To keep heat levels low, big or small power plant?
- Thread starter kiario
- Start date
Chances are, in a Sidey a 2A PP is your only choice. If you can get a 1A it may not be powerful enough (without engineers).
Heat efficiency is what really matters, so a 5A would always be colder than a 6D for example. Only in extreme cases would you want a non A-rated PP.
Edit: All A rated powerplants have the same heat efficiency, size makes no difference on heat generated.
Heat efficiency is what really matters, so a 5A would always be colder than a 6D for example. Only in extreme cases would you want a non A-rated PP.
Edit: All A rated powerplants have the same heat efficiency, size makes no difference on heat generated.
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Been out of the game for a while, am fairly certain size of the power plant plays no part in efficiency. If you are looking for heat efficiency, go A rated, then pay a visit to an engineer.
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Sidewinders only have class 2 PP, no class 1 available.
So 2A rated is the best option.
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Within the same size of plant, A-rated is always coolest.
Concerning different class sizes:
There is no thermal efficiency benefit in excess power capacity.
So if someone can manage with a 5A or have oodles of power to spare with a 6A, they gain no cooling benefit from the 6A.
I recall, however, that some explorers used to claim that the ambient temperature of smaller A-rated powerplants was lower than larger, ie that the same loadout with a 3A would run cooler than with a 5A.
I do recall that back in the silent running 2.0 era I looked into this a little with my former player group, Adle's Armada.
From a PvP perspective I know that we either found that the smaller plant ran at the same temperature or that (if smaller was better) the benefit was so slight as to be of no practical value. I'm sorry, I honestly can't remember which.
Either way, though, there is no heat benefit to running a larger plant unnecessarily.
(There can be very serious benefits in dealing with powerplant damage during combat, but they have to be considered against the extra mass.)
Concerning different class sizes:
There is no thermal efficiency benefit in excess power capacity.
So if someone can manage with a 5A or have oodles of power to spare with a 6A, they gain no cooling benefit from the 6A.
I recall, however, that some explorers used to claim that the ambient temperature of smaller A-rated powerplants was lower than larger, ie that the same loadout with a 3A would run cooler than with a 5A.
I do recall that back in the silent running 2.0 era I looked into this a little with my former player group, Adle's Armada.
From a PvP perspective I know that we either found that the smaller plant ran at the same temperature or that (if smaller was better) the benefit was so slight as to be of no practical value. I'm sorry, I honestly can't remember which.
Either way, though, there is no heat benefit to running a larger plant unnecessarily.
(There can be very serious benefits in dealing with powerplant damage during combat, but they have to be considered against the extra mass.)
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Ok, thanks for the clarification guys,
What I thought was. If you have a very powerful engine in a car and it will run cooler than a less powerfull that has to run at max power and turbo to achieve the same performance.
Therefore I thought that a powerfull PP with excessive power would run cooler and therefore benefit silent running more.
What I thought was. If you have a very powerful engine in a car and it will run cooler than a less powerfull that has to run at max power and turbo to achieve the same performance.
Therefore I thought that a powerfull PP with excessive power would run cooler and therefore benefit silent running more.
For Silent/Cold running - Focus on installing less power hungry modules, shutting down non essential and power hungry systems will also help keep the ship cool when required.
Power usage affects heat output. Less power use equates to less heat. Available excess power has no real bearing. If silent running is the goal, then your enemy is the module list itself. Turn everything off when you don't need it.
Also consider looking at ships that have good speed/ handling even with D rated thrusters. If you put clean engineering into D rated thrusters they run on sod all power and operate with less power draw, yet can rival A rated for optimal multiplier, and if you spin to win a bit, you can sometimes get the holy trifecta of low power, better multiplier and same or greater optimal mass; all of which can make D actually exceed A (stock) in performance. Win-win.
Essentially, power usage is the enemy for silent running. Less is more. Go forth and sneak, CMDR. o7
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For even better heat Efficiency, turn off modules that you don't use constantly, like cargo hatch or SRV Hangar. Lesser consumption = lesser heat.
Also, some modules can be engineered for better heat Efficiency, but with some drawbacks. The the low power, efficient shield or clean drive Tuning are some good ones, for instance. You won't get across them if you want to make a stealth smuggling ship, if that's the case here.
EDIT: for a stealth ship, it would be advisable to afford the Diamondback Scout. This ship is litterally cool!
Also, some modules can be engineered for better heat Efficiency, but with some drawbacks. The the low power, efficient shield or clean drive Tuning are some good ones, for instance. You won't get across them if you want to make a stealth smuggling ship, if that's the case here.
EDIT: for a stealth ship, it would be advisable to afford the Diamondback Scout. This ship is litterally cool!
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In a recent pvp tourney where we were using near stock ships (one g1 mod
There's my anecdote for the sharing.
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[money] A-rated power plants are always the most thermally efficient and the largest the Sidewinder can handle is a 2A. Power to mass ratio is not so important in a Sidewinder given the ship and sizes of the modules involved after all, you are probably not going to go off exploring in a Sidewinder so just max out everything. Take the 2A-rated power plant to an Engineer and its performance can be improved somewhat further. I tend toward the "overcharged" power plant modification myself since by my own logic a power plant operating with a power-draw at 80% of power-generating capacity should run cooler than one running at 100% power-draw. Also, the overcharged power plant mod combined with the efficient weapons mod on the beam-lasers makes for a fairly potent combination.
For just about anything besides exploration (where the CMDR wants to minimize mass/weight) you will generally want to use the largest A-rated power plant you can afford. I run A-rated power plants almost exclusively except in ships of exploration, where the ability to power huge shield generators, lots of weapons and extra modules is not as important as reducing mass. A-rated power plants can run more modules and bigger weapons for longer periods of time with less heat buildup than lower-rated power plants. o7
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This is interesting, Ozram: do you mean therefore that your experience above would support the anecdotal mention I cited from the explorers, i.e. that with an identical loadout but a smaller A-rated plant, the ship ran cooler than with the same loadout but a larger A-rated plant?
Hey truesilver.
hm this would go against every "scientific" test that has been published, so I doubt it. I guess there were other factors that had an influence and then it was connected to the unrelated change in PP, which is an easy mistake to make.
Total power consumption and heat efficiency should be all that has an influence.
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I won't be near those builds for a while and as the previous poster mentioned, I could be in error. I do, however, have two vids (of my not so expert piloting).
One with the smaller plant:
[video=youtube_share;5yeI26DFBSQ]https://youtu.be/5yeI26DFBSQ[/video]
And one with the larger:
[video=youtube_share;xQGslZqaczw]https://youtu.be/xQGslZqaczw[/video]
Aside from the pp the builds are identical (and vanilla; the only mod being a sturdy mounted force shell cannon)