Running cool and appearance on scanners

[Spicy_Satoshi]

So if my ship runs at temperature around 20 - I'm going to be harder to lock on scanners by other CMDRs? Is there any chart or formula showing ship temperature / scanner visibility dependancy?

[PlasmaJedi]

It's not massive; if you were expecting to do stealth combat or something, it's not happening. But it does make a difference when you are at a good distance away. For example, if you don't have a good scanner, it will be hard to detect a Diamondback in a RES unless your are much closer than other ships require.

If you wanna turn invisible, the only option is reducing your heat to zero with a heat sink (wich only lasts a couple seconds. You know how you suddenly lose lock on an NPC ship sometimes? They probably popped a heatsink), OR, use silent running.

Silent running comes at the cost of losing your shields (having your "pants down") and being unable to stay that way for too long, since you cannot vent the heat your reactor and weapons and engines build up (like holding your breath while swimming furiously undwerwater). So fighting in silent running is like getting caught with your pants down while holding your breath... Really awkward... BUT, it can be handy to slip into a mailslot without being noticed! HOWEVER, you CAN still be detected on scanners if the enemy is close enough. The larger your ship, the farther they can be while still locking onto you. A little DBX stealthing into a mailslot with illegal passengers or cargo is all but undetectable; a Corvette, is NOT, and will likely get scanned and promptly destroyed, costing a huge rebuy and a lot of embarrassment.

As for hard data like charts and stats, I can't help you. Sorry.

[Spicy_Satoshi]

I noticed that some CMDRs in Diamondbacks "glimmer" on scanners very often, I'm not sure if their go silent running or their ships run so cold that you have to come closer than usual to lock them up on scanners again.
Yeah and I know about the minimum distance, it's 200m or 700m depending on a ship size, but I was wondering what is the minimal ship temperature (when running with vents open) to lock it on scanners beside the auto-lock zone...

[Hobo Misanthropus]

I think I can best describe it like this.

Cold Running means engineering your ship for minimum operational thermal signature (IE all modules including Shields). The minimum resolution is 500m away before your signature resolves and you can be targetted with sensors, however outside of 500m, your ship will appear on other player's scanners, as a distorted contact out until like 1/2 of the maximum emission range of the hostile sensors. The Threshold for "Cold Running" is 19% Thermal output.


Silent Running functions much the same, but completely erases you from hostile sensors until with 500m, at the expense of losing your shields.

Cold-running and Silent Running often compliment eachother, as a good Cold Runner ship will be naturally better at operating for extended periods in Silent Running.

[BinaryFu]

The colder you are, the closer someone has to be to be able to pick you up on sensors - higher grade sensors have a longer range to be able to pick you up. As an example, I believe it's around 10% heat level that station authorities have difficultly picking you up outside of 500m.

However, here's the big deal - if you run as cool as possible, you can hit SILENT RUNNING for as long as you want - I often take my smuggler Python in from 5k out, request landing permission, drop silent running and practically park her before turning it off, without heat damage.

Keep cool, look cool, be cool.

[Spicy_Satoshi]

OK, so low heat-high heat only affects how long I can silent run without ejecting a heat sink.


But reffering to what @Hobo Misanthropus have said: "(...) however outside of 500m, your ship will appear on other player's scanners, as a distorted contact out until like 1/2 of the maximum emission range of the hostile sensors. The Threshold for "Cold Running" is 19% Thermal output."

Does it mean that unless I hit 19% my ship is going to glimmer on scanners being 500m away?

[Hobo Misanthropus]

I think it scales up rapidly, perhaps even exponentially once you go to 20% and over, it may even be tiered, I haven't done a lot of testing. I know that once you hit 20% thermal load, you're at least detectable out to 2km. It might be something like

<19% = 500m Resolution threshold
>20% - 50% = 2km Resolution Threshold
>50% = Maximum Emission range for target sensors.

[Spicy_Satoshi]

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

I think it scales up rapidly, perhaps even exponentially once you go to 20% and over, it may even be tiered, I haven't done a lot of testing. I know that once you hit 20% thermal load, you're at least detectable out to 2km. It might be something like

<19% = 500m Resolution threshold
>20% - 50% = 2km Resolution Threshold
>50% = Maximum Emission range for target sensors.

This is it!
Is 19% load official or confirmed info?

[PlasmaJedi]

I donno if that's confirmed or not, but I can clearify something else.

The low heat / hight heat thing you mentioned earlier, it's like this:

Your power plant has a heat efficiency, you can see this in Outfitting. The standard is 1.00, at an E grade powerplant. The closer you get to A grade, the lower this value gets, to around 0.45 or so. This is the proportion of heat your powerplant generates per unit of power it produces. If you are running at full capacity, it will generate more heat. Also engines and weapons generate heat directly. Maybe shields too, but I don't think so.

This means, that going into your systems panel and shutting off uneeded systems will put less strain on your powerplant, and it will generate less heat. Using engines and boosting will add so much more heat into your system, but the powerplant itself will run cooler. You will notice that it will also show that your fuel consuption rate on the right side of the HUD is lower.

The heat gauge on the left of your radar is showing the temperature you are currently at, and thus how big a signature you give off, UNLESS you are in Silent Running. Your ship is always giving off and cooling it's excess heat when not in SR, so you tend to run cool. When you activate SR, you lock in all that heat dispersion, so you cannot cool down.

How long you can safely remain in SR depends on how much heat you generate: how much you use thrusters, how much you fire weapons, how hard your powerplant is working, etc. One trick to stealth docking is to get far out from a station, line up a course right for the mailsot, go SR and shut off the engines (or use assist off and then touch nothing to keep your jets from firing), and glide into the airlock without ever overheating. Naturally, getting a higher grade powerplant will let you stay in SR longer, and it also affects how bad you heat up near a star, so you can refuel longer. Modding your powerplant with Overcharged will increase it's heat output, and make more power, and there another one along the lines of "Cool Running" that will do the reverse. Also mods to thrusters and weapons can affect the heat they generate.

SO, the takeaway here is that a ship optimised to run cool generally won't ever be undetectable, but it WILL be a bit harder to get a solid lock on, and it will run far better in Silent Running than a ship that has runs hotter. ALSO, different ships seem to have their own effects on how hot they run, and I don't know why, other than "FDev said so". Diamondbacks, both scout and explorers, run very cool, are harder to spot on radar, and can linger in a sun's corona for ages.


Fun fact: If you are building an explorer and want the longest jump range you can get, or maybe just like a long jump and don't need a lotta power, you will probably use a grade D powerplant, since it's the lightest in it's size class. This is very true, but it also runs quite hot, and will make hanging in a star difficult. BUT, an A grade powerplant of ONE size lower, is actually LIGHTER, provides MORE power, and runs MUCH cooler! If you need even more power, mod it with Overcharged, and you can get still more power with a only bit less heat efficiency! Also a similiar effect works with thrusters! Alsthough smaller A grate thrusters are a bit heavier that full size Ds, they perform better and weigh less than Cs and As of the full size!

[Killer Bee]

Very interesting, PlasmaJedi. The cooler operation of a smaller A class power plant could also help explorers gain a few LY's jump! Thanks