[Suggestion/Discussion] Changing how heat is dissipated

[captain828]

I'm currently not a fan of how heat is handled in the game: basically you need to do block spam and/or build on a wide surface area to handle heat dissipation.

Why don't I like this? First of all, it means that for large ships heat just isn't a thing you need to bother yourself with at all even if you add many weapons/turrets/systems. But for smaller ships, however, you need to be very mindful about what modules and weapons you add because you are limited by the shape & size of the ship you are trying to make.

What I would propose:

1. drop the heat dissipation ability from hull blocks
2. the surface area dissipation is fine but should just be an extra and be very limited
3. add dedicated small & large stretchable heatsink blocks
4. only heatsinks can "store" heat - the surface area only has a small amount of passive dissipation
5. not sure how the surface area is currently calculated but it should only be the surface that is in open space
6. make surface area heat dissipation percentage-based to avoid the "large ships" issue: so basically it could only dissipate X% of the generated heat passively, where X is a low number, like 5% or 10%

How would the heatsinks work?

• much like hull blocks right now, they can "store" a certain amount of heat
• in order to dissipate the heat, they would have to be in open space - be exposed to the outside of the ship (enclosing a heatsink in a "room" shouldn't work)
• if the block is not in open space, then it can only accumulate heat but not dissipate it - in this case, only the ship surface area could dissipate heat
• the above check should also take into account child entities: so if an exposed heatsink is covered up by a panel from a rail/rotor/hinge it should no longer be considered "in open space"
• the more surface area of a heatsink is in open space, the faster heat can be dissipated

Things this change could enable:

• stealth! you want to be stealthy, close access to those heatsinks for a "stealth mode" which could mean things like a reduced IR signature, making it so that ships will have a harder time detecting you at long range, harder to lock on when missiles get added etc.
• ship auto-shutdown if it exceeds the max heat it can "store": instead of just destroying it, all the systems that would generate heat stop functioning until heat is back < 90%
• ship heat detection logic: so we could trigger emergency modes if heat is above/below a % threshold
• more in-depth ship designs, that take into account heatsinks needing to be exposed to the elements, either statically or dynamically

I know this would be a big dev task but could be something added down the road, once released in EA. Any feedback is welcome.

[Sullos]

Whilst I have actually wanted heatsinks as an object for a while, and it would be cool, I feel like the suggestion may be going into too much depth unnecessarily. The stealth mode, while cool, seems completely unnecessary, coding wise, as well as the surface area open to space calculations of heat sinks. Heat sinks, should people want them, should just be a block that dissipates maybe 2x the heat of a standard hull block. Maybe not event hat much, to give an advantage to smaller builds, but not completely remove the risk. I love the idea of heat sinks storing heat and overall just something better at dissipating heat, but the real question remains with how this would actually fix the problem around large ships having it too easy with heat generation/dissipation. I know for a fact when mapping out recent builds I have had to add large chunks of hull in the planning stages to know I will meet my heat dissipation requirements. It is possible people are not yet building ships to their maximum potential, and therefore heat hasn't been a problem yet.

Love the idea in general, just some aspects seem unnecessary and possibly more mod development based. Love to hear how others feel about it though.

[ultrak2k]

I do wonder what prevents one from spamming out heat sinks, though.

[captain828]

@Sullos Whilst I have actually wanted heatsinks as an object for a while, and it would be cool, I feel like the suggestion may be going into too much depth unnecessarily.

You should consider this more of a feature that can enable other things - I definitely agree not all of this should be added now.

The stealth mode, while cool, seems completely unnecessary, coding wise, as well as the surface area open to space calculations of heat sinks.

In the current state, ofc, but who knows what the future holds. If you look at other space games (ED, SC) that have heat management they also tackle stealth - up to Tsuna to decide if he wants to go that route in the future and what the effects of it would be.

I think the open space calculation is necessary as otherwise you just remove heat dissipation from the hull block and move it to another block - what's the point then?

I love the idea of heat sinks storing heat and overall just something better at dissipating heat, but the real question remains with how this would actually fix the problem around large ships having it too easy with heat generation/dissipation.

Maybe I wasn't very clear in what I meant by "heat is not a problem at all for large ships": you don't even need to consider it while building a large ship right now - it just magically sorts itself out with no planning. With this system, since only heatsinks can dissipate heat, you need to plan where to place them/how they will work etc. Heatsinks, compared to hull blocks, should be treated as an exposed system - you get hit there and you have a high chance of losing a heatsink - that is more planning you would have to do now instead of not dealing with any of it at all with large ships.

Don't get me wrong though, large ships will still have an easier time by their nature: way more surface area to hide heatsinks in compared to a small ship.

@ultrak2k I do wonder what prevents one from spamming out heat sinks, though.

Nothing really prevents you from spamming anything but there are two important things to keep in mind:

1. they need to be exposed to open space to dissipate heat, you can't just spam them in the middle of the ship and still get their full benefits
2. related to 1), you wouldn't want to cover your ship in heatsinks either as they would be far more fragile compared to a hull block
3. let's say you don't expose any of your heatsinks: you would only have a very low, percent-based, heat dissipation from your ships surface - while this could work with some designs I don't see it being feasible for combat ships which is where balancing really matters

The likely best way to set them up would be to first ensure you have enough heat dissipation per second when your ship is at max heat generation and then to add closed heatsinks that would simply just store more heat so it takes longer to cook your ship.

[ultrak2k]

Even if they can't be inside, it doesn't matter, what stops someone from just making a wall of heat sinks, and just attaching them to a pole away from the main hull? Or just put heat sinks over actual armour?

[tsunamayo]

yes this is an interesting suggestion, what I take out of this is something I though before, which is adding way to store more heat and decorelate heat flow and storage, as now there is pretty much linear relation, weapon set aside. Now I dont see why heat is not an issue on big ships. I would need to proof of that (I mean I need to see actual blueprint). From a logic perspective: Surface heat rise to the square of dimension, Hull heat rise to the square of dimension if you only use 1m thick hull skin. Hull generation rise to he cube of volume, if you create big block of system inside your ship. Not entirely true as some system like thrusters or weapon wont scale 3D <= I guess that was maybe the reason? If you are low on shield for example, I guess you didnt put enough system inside your ship. More system will be added like warp drive for interstellar travel for example, storage that would require power, ect.

Anyway I will need to see some blueprint to get a better idea.

And yes that seems to be some added complexity over the current system.

[captain828]

Now I dont see why heat is not an issue on big ships. I would need to proof of that (I mean I need to see actual blueprint). From a logic perspective: Surface heat rise to the square of dimension, Hull heat rise to the square of dimension if you only use 1m thick hull skin. Hull generation rise to he cube of volume, if you create big block of system inside your ship.

If you look at it from a purely mathematical formula, yes, you are right - you can scale heat dissipation with more systems. But the reality is when building ships we rarely build our ships to be min-maxed - or at least I haven't seen any large ship designs that just pack as many systems as possible in. We try to build ships with nice interiors that have meaning to them so big blobs of shield blocks are not something that is done in practice. So when you take this into consideration, yes, there is a lot of wasted space on things like dining rooms, cargo bays, exposed systems, elaborate hallways etc. - all of which contribute to this issue of heat not being a problem on large ships.

I can add some examples but there is no logic issue or bug here, it's more of how we build ships.

[Calvert4096]

I was thinking about this idea while building the structure on my ship shown below.

I like the idea of players being force to consider heat dissipation in their ship design and trade it against other concerns like mass and vulnerability. I don't think "spamming" radiatior fins is an exploit as I think others are implying -- but if we want to add realism, this kind of arrangement should work better in atmosphere and not so well in space.

I think there's a computationally inexpensive way to do this, provided some kind of (simple!) atmosphere system is implemented. For flight in vacuum, the effective surface area would be the sum of silhouette areas from looking at a ship (or station) from all six directions. In atmosphere, the area would calculated as I think it is now -- total exposed voxel and brick surface area. For any partial atmospheric pressure, the heat calculation would linearly "fade" between the two values.

For smaller ships, it would make sense I think to have radiator fin systems components with much higher effective surface area:volume ratio than the "brick" fins shown in the screencap above. For larger ships, I agree heat sinks (which maybe play into part of a stealth game mechanic) would make sense.

[Hecateus]

posted this relevant idea earlier on Discord...PIPES use the Pipes. I imagine that any powered component will generate waste heat. iirc SEVO Hull blocks absorb heat from sources and gradually make it go away. I assume Hull also moves power and data, as there is no cabling besides Greebles. There are however, Greeble pipes which can be purposed into an environmental control mechanic, which can include speedy heat movement. I would suggest every power component generates heat: unconnected this radiates it's heat unless connected to either Hull 50/50 absorb/radiate or Environmental pipes >50 absorb: Environmental Control Units condition air quality and quantity in a room, including temperature: these connect via pipes to whatever else involves Environmental control: Pipes leading from any powered component to either Heat Storage blocks and/or Radiators will rapidly move heat out of sensitive areas: Radiators and Pipes use regular ammonia coolant; Heat Storage uses Molten Salt; emergency cryogenic nitrogen coolant can be used to rapid cool systems; as can evacuating air from a room into vacuum; Radiators must be placed outside or at least are cooling the vessel when so deployed. Not cooling the vessel can lead to dying flowerpots and overcooked food etc. You just need extant pipes, a few new blocks, and logic simpler than what we have in SEVO so far.