[Research] Detailed Heat Mechanics

[Konnivar]

What exactly is the waste heat on thrusters? I am really confused because it seems that clean drive is simply a lower scaled dirty drive modification. So either thermal load of thrusters works different than I think it does, or clean drive is juts a low variant dirty drive. But then this questions why not simply using
So on big rated thrusters (8A) the dirty 3 is nearly identically to the clean 5. Which questions the effort for the clean 5. So the major difference. is the waste heat also affecting boost drain on the ENG?
However since the Thermal laod on all engien sizes and classes is equal, smaller engines, heatwise all profit a lot from clean drives over dirty drives the smaller and lower rated they get

For people wanting to test OP's numbers as well, the gimballed beam laser class 2 does requires 1.0mW. so it is a bit of a faster way to test your heattreshold in silent running.

Is the thermal laod of wepaons also affected by the PP heat efficiency.

I did some testing of Clean drives vs. Dirty and stock drives in these threads:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/354115-Clean-Drive-Tuning-is-Pointless

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/358008-PSA-Clean-Drive-Tuning-is-NOT-for-Explorers

Make of my data what you will; there are a few extra tests that could be made to create a more comprehensive picture.

 

[GoStu]

That's a lot of work, but... since I've no interest in burning up someone else's ship, I'm just not sure what good all this data is.
It's always been pretty obvious that some ships heat up faster or cool down faster than others, since they all have heat indicators.

So outside of figuring out how to game the play for maximum heat generation and damage to an enemy I don't have - what can I do with all this?

For one, it helps you understand engineering a bit better and what that "Efficiency" stat on your Powerplant does. It's one of a few reasons why you shouldn't just run the biggest Overcharge possible; tanking efficiency to get more Power Generation is double-ugly for your heat.

With the formulas in the OP you can also find that once you're above 66% heat, you don't cool any faster. Therefore, if your heat is over 66% and is still climbing, you WILL overheat unless you do something to reduce the amount of heat you're generating.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

For one, it helps you understand engineering a bit better and what that "Efficiency" stat on your Powerplant does. It's one of a few reasons why you shouldn't just run the biggest Overcharge possible; tanking efficiency to get more Power Generation is double-ugly for your heat.

With the formulas in the OP you can also find that once you're above 66% heat, you don't cool any faster. Therefore, if your heat is over 66% and is still climbing, you WILL overheat unless you do something to reduce the amount of heat you're generating.

ont he cutter power is an issues, it has very big internals in sum but only a clss 7 distributor, so heat generation is big and has to work with that, thats why a corvette can get so realy ugly with firepower it's just having that amazing C8 power distributor and the rather lowish other inetrnals don't generate much waste ehat leaving a lot to squeeze into weapons without cookign itself so quickly.

 

[Lightspeed]

Any chance someone could do an update for the T-10 ?

 

[marx]

Did the tests for the Type-10, with the following results:

6E Power Plant (Heat Eff = 1), 7E Thrusters (Power draw = 6.08 MW):
1m 20s -> 80 * 1 * 6.08 = 486.4
1m 23s -> 83 * 1 * 6.08 = 504.64

4A Power Plant (Heat Eff = 0.4), 6D Thrusters (Power draw = 5.67 MW):
3m 41s -> 221 * 0.4 * 5.67 = 501.228
3m 42s -> 222* 0.4 * 5.67 = 503.496

The first result's slightly larger difference was likely me missing something. Averaging the other three would give 503.12 BTU, rounded down to 503 BTU then. Quite good.

I've also tried the Clipper, with 4A PP and 5D thrusters (Power draw = 4.59 MW):
4m 8s -> 248 * 0.4 * 4.59 = 455.328, so the same as listed

Update: testing the Cutter, with 5A PP and 7D thrusters (Power draw = 6.84 MW):
2m 56s -> 177 * 0.4 * 6.84 = 484.272, near what's listed

 

[Frenotx]

Thanks for the data, folks. Updated the OP with the various new info. Sorry for putting this off so long. X3

 

[Noobilite]

Does anyone know if weapons heat is slowed down by the power plants efficiency and how weapons heat works in general. How does weapons heat work? By that I mean heat from firing weapons.

https://eddp.co/u/ZHqTwQxZ

When the HPS value from heat in coriolis does it go directly to the power plant and act like the normal system power or does it go through the capacitor first? The whole power/heat from weapons is still confusing me. I realize it needs to be converted to actual shots potentially. I'm just uncertain which value goes where.

If I'm right and this layout has a resting state of around 215 heat out of 490 and it fires all 4ximperial hammers it will stop firing at just under 160% heat and never hurt the hull after approx 8 second. Assuming the individual shots don't sneak in an extra set since I used purlely HPS as a generalization and not the actual shot and reload. I assumed the HPS value goes directly to the heat bar and is reduced by the efficiency value of 0.48. It takes one round below 66% gaining 82 heat then being reduced by the cooling amount, then fires gaining a net gain of 62.7666 approx. This in 8 seconds of fire is just under 784 heat. Just below hull damage values. Or that is my estimate. NVM I think I just realized I did the math completely wrong...

either way what way is heat weapon firing heat supposed to be dealth with. Does it drain the capacitor or does it only add to the heat bar. I read capacitor somehow increases heat at low levels.... I haven't made heads or tails of this yet. Or should I say what is known about how it works? Particularly, does heat from weapons fire get reduced by the power plant efficiency?

 

[777Driver]

Does anyone know if weapons heat is slowed down by the power plants efficiency and how weapons heat works in general. How does weapons heat work? By that I mean heat from firing weapons.


either way what way is heat weapon firing heat supposed to be dealth with. Does it drain the capacitor or does it only add to the heat bar. I read capacitor somehow increases heat at low levels.... I haven't made heads or tails of this yet. Or should I say what is known about how it works? Particularly, does heat from weapons fire get reduced by the power plant efficiency?

Early here, haven't had my coffee yet. Here's a brief description and some examples:

Putting aside heat sinks and engineering. There are two primary ways the ship will attempt to keep cool - The main powerplant, A rated is the most heat efficient, The main external radiators, expelled heat is what shows up as your heat heat signature, switching off modules will reduce your signature,the less load on the powerplant the less heat being generated.

Weapons works slightly different and have some additional cooling. First difference is you can have weapons online consuming power, they only generate minimum heat until you have them deployed. An example: my ship is sitting at 4% heat, all other modules are shut down except for 9 Torpedo launchers, once I deploy weapons heat will increase to 7%

The WEP capacitor is a cooling system, if the weapons are firing, the WEP capacitor will attempt to cool weapons, if I deplete the WEP capacitor, the weapons will overheat, causing a weapons malfunction, the excess heat will go through the radiator, high levels will overheat the ship causing damage, you'll also light up like a Christmas tree on scanners.

 

[Noobilite]

I don't understand the weapons cooling/capacitor thing. Isn't there an energy per shot used up? Does it have an efficiency rating? How is the capacitor using heat and energy simultaneously?! Should it not have seperate ratings for the energy and heat?

Nvm, I'll figure it out. still going over coriolis numbers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3c62i2/conceptualizing_dps/

Still reading but this may explain it.... NVM, the only example he gives is a non existant weapon.. Still confused on basic weapon mechanics. Let alone heat. 8\

They need to stop giving everyone pre compiled data and give us the base stats and let us calculate stuff ourself. This is far too confusing. People really don't need the game played for them. We do on the other hand need the minimal info to let us figure it all out...

 

[777Driver]

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...stem-quot-as-quot-Weapon-power-capacitor-quot

 

[Noobilite]

If they just switched capacitor with heat like someone said it would be nice if they changed it back and added heatsinks on it or something.. I was hoping the sun effected systems. I was planning on using that as a strategy...

 

[taleden]

I've been doing some more testing on the beta, and I suspect that heat dissipation is actually a distinct attribute of the ship, separate from the heat capacity.

To test this, I picked three ships with varying heat capacities and fitted them each to generate exactly the same total thermal load of 37 per second: 10 MW on a 4E Power Plant, plus 27/s from charging a class 5 FSD (at zero thrust, to avoid actually jumping):

• Diamondback Explorer, estimated heat capacity = 527
• Beluga Liner, estimated heat capacity = 421
• Imperial Cutter, estimated heat capacity = 490

If the heat dissipation coefficient were constant for all ships (-0.2 in your estimate), then we should expect these three fits to stabilize at an equilibrium heat level in line with their respective heat capacities: the DBX at the lowest equilibrium point from its high heat capacity, the Beluga at the highest equilibrium point, and the Cutter in the middle.

But in fact when I tested these fits, it turns out that both the DBX and the Beluga reach equilibrium at ~57% heat, while the Cutter runs cooler than both of them at ~47%. This implies that the Cutter's heat dissipation is better than the DBX even with its lower total heat capacity, while the DBX and Beluga have very similar heat dissipation even with their very different heat capacities.

 

[Truesilver]

I've been doing some more testing on the beta, and I suspect that heat dissipation is actually a distinct attribute of the ship, separate from the heat capacity.

To test this, I picked three ships with varying heat capacities and fitted them each to generate exactly the same total thermal load of 37 per second: 10 MW on a 4E Power Plant, plus 27/s from charging a class 5 FSD (at zero thrust, to avoid actually jumping):

• Diamondback Explorer, estimated heat capacity = 527
• Beluga Liner, estimated heat capacity = 421
• Imperial Cutter, estimated heat capacity = 490

If the heat dissipation coefficient were constant for all ships (-0.2 in your estimate), then we should expect these three fits to stabilize at an equilibrium heat level in line with their respective heat capacities: the DBX at the lowest equilibrium point from its high heat capacity, the Beluga at the highest equilibrium point, and the Cutter in the middle.

But in fact when I tested these fits, it turns out that both the DBX and the Beluga reach equilibrium at ~57% heat, while the Cutter runs cooler than both of them at ~47%. This implies that the Cutter's heat dissipation is better than the DBX even with its lower total heat capacity, while the DBX and Beluga have very similar heat dissipation even with their very different heat capacities.

Very interesting, TY. Whilst I'm sorry to follow such quality material with mere anecdote, for what it's worth I was flying a Cutter with a hot loadout yesterday in PvP and to my delight the ship was dissipating the heat spikes far faster than I expected.

 

[Noobilite]

I've been doing some more testing on the beta, and I suspect that heat dissipation is actually a distinct attribute of the ship, separate from the heat capacity.

To test this, I picked three ships with varying heat capacities and fitted them each to generate exactly the same total thermal load of 37 per second: 10 MW on a 4E Power Plant, plus 27/s from charging a class 5 FSD (at zero thrust, to avoid actually jumping):

• Diamondback Explorer, estimated heat capacity = 527
• Beluga Liner, estimated heat capacity = 421
• Imperial Cutter, estimated heat capacity = 490

If the heat dissipation coefficient were constant for all ships (-0.2 in your estimate), then we should expect these three fits to stabilize at an equilibrium heat level in line with their respective heat capacities: the DBX at the lowest equilibrium point from its high heat capacity, the Beluga at the highest equilibrium point, and the Cutter in the middle.

But in fact when I tested these fits, it turns out that both the DBX and the Beluga reach equilibrium at ~57% heat, while the Cutter runs cooler than both of them at ~47%. This implies that the Cutter's heat dissipation is better than the DBX even with its lower total heat capacity, while the DBX and Beluga have very similar heat dissipation even with their very different heat capacities.

Did you have an engine on the cutter with reinforce or better efficiency. all engine mods change the value. Maybe it's a static value. Are you sure the ships using the exact same parts? maybe one slipped on the cutter. If not that is interesting. Were you in the exact same conditions. Maybe the sun or other things do matter. Were you shaded by a station or in another system or anything odd?!

 

[taleden]

No engineering on any parts for those tests, the builds were exactly as posted. All tests were done outside the same station with no solar heating, checked by disabling all modules, engaging silent running and checking that heat level did not ever rise.

If you don't believe me, try it yourself and let us know what you find.

 

[baqar79]

Just some preliminary findings on WEP capacitor in regards to heat generation.

TL;DR version:
-The closer your WEP capacitor is to full, the less heat you generate per shot.
-If your WEP capacitor is full, then having a larger capacity reduces the heat per shot.
-Heat per shot is determined I think by a relationship between the energy required for the shot, and the remaining capacity in WEP (less capacity in WEP increased heat considerably).
-Recharge rate seems to have no bearing on heat generation.
-When disabling Silent running it takes several seconds it seems to return to normal thermal dissipation, any weapon fired during this time will generate roughly the same heat as in silent running mode.

Long version:

For testing, I did so in my Python (450BTU's).

I set 0-pips to WEP, and I then enabled Silent Running before firing a single shot. I then waited for the ship to cool down before firing another shot and repeated this until the WEP capacitor was empty.

2B Railgun Specs:
Power Draw: 1.39MW
Distributor Draw: 4.82MW
Thermal: 20

6D engineered distributor(WEP Capacity: 34.79MW, WEP Recharge:5.36MW/s):
1: 22->51 (+29)
2: 22->61 (+39)
3: 22->71 (+49)
4: 22->80 (+58)
5: 21->89 (+68)
6: 22->101 (+79)
7: 21->109 (+88)

1D stock distributor(WEP Capacity:11.00MW, WEP Recharge:1.40MW/s):
1: 21->71 (+50)
2: 23->104 (+81)

7C stock distributor(WEP Capacity:51.00MW, WEP Recharge:5.10MW/s)
1: 21->47 (+26)
2: 22->55 (+32)
3: 21->60 (+39)
4: 21->67 (+46)
5: 21->73 (+52)
6: 22->81 (+59)
7: 21->88 (+67)
8: 23->96 (+73)
9: 21->101 (+80)
10: 22->108 (+86)

I also checked to see whether having pips in WEP made any difference to heat capacity as long as the capacitor was full:

6D Distributor test (full capacity), silent running, 4-pips to WEP:
4-pips: 22->51, 22->51
2-pips: 22->50, 21->50
0-pips: 22->50, 21->50

As you can see no difference between 0-pips or 4-pips, only how much WEP capacity you have remaining matters when it comes to heat.

I also performed the same test on the 6D distributor without silent running:

6D Distributor test (0-pips, not in silent running):
1: 22->27 (+5)
2: 22->31 (+9)
3: 21->33 (+12)
4: 21->35 (+14)
5: 20->37 (+17)
6: 22->40 (+18)
7: 20->42 (+22)

This whole experiment has been rather confusing overall. After all if the Python has 450BTU's capacity, how is it that a single rail gun shot can cost up to 88% of this heat capacity (396BTU's) in silent running mode?

If I'm not in silent running mode, the temperature gain is very much smaller (7th shot fired with 6D dist in silent running mode costs 88% thermal, while in normal mode it is only 22%).

I've considered that perhaps thermal capacity may be much smaller and the thermal cooling rate much greater (for example I tried a thermal capacity for the Python of 120, but a cooling formula of .8x^2 instead of .2x^2, which kind of worked, but I didn't feel very confident with this).

Maybe weapons use some other cooling system mechanic? In any case the above findings hint at the possibility that lowering the distributor draw of a weapon (and increasing the distributor WEP capacity) may be a more effective way to keep cool rather than thermal load, but I'll have to wait for 3.0, which will make testing weapons easier.

 

[Frenotx]

Just some preliminary findings on WEP capacitor in regards to heat generation.

TL;DR version:
-The closer your WEP capacitor is to full, the less heat you generate.
-If your WEP capacitor is full, then having a larger capacity reduces the heat per shot.
-Heat per shot is determined I think by a relationship between the energy required for the shot, and the remaining capacity in WEP (less capacity in WEP increased heat considerably).
-Recharge rate seems to have no bearing on heat generation.
-When disabling Silent running it takes several seconds it seems to return to normal thermal dissipation, any weapon fired during this time will generate roughly the same heat as in silent running mode.

Long version:

For testing, I did so in my Python (450BTU's).

I set 0-pips to WEP, and I then enabled Silent Running before firing a single shot. I then waited for the ship to cool down before firing another shot and repeated this until the WEP capacitor was empty.

2B Railgun Specs:
Power Draw: 1.39MW
Distributor Draw: 4.82MW
Thermal: 20

6D engineered distributor(WEP Capacity: 34.79MW, WEP Recharge:5.36MW/s):
1: 22->51 (+29)
2: 22->61 (+39)
3: 22->71 (+49)
4: 22->80 (+58)
5: 21->89 (+68)
6: 22->101 (+79)
7: 21->109 (+88)

1D stock distributor(WEP Capacity:11.00MW, WEP Recharge:1.40MW/s):
1: 21->71 (+50)
2: 23->104 (+81)

7C stock distributor(WEP Capacity:51.00MW, WEP Recharge:5.10MW/s)
1: 21->47 (+26)
2: 22->55 (+32)
3: 21->60 (+39)
4: 21->67 (+46)
5: 21->73 (+52)
6: 22->81 (+59)
7: 21->88 (+67)
8: 23->96 (+73)
9: 21->101 (+80)
10: 22->108 (+86)

I also checked to see whether having pips in WEP made any difference to heat capacity as long as the capacitor was full:

6D Distributor test (full capacity), silent running, 4-pips to WEP:
4-pips: 22->51, 22->51
2-pips: 22->50, 21->50
0-pips: 22->50, 21->50

As you can see no difference between 0-pips or 4-pips, only how much WEP capacity you have remaining matters when it comes to heat.

I also performed the same test on the 6D distributor without silent running:

6D Distributor test (0-pips, not in silent running):
1: 22->27 (+5)
2: 22->31 (+9)
3: 21->33 (+12)
4: 21->35 (+14)
5: 20->37 (+17)
6: 22->40 (+18)
7: 20->42 (+22)

This whole experiment has been rather confusing overall. After all if the Python has 450BTU's capacity, how is it that a single rail gun shot can cost up to 88% of this heat capacity (396BTU's) in silent running mode?

If I'm not in silent running mode, the temperature gain is very much smaller (7th shot fired with 6D dist in silent running mode costs 88% thermal, while in normal mode it is only 22%).

I've considered that perhaps thermal capacity may be much smaller and the thermal cooling rate much greater (for example I tried a thermal capacity for the Python of 120, but a cooling formula of .8x^2 instead of .2x^2, which kind of worked, but I didn't feel very confident with this).

Maybe weapons use some other cooling system mechanic? In any case the above findings hint at the possibility that lowering the distributor draw of a weapon (and increasing the distributor WEP capacity) may be a more effective way to keep cool rather than thermal load, but I'll have to wait for 3.0, which will make testing weapons easier.

Some weapons specifically received huge thermal penalties for firing in silent running, iirc. Rails were the focus of the change. It might be a global % thermal penalty for all weapons (and rails are just most evident due to their high base heat), but I seem to remember it being for specific weapons. Either way, weapon heat generation in silent running is different (magnified) by design, as of a patch that happened a good while back.

 

[baqar79]

Some weapons specifically received huge thermal penalties for firing in silent running, iirc. Rails were the focus of the change. It might be a global % thermal penalty for all weapons (and rails are just most evident due to their high base heat), but I seem to remember it being for specific weapons. Either way, weapon heat generation in silent running is different (magnified) by design, as of a patch that happened a good while back.

Thanks for your insight with silent running mode (*opens up bin, dumps research with silent running into it, sniffs and wipes tears from eyes* ).

Well, it's not all wasted research, having less WEP capacity before firing still makes quite a difference to heat generation (5% (full)->22% (empty)). I couldn't find much in the way of WEP mechanics research, there hasn't been any other research into WEP specifically?

 

[Frenotx]

Thanks for your insight with silent running mode (*opens up bin, dumps research with silent running into it, sniffs and wipes tears from eyes* ).

Well, it's not all wasted research, having less WEP capacity before firing still makes quite a difference to heat generation (5% (full)->22% (empty)). I couldn't find much in the way of WEP mechanics research, there hasn't been any other research into WEP specifically?

In another somewhat-distant patch, FDev altered weapon heat mechanics to work as you described: The lower your WEP capacitor, the more heat your weapons will produce. This is part of why I did the heat capacity tests the way I did, actually. The effect has been around for a while, but I don't know if anyone has actually worked out the numbers. With the amount of numbers that are available in the outfitting screen now, it should be possible to work out the exact multipliers that come in to play. I don't know if I'm in the mood to run these tests now, but I'd certainly be interested in helping you set up your own tests. I'd also be most interested in the results, too. :3

 

[Zeeman]

Huh. Figured there'd be a bit more interest on this subject. Any suggestion on what mechanics everyone would be more interested in understanding?

Actually, this is fascinating stuff, but it’s the first I’ve seen of this thread, and I’m also out int he black, so no access to any of my fleet... Well, except my Anaconda, and the powerplant is an overcharged 2A, so will need to figure that out...

Z...