat and two things structured my testing. Throttle level affects heat which is hard to see with how aggressive heat is in older ships but was clearer in the T8 and P2 when throttling down and noticing two different resting heat % on a SCO FSD C:

View attachment 413413

The second thing was heat seems to build up like fuel consumption, ramping up until the ship reaches maximum speed which I'll show in the results below. So, all my testing was done with throttle at 100%. I've assumed the heat generation stat on the SCO modules are heat units per second much like heat sinks, FSDs, and thrusters.

In the below table:

• Column 2 is where I reset heat to 0% and when the heat sink wore off, SCO was engaged and I timed the heat climb to 100%.
• Column 3 is where I reached max SCO speed for full effect of heat, reset heat to 0%, then timed the heat climb to 100%.
• Column 4 is where I worked my way backwards from EDSY by plugging in the SCO thermal load stat into the EDSY FSD thermal load to mimic the in-game test conditions. I then compared EDSY's estimated time to 100% from idle % vs the in-game result. The in-game result is also from the same idle % at max SCO speeds.

Ship	0%-100% heat starting at regular supercruise	0%-100% heat at 100% SCO speed	EDSY idle heat %-100% heat at 100% SCO speed
P2 (SCO FSD B)	30s	25s	EDSY 26.0% 4.3s - ingame result 23s
Cobra III (SCO FSD A)	10s	7s	EDSY 28.9% 5.9s - ingame result 6s
Asp X (SCO FSD A)	11s	7s	EDSY 27.8% 4.1s - ingame result 5s

I believe the difference between column 2 and 3 is a good way to show the heat build up effect. In column 4, EDSY does a fairly good job at predicting the results I reckon but need more data points and need them at exact time values instead of whole seconds like I've done. The 23s in-game result from the P2 is expected from its SCO capable nature. In order to get EDSY to estimate 23s, the thermal load stat plugged into the FSD has to be around 50.5 (about half of the SCO B's full heat effect), so we could very loosely say the P2 has a heat modifier of 0.5 but it seriously needs more testing. This is assuming the heat generation stats on the modules are correct. I only say this because the fuel consumption per second stat Fdev added later in-game is inconsistent and on some occasions quite wrong, so I'll make a post in suggestions about this separately.

Here's just a picture of what I described in EDSY:
View attachment 413414

Phenomenal stuff, thanks again for doing all this!

That's really clever using the FSD thermal load calcs on edsy to figure out the SCO modifiers. I'm real curious what the Mandalay's modifier is, based on an anecdote I've seen about it making a Hutton run nonstop without extra fuel or even a heatsink (!).

I don't have access to the new ships myself, I wonder if the Canonn pilots would be interested in helping gather data points? (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/return-of-the-canonn-discord.608496/ their discord invite link here's still good)

 

[Osiliran]

I haven't paid very close attention but I had thought that the fuel consumption went sky-high pretty much instantly, unlike the speed.

This is really good stuff. In order to eliminate possible differences between the displayed in-game heat generation stats and the actual values used, you could use the same SCO drive on both old and new ships (rather than B vs A). But yeah I guess there must indeed be some kind of special SCO-specific heat coefficients on the new ships.

No worries Neilski. It seemed to me most ships reach max speed and fuel rate roughly the same time but some of the low fuel rate ships, especially the new ones, hit cap before speed. Yeah 100% on standardizing the tests, its just under most other FSD ratings the P2 doesn't overheat and wanted to observe some of those times for this exercise.

 

[Osiliran]

Phenomenal stuff, thanks again for doing all this!

That's really clever using the FSD thermal load calcs on edsy to figure out the SCO modifiers. I'm real curious what the Mandalay's modifier is, based on an anecdote I've seen about it making a Hutton run nonstop without extra fuel or even a heatsink (!).

I don't have access to the new ships myself, I wonder if the Canonn pilots would be interested in helping gather data points? (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/return-of-the-canonn-discord.608496/ their discord invite link here's still good)

No stress V'larr it was a fun exercise. I think next step is thinking up a good methodology for larger testing that we can share with others (like Canonn) to collect more data points. Thanks for the link I'll check it out. If you (and anyone else) have any suggestions on a starting point, throw them in here and we can work on an approach.

 

[Osiliran]

Happy SCO day everyone! It's been about one year since SCO changed our cmdr's lives forever No better way to celebrate than testing a new ship.

Tested the Corsair and added the data points to the spreadsheet. It's quite comparable to the T8 - same speeds but with a slightly thirstier fuel constant of 0.24 vs the T8's of 0.19. Between the two ships, Corsair does a better job of managing SCO heat.

 

[Major Klutz]

I've been away from the game for a few years and just started playing again, so I'm new to the SCO drive.
Your data is extremely helpful. Thank you.

 

[Osiliran]

I've been away from the game for a few years and just started playing again, so I'm new to the SCO drive.
Your data is extremely helpful. Thank you.

My pleasure

The Panther Clipper Mk II fuel and speed rate data has been added to the sheet. I was unable to test on this occasion, so a fellow cmdr has been able to assist (thank you Disnaematter).

Observations:

• Fuel formula gives us a ship constant (fuel) of 0.21, meaning its fuel rate is operating at about 21% of what you'd expect from a FSD/fuel tank combo in those sizes.
• Relative to the other new ships is a comparison below (lower is better):
  • Python Mk II 0.60
  • Type-8 0.19
  • Mandalay 0.08
  • Cobra Mk V 0.19
  • Corsair 0.24
• Unlike the other new SCO ships, it doesn't seem to gain any additional speed performance beyond the modules' advertised rates and is more or less in line with old ships that share the same FSD size (Cutter/Beluga).
• On a core fuel tank, it'll get you about 450,000 l/s in 2 mins 30 secs, which is not bad considering the Type-9, Cutter and Beluga will all get you only 100,000 l/s in 30 secs. Good value for traders.

No comment on heat until I'm able to try for myself, but I'd love to hear how others are going with it.

 

[Chroniclerope]

My pleasure

The Panther Clipper Mk II fuel and speed rate data has been added to the sheet. I was unable to test on this occasion, so a fellow cmdr has been able to assist (thank you Disnaematter).

Observations:

• Fuel formula gives us a ship constant (fuel) of 0.21, meaning its fuel rate is operating at about 21% of what you'd expect from a FSD/fuel tank combo in those sizes.
• Relative to the other new ships is a comparison below (lower is better):
  • Python Mk II 0.60
  • Type-8 0.19
  • Mandalay 0.08
  • Cobra Mk V 0.19
  • Corsair 0.24
• Unlike the other new SCO ships, it doesn't seem to gain any additional speed performance beyond the modules' advertised rates and is more or less in line with old ships that share the same FSD size (Cutter/Beluga).
• On a core fuel tank, it'll get you about 450,000 l/s in 2 mins 30 secs, which is not bad considering the Type-9, Cutter and Beluga will all get you only 100,000 l/s in 30 secs. Good value for traders.

No comment on heat until I'm able to try for myself, but I'd love to hear how others are going with it.

I had the same observation, it really flies in SCO like a non optimized ship! Did they forget to change a true/false in its code?

Or perhaps I'm just spoiled by all my time in the Mandalay, but I would expect a big heavy ship to reflect that and love going forwards.

 

[aRJay]

I have only done 178,000Ls in my PC with 7A SCO FSD as supplied but with G5 increased range, the PP had G1 Low Emissions. While I didn’t observe the heat figures they never got into the warnings levels.

 

[V'larr]

I had the same observation, it really flies in SCO like a non optimized ship! Did they forget to change a true/false in its code?

Or perhaps I'm just spoiled by all my time in the Mandalay, but I would expect a big heavy ship to reflect that and love going forwards.

Do you mean it wobbles in SCO?