Engineers Why is Heat a different damage type to Thermal?

[PeachSlices]

Did someone skip Thermodynamics, because from what I understand Thermal Energy comes from Heat. An object is Hot and gives other objects Thermal Energy, whereby it becomes Hotter. Using the combination of Conduction, Transfer or Convection.

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/thermalP/Lesson-1/Methods-of-Heat-Transfer

The "hotness" of an object is measurable with a thermometer using thermal transfer of the heat energy from the differently termperatured object until a temporary equilibrium between subject and measure is met.

Imparting Heat without a transfer medium is non-sense. The spice mus.. The energy has to transfer between object using a form of radiation, by far and away the most likely event is thermal emission.

Therefore heat has to pass through a thermal resitive coefficient, before becoming manifest in the object itself as heat energy.

Could someone please Science the sh** out of these damage types and sort it?

Begging Questions:

Why does Thermal resistance NOT count against Heat weapons?

Why does the reflective armour not work against Heat weapons?

Where are the electro-magnetic pulse weapons? (These are widely known to be by far the most effective weapons in space, see Vacuum)

 

[goemon]

heat damage in the game comes from internal heat of moduls building up - your ship is overheating. whether you fly close to a star, close your heatvents while running "silent", or fire an scb: it is your internal heat damaging your ship.

thermal weapons are attacking from the outside - your shield and your hull mitigate that damage.

now - how does heat get through shielding or hull? i have no idea, but i also have no idea, how your multi-canonn bullets get out of your shielding.... while bullets from the outside can't get in.

 

[PeachSlices]

Thats great but heat has to use a thermal transfer first. Giving something heat directly is anti-science.

heat damage in the game comes from internal heat of moduls building up - your ship is overheating. whether you fly close to a star, close your heatvents while running "silent", or fire an scb: it is your internal heat damaging your ship.

thermal weapons are attacking from the outside - your shield and your hull mitigate that damage.

now - how does heat get through shielding or hull? i have no idea, but i also have no idea, how your multi-canonn bullets get out of your shielding.... while bullets from the outside can't get in.

 

[goemon]

Thats great but heat has to use a thermal transfer first. Giving something heat directly is anti-science.

i guess, the problem is the other way round.

moduls produce heat via using energy. the main problem in space is to get rid of heat. see for exampel the ISS radiators: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/radiators.html

now, looking at the special effect descriptions:

"Thermal Cascade
Experimental munitions that interact with shields upon detonation, generating significant heat on the target."

"Thermal Shock
Articulated focus array designed to spread heat effectively. Strikes to shields and hull impart additional heat into the target."

--- i guess the only sciency way would be, that those weapons trigger the shieldgenerator to use more energy/ produce more heat. a bit like: if you are cold, you can either expose yourself to the sun or move. heat damage is the second. if you do sports, no suntan cream will keep you from sweating.

but as said above - i personally see no acceptable science behind "shield generators" themself.

 

[PeachSlices]

"Thermal Cascade
Experimental munitions that interact with shields upon detonation, generating significant heat on the target."

"Thermal Shock
Articulated focus array designed to spread heat effectively. Strikes to shields and hull impart additional heat into the target."

Both of these descriptions and mechanics are very odd, there has to be energy transfer, if there is transfer you can make something resist it. Thermodynamics doesnt let you "impart" heat. Heat is not an energy in of itself, it is a property of an object.

 

[Ozram]

heat damage in the game comes from internal heat of moduls building up - your ship is overheating. whether you fly close to a star, close your heatvents while running "silent", or fire an scb: it is your internal heat damaging your ship.

thermal weapons are attacking from the outside - your shield and your hull mitigate that damage.

now - how does heat get through shielding or hull? i have no idea, but i also have no idea, how your multi-canonn bullets get out of your shielding.... while bullets from the outside can't get in.

I always imagined it was similar to a machine gun begging the rotor blades if a ww2 fighter, where the weapon was essentially synchronised with the spinning blades to shoot at the gap as the blades rotate. If at all out of sync, then the bullets hit the blade. That's sorta how I've magicked it for myself.

 

[LeetNoob]

It's a game in fairness.

 

[DragoonKnight]

Thats great but heat has to use a thermal transfer first. Giving something heat directly is anti-science.

Think of it like a microwave. You can boil a cup of water without having it touch anything. Radiation heats up the targets hull. Why does it pass through shields? I dont know, it just does.

 

[DragoonKnight]

If you really need a science sounding explanation then consider that the weapons may be firing high energy gamma radiation. That gamma radiation penetrates shields and excites the nucleus of the atoms in your ships armor. Your ship heats up.
Happy?

 

[JacoTheBad]

Like DragoonKnight said about the Microwave. You don't necessarily need heat to generate heat, just a way to excite matter

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Did someone skip Thermodynamics, because from what I understand Thermal Energy comes from Heat. An object is Hot and gives other objects Thermal Energy, whereby it becomes Hotter. Using the combination of Conduction, Transfer or Convection.

Absolutely right. The game terminology is not scientifically accurate. For some reason, players are asked to distinguish between "heat" that radiates out of a ship and "thermal" attacks that are directed against it (but don't "heat" it up). To actually trigger "heat" damage, we have to use a specific " heat" weapon, not a " thermal" attack.

Real world effects don't apply in game. For instance, getting hit by a cannon would certainly heat up a hull. The game categories of damage don't match, but that's ok. They are supposed to create gameplay, promote tactical thinking etc. They are as meaningful as the suits in a pack of cards.

Laser weapons are electromagnetic. Light is part of the EM spectrum.

 

[PeachSlices]

These two are both examples of electro-magnetic transfer and can be reflected.

Like DragoonKnight said about the Microwave. You don't necessarily need heat to generate heat, just a way to excite matter

If you really need a science sounding explanation then consider that the weapons may be firing high energy gamma radiation. That gamma radiation penetrates shields and excites the nucleus of the atoms in your ships armor. Your ship heats up.
Happy?

Exactly, so why does reflective armour not work for heat weapons?

Laser weapons are electromagnetic. Light is part of the EM spectrum.

I had to edit the OP to make it clear that I meant EMP weapons.

 

[sam445]

I would say that Thermal attacks are focused, and thus cause damage on the point of impact (think of using a focusing lens on a tiny dot. It burns!), and the Heat attack is more diffused, not transmitting enough energy on a single point to damage it, but enough to make it warmer.

 

[JacoTheBad]

Exactly, so why does reflective armour not work for heat weapons?

I used the Microwave more or less as a loosely based principle, and not an exact match... Perhaps the "heat" weapons would be more adequately named as "Anti Molecular Cohesion Beams", and the "Heat" is simply the bi product of the forces threatening to pull all your molecules apart...

... I am arguing theoretical futuristic weapons for a space game set in the 3300s... I think I just felt myself nerd level

 

[Devari]

Did someone skip Thermodynamics, because from what I understand Thermal Energy comes from Heat. An object is Hot and gives other objects Thermal Energy, whereby it becomes Hotter. Using the combination of Conduction, Transfer or Convection.

The issue here is the direction the heat is affecting the ship. A Thermal attack affects a ship from outside the hull, causing damage to shields/hull primarily, before affecting modules. Heat, on the other hand, is a measure of the ship's ability to dissipate internal heat from it's modules. Increasing the heat inside your ship (i.e., from silent running or reducing your thermal dissipation by being near a star) will affect your modules first, then hull as it's affecting the inside of the ship.

This generally makes sense, as your ship is considered an open system from a thermodynamics perspective unless you close your heat radiators and go into silent running, in which case it is thermodynamically a closed system and the reactions generating heat (or rather converting nuclear and electrical energy into thermal energy) will continue with nowhere for the heat energy to go until you open the heat radiators again. It even makes sense that the heat dissipation would be worse being next to a star (heat radiators can't exchange heat as effectively near a star compared to deep space due to the temperature differential between the ship and the surrounding environment). Shields having no effect on heat buildup near a star also makes sense, as you're not being affected by the star's temperature directly so much as your ship's heat radiators can't get rid of heat from inside the ship.

Where this breaks down of course if that somehow the thermal shock weapons can magically cause your ship to overheat. This makes no sense of course because they are using external heat which we already know your shields and hull are very capable of dissipating. The heat from a thermal shock weapon would need to get past your shields and hull and either cause modules to overheat directly or somehow affect your ship's ability to dissipate the internal heat. Although I could conceive of a mechanism where this might happen (i.e., a charged particle beam or pulse that somehow specifically affects your ship's heat radiators in some way) it simply doesn't make sense scientifically based on how thermal shock weapons are presented in the game.

Then again, a magic healing beam, a "heat vent" that is only effective when striking a solid object (rather than venting directly into space) and so on are even worse from a scientific perspective. Essentially FD completely jumped the shark with Engineering weapons, it's one of those things that will either be completely immersion-breaking or you'll just need to ignore to enjoy the game.

From a game balance perspective, I understand what they were trying to achieve with thermal shock weapons, they just implemented it extremely poorly. It's a very similar situation to MechWarrior where lasers or particle projectors inflict thermal damage in a localized area of your armor, while some specialized weapons such as flamethrowers will affect your Mech's ability to dissipate heat from the reactor and will actually cause your heat to go up. The balancing factor here is that flamethrowers were short-ranged, small weapons that did little if any armor damage and required a fast mech with a good pilot to keep them on target. The current thermal shock heat meta that we have in the game at the moment makes the heat mechanic the single best way to defeat another ship. It's just not even close when compared to other weapons. What's worse, it's not a "challenging" or "difficult" mechanic to implement or use, you just put thermal shock mods on your weapons and fire away.

The ONLY balancing factor that would make heat mod weapons "balanced" is that if they inflicted the same heat to the firing ship as they did to the target. Then a thermal shock build would need to be designed specifically to dissipate it's own heat from firing the weapons instead of magically inflicting crippling heat through the target's shields and hull. Unfortunately FD has no idea of how to balance the game at this point (you can look at 2.1.05 and ridiculous CG payouts as proof of this) and until they learn how to achieve proper game balance or nerf thermal shock weapons into the ground this is what we're left with.

 

[Dbrn47]

Oh lord... Just change the name to "Magic Heat Laser" for the pedants already.

 

[Devari]

Oh lord... Just change the name to "Magic Heat Laser" for the pedants already.

If they change the ship HUD to include a button labelled "I Win" that your CMDR presses when the Magic Heat Laser fires? Then I will consider this an acceptable solution.

 

[Frenotx]

For the thermal cascade weapons, perhaps the munitions release something upon detonation that interacts with whatever the shield is made of, and generates a lot of heat- kind of like a super-hot flare going off on the shield.

 

[Ozram]

OP, I agree. Even within the f antsy of the game, reflective armor should deflect heat/thermal weapons.

 

[DragoonKnight]

These two are both examples of electro-magnetic transfer and can be reflected.





Exactly, so why does reflective armour not work for heat weapons?

Just because something is reflective to one thing, does not make it reflective to everything. Reflective armor is good for reflecting the frequencies used by laser weapons, but not good at all against the higher frequencies used in heat weapons. Very high frequency radiation (like gamma rays) will penetrate almost anything.