A little less than a month ago I ran some tests comparing Clean Drive Tuning (CD) and Dirty Drive Tuning (DD) as I was engineering my Asp Explorer for exploration and trying to lower the heat signature so I could fuel scoop for longer. It occurred to me that the extra power draw of CD could directly counteract the benefits of the reduced thermal load; which lead to my testing.
For anyone interested in looking at the original thread here's a link: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...is-Pointless?p=5547817&viewfull=1#post5547817
This thread will mostly be a consolidation of all the results and a few new conclusions. It will also be lots of text, so continue at your own discretion.
TL/DR: CD as a mod only has advantages in silent running and even then it doesn't significantly outperform standard drives in duration. The only reason it is better for silent running builds is because it has an optimal multiplier increase in addition to the similar duration in SR as Standard drives.
Intro:
For these tests five ships were used: the Asp Explorer, Dolphin, Fer-De-Lance, Type-7, and Vulture. These ships were chosen as all five are equipped with class 5 drives, and provide a sample pool that is about 1/6 the population of ships currently in the game. These ships were outfitted with a grade A power plant of respective size to the ship and fitted with a heat sink launcher. The drives were Class 5 Grade A, standard, Clean drive, and Dirty drive modified. The drives used can be seen in the spoilers below; the goal was not to get a god roll, but to get an average high positive, high negative roll.
Standard:
Clean:
Dirty:
Procedure:
Two Tests were performed with each ship using stock loadouts with the exception of the power plant and thrusters. Each ship was tested with the three different types of thrusters and the lowest temperature was recorded at 100% throttle. The Highest temperature was measured by boosting several times and recording the highest temperature spike (Many images were collected during this set of tests; the imgur albums are available near the bottom of this post).
Four different Silent Running tests were performed on each ship with each type of drive. All of these tests began with the same procedure: all modules were deactivated except for the heat sink launcher, silent running was activated, a heat sink was launched, the heat sink launcher was deactivated before the sink was ejected from the ship. This method is the same as was used by CMDR Frenotx in researching heat mechanics. The first test began with the throttle at 0% and activating the thrusters and a stopwatch at the same time, the time was then recorded until the "Warning Heat Damage" message appeared in the top right info panel indicating the ship had reached 100% heat. The same methods were used with the throttle starting at 100% for the second test. The third test involved cycling the throttle between full forward (100%) and full reverse (-100%) never allowing the ship to reach max speed in either direction. For the final test the power distributor was powered on and drives were activated the moment the heat sink launcher ejected the sink. The number of boosts before reaching 100% heat was then recorded.
Results:
The BTU of each ship was calculated using Frenotx's method and when compared to the confirmed values seemed to line up. Hypothesis T-Tests were used to indicate if a difference between two data sets was significant; any value less than or equal to 0.05 (5%) is considered significant.
A few interesting discoveries:
Conclusions:
The 0% and 100% t-test results showed no significant difference between clean and dirty drives. However, it was pointed out by baqar79 that my testing methodology for 100% was flawed which lead to the Varying throttle test. One result of note is that clean drives performed worse than standard drives in all cases when silent running at 0%; this makes sense as CD has a higher power draw than standard drives, and in this particular test the thermal load was not a factor. The varying throttle test shows where CD really shines, in having similar performance to standard drive in terms of duration while having the advantage of an increased optimal multiplier. Taking into account the first set of tests that shows no statistically significant difference in heat generation between CD and DD, while DD does have a boost speed that is significant the conclusion that Clean Drive Tuning is only useful for Silent Running can be reached. So, in this regard CD is similar to the Fast FSD boot mod where it is useful, but only in a niche application.
Recommendation:
Clean Drive Tuning is a bit misleading in its name; the name makes one think that it should be more efficient, when in fact it isn't. For that reason I propose that Clean Drive Tuning be renamed Silent Drive Tuning. I also think that another mod should be added called Efficient Drive Tuning that has a mass reduction, power reduction, and thermal load reduction; with negatives of a large reduction in integrity, and a reduction in optimal multiplier. Efficient Drive Tuning would be a mod for those looking to explore as it would increase fuel economy and reduce mass.
Albums from first test:
AspX: http://imgur.com/a/fPE4j
Dolphin: http://imgur.com/a/o9Lqn
FDL: http://imgur.com/a/9UzT4
T7: http://imgur.com/a/5XB70
Vulture: http://imgur.com/a/94DXz
For anyone interested in looking at the original thread here's a link: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...is-Pointless?p=5547817&viewfull=1#post5547817
This thread will mostly be a consolidation of all the results and a few new conclusions. It will also be lots of text, so continue at your own discretion.
TL/DR: CD as a mod only has advantages in silent running and even then it doesn't significantly outperform standard drives in duration. The only reason it is better for silent running builds is because it has an optimal multiplier increase in addition to the similar duration in SR as Standard drives.
Intro:
For these tests five ships were used: the Asp Explorer, Dolphin, Fer-De-Lance, Type-7, and Vulture. These ships were chosen as all five are equipped with class 5 drives, and provide a sample pool that is about 1/6 the population of ships currently in the game. These ships were outfitted with a grade A power plant of respective size to the ship and fitted with a heat sink launcher. The drives were Class 5 Grade A, standard, Clean drive, and Dirty drive modified. The drives used can be seen in the spoilers below; the goal was not to get a god roll, but to get an average high positive, high negative roll.
Standard:
Procedure:
Two Tests were performed with each ship using stock loadouts with the exception of the power plant and thrusters. Each ship was tested with the three different types of thrusters and the lowest temperature was recorded at 100% throttle. The Highest temperature was measured by boosting several times and recording the highest temperature spike (Many images were collected during this set of tests; the imgur albums are available near the bottom of this post).
Four different Silent Running tests were performed on each ship with each type of drive. All of these tests began with the same procedure: all modules were deactivated except for the heat sink launcher, silent running was activated, a heat sink was launched, the heat sink launcher was deactivated before the sink was ejected from the ship. This method is the same as was used by CMDR Frenotx in researching heat mechanics. The first test began with the throttle at 0% and activating the thrusters and a stopwatch at the same time, the time was then recorded until the "Warning Heat Damage" message appeared in the top right info panel indicating the ship had reached 100% heat. The same methods were used with the throttle starting at 100% for the second test. The third test involved cycling the throttle between full forward (100%) and full reverse (-100%) never allowing the ship to reach max speed in either direction. For the final test the power distributor was powered on and drives were activated the moment the heat sink launcher ejected the sink. The number of boosts before reaching 100% heat was then recorded.
Results:
The BTU of each ship was calculated using Frenotx's method and when compared to the confirmed values seemed to line up. Hypothesis T-Tests were used to indicate if a difference between two data sets was significant; any value less than or equal to 0.05 (5%) is considered significant.
A few interesting discoveries:
- The termal load of thrusters is constant over all classes and grades, meaning ships with higher thermal capacity are less affected by a difference in thermal load
- The thermal load of thrusters is only applied when the ship is changing velocity once max speed has been reached the thermal load is no longer applied even if the engines visibly appear to be "On"
- The heat generated from boosting is a stat that may or may not be independent of thruster thermal load as can be seen in the differences between the FDL, T7, and Vulture which all have similar thermal capacity but much different heat per boost
Conclusions:
The 0% and 100% t-test results showed no significant difference between clean and dirty drives. However, it was pointed out by baqar79 that my testing methodology for 100% was flawed which lead to the Varying throttle test. One result of note is that clean drives performed worse than standard drives in all cases when silent running at 0%; this makes sense as CD has a higher power draw than standard drives, and in this particular test the thermal load was not a factor. The varying throttle test shows where CD really shines, in having similar performance to standard drive in terms of duration while having the advantage of an increased optimal multiplier. Taking into account the first set of tests that shows no statistically significant difference in heat generation between CD and DD, while DD does have a boost speed that is significant the conclusion that Clean Drive Tuning is only useful for Silent Running can be reached. So, in this regard CD is similar to the Fast FSD boot mod where it is useful, but only in a niche application.
Recommendation:
Clean Drive Tuning is a bit misleading in its name; the name makes one think that it should be more efficient, when in fact it isn't. For that reason I propose that Clean Drive Tuning be renamed Silent Drive Tuning. I also think that another mod should be added called Efficient Drive Tuning that has a mass reduction, power reduction, and thermal load reduction; with negatives of a large reduction in integrity, and a reduction in optimal multiplier. Efficient Drive Tuning would be a mod for those looking to explore as it would increase fuel economy and reduce mass.
Albums from first test:
AspX: http://imgur.com/a/fPE4j
Dolphin: http://imgur.com/a/o9Lqn
FDL: http://imgur.com/a/9UzT4
T7: http://imgur.com/a/5XB70
Vulture: http://imgur.com/a/94DXz
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