Heat Suggestion

[Yugi]

Well, I think there should be more shields that are immune. This would mean that if your shields are down after fighting and you try to hide on the sun, you slowly die!
Good idea

EDIT: Of course, if you were fighting Corsiars, they would fry before you. But...why would you be running from Corsairs?

[OddBob]

2 solar panels will make you immune to heat

Why do solar panels make you immune? I'd think that if you got too close it would damage them.

[marr]

Actually, a general heat management system would make for an interesting expansion to game mechanics.. Heat shielding, heatsink upgrades, cheaper powerful reactors and weapons that increase your heat issues, weapons that cause more heat than direct damage to the target, and of course the local sun. Overheating could damage certain trade goods, (Refrigerated cargo hold!) reduce (or increase!) the efficiency of particular equipment, cause display and control glitches, ammunition cook-off, reactor shutdown, and eventual pilot death.

Sure, that's all very derivative of Battletech, but it's a realistic thing to simulate, and therefore very roguelike. Getting rid of excess heat is a major part of spaceship engineering, you can't just throw on some cooling vents and fans when you're in hard vacuum.

[OddBob]

As they will absorb the solar light, but if you are too close, maybe a reactor damage (caused by too much power coming in) or damage the panels.

As far as I know, solar panels aren't going to help anymore that your armor panels will. The energy is still there. Radiation is the real problem.

Actually, a general heat management system would make for an interesting expansion to game mechanics.. Heat shielding, heatsink upgrades, cheaper powerful reactors and weapons that increase your heat issues, weapons that cause more heat than direct damage to the target, and of course the local sun. Overheating could damage certain trade goods, (Refrigerated cargo hold!) reduce (or increase!) the efficiency of particular equipment, cause display and control glitches, ammunition cook-off, reactor shutdown, and eventual pilot death.

I like it.

[Betelgeuse]

losing heat wouldn't be hard with ammo weapons. Just use some kind of heat pump (you even have one in your house ) to transfer heat into the ammo because you are going to fire it anyway so that would be an nice way of getting rid of heat (ships can't really do this today because they can't afford to dump tons of stuff like using an ammo weapon does)

[hookoa]

That'd make weapons like the slam cannons and recoiless a lot more valuable. They fire matter, but don't have the weight and storage issues of ammo weapons like Akan and MAGs.

Collect space dust; use to suck heat from reactor/hull/wherever; fire into space. (or enemy)

[marr]

losing heat wouldn't be hard with ammo weapons. Just use some kind of heat pump (you even have one in your house ) to transfer heat into the ammo because you are going to fire it anyway so that would be an nice way of getting rid of heat.

Interesting idea - we'd need a physics major to comment on how effective it could be. I suspect that firing most guns would generate more heat overall than the projectiles could take away, depending on the nature of the ammo.

(ships can't really do this today because they can't afford to dump tons of stuff like using an ammo weapon does)

Possibly the main reason our current jalopy's don't do this is that none of them are armed. I believe the current solution to overheating is to vent some atmosphere and replace it from compressed stores, with the usual aerosol cooling effect.

[Betelgeuse]

the heat pump is a common thing (a refrigerator is a heat pump) plus has the advantage of being able to work in reverse (in cases where you are losing more heat then generating, can happen if costing in the outer system).

Venting some atmosphere would just be an inefficient way of making a heat pump (ie takes alot of energy to compress the gas and it still wouldn't have as much heat retention as water).

That does give a good use for those ice tanks. Just use a heat pump to transfer lots of heat to those and just dump them into space. That would work also if not being as useful as the ammo based one. Even if you couldn't gain a net heat loss with ammo based weapons (don't see why not) you can still make it much more heat friendly by using the heat pump.

[marr]

the heat pump is a common thing (a refrigerator is a heat pump) plus has the advantage of being able to work in reverse (in cases where you are losing more heat then generating, can happen if costing in the outer system)

I doubt you'd need a huge amount of detail on the specifics, really. Just give the reactors an amount of waste heat they can sink per second, and if it gets down to zero, that's fine. Assume all not-waste heat can be retained for life support. Losing all power (thus freezing to death) is already an immediate game-over.

Venting some atmosphere would just be an inefficient way of making a heat pump (ie takes alot of energy to compress the gas and it still wouldn't have as much heat retention as water)

Yeah, it wouldn't do much for a warship, but it's what they do today. The O2 is loaded onto the ship pre-compressed at the spaceport anyway, so it's pretty much a free ride.

That does give a good use for those ice tanks. Just use a heat pump to transfer lots of heat to those and just dump them into space.

Good call. Any kind of ice/water/frozen food type of trade goods could be used for last-ditch emergency cooling, hopefully accompanied by hissing gouts of steam like a dying station.

That would work also if not being as useful as the ammo based one. Even if you couldn't gain a net heat loss with ammo based weapons (don't see why not)

Because these are weapons that use megawatts of power to fling things into space at a fair percentage of lightspeed. I would expect that to create way more heat than you could effectively dump into the bullets, however efficient the technology.

[Betelgeuse]

Because these are weapons that use megawatts of power to fling things into space at a fair percentage of lightspeed. I would expect that to create way more heat than you could effectively dump into the bullets, however efficient the technology.

Putting it that way no amount of dumping or venting would help. (dumping would be the best way of getting rid of heat.) Dumping a gas wouldn't help because it is just dumping, and not a good way of dumping heat because air does not hold that much heat.
Do you have any other ideas on how to get rid of heat?

[Burzmali]

Bah, space is very large and very cold. Keeping the cold out of the ship is going to be just as hard as getting the heat out. As long as you keep the hot components insulated and cooled with a high surface area vacuum heat exchanger you'd be fine. The only interactions that produce important amounts of heat in weapons are mechanical friction and electrical resistance. With enough technology you can reduce those to near nothing.

[Betelgeuse]

what is a vacuum heat exchanger? The main way of getting rid of heat in space is to radiate it and that is a very slow way of getting rid of heat.
most of the other ways I can think of use lots of tons of various stuff. (a nice way is to load up some chemicals that react endothermicly react them and then use a heat pump to heat it then dump it.)