Overheat Levels at 100%

[likke_A_boss]

So in 1.0, I was trying out the new stock features, and scanned the Mun, landed on the Mun with a lander equipped with two drills, a converter, ore storage, tons of electricity, and a fuel tank thats almost empty.

When I was ready to convert, the converter thing reported overheat levels at 100% and reports zero efficiency.

What is overheating and how does it work?

[NovaSilisko]

I really can't work out how the heat mechanics work for drills. It seems to sometimes shoot up to 100 immediately, sometimes wavers around back and forth between ~20 and ~70, sometimes stays low. And, on bad days, it suddenly makes the rear half of my ship explode without warning. It also doesn't seem to scale linearly with timewarp amount, as well. It's all very strange...

[TheWire]

I'm having the same problem drill is overheating before even being used on minmus.

[Scotius]

Do you guys have best possible engineer on board? Best as in 'Most levels" instead of "Minimal stupidity" - although the latter may be important too.

[Whackjob]

Here's my understanding. You need to get rid of that thermal energy it generates. I've found that flying through the atmosphere cools it slightly. But not enough. The fix?

Solar panels! Apparently they both harvest energy AND dissipate heat. Roll out the large solar panels!

[RoverDude]

Solar panels just happen to have a large surface area so they can radiate better

And I'm reviewing the heat levels.

[LordFerret]

Here's my understanding. You need to get rid of that thermal energy it generates. I've found that flying through the atmosphere cools it slightly. But not enough. The fix?

Solar panels! Apparently they both harvest energy AND dissipate heat. Roll out the large solar panels!

You should put this information in GoSlash's Helpful 1.0 observations thread.

[CalculusWarrior]

At the moment, drills follow the following rules: (I have done extensive testing this afternoon)

Drills generate a lot of heat (about as much as an engine running), and due to the new heat system, this heat is conducted out to the rest of your craft. If the craft cannot radiate all this away (very unlikely, you need high emissivity, while most parts have just average), then you will begin to heat up. The amount you heat up is dependant on the number of parts and their thermal mass. Once the drill's temperature has reached 500K, it ticks down to around 497K and increases the overheat percentage. Rinse and repeat until you've reached 100%, at which point the drill will shut down.

[Brofessional]

It would be nice if we could get radiator panels in 1.1.

[bazz]

Once the drills and converter over heat and shut down are they then broken and useless? Mine are at 100% and stuck there?

[ZainlessBrombie]

Have you tried to edit the savefile? I tried but I couldn't get it to work.

[ZainlessBrombie]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/118068-Radial-drill-on-Minmus-suddenly-overheated-and-will-not-cool-down?p=1885745#post1885745

someone else had the same issue here

[RoverDude]

Noted this as a bug. It's been looked into

[likke_A_boss]

Noted this as a bug. It's been looked into

Thanks RoverDude!

[Payload]

Here's my understanding. You need to get rid of that thermal energy it generates. I've found that flying through the atmosphere cools it slightly. But not enough. The fix?

Solar panels! Apparently they both harvest energy AND dissipate heat. Roll out the large solar panels!

Solar panels are actually terrible at this. They radiate pretty well in an atmosphere, but in a vacuum they are just awful. I have tried the small aero sections with minimal success. What you really need is a radiator of some sort. I picket up a nice alpha pack of stand alone radiators that seem to do the trick.

With the whole heat generation system being used right now there is no way you will ever radiate enough heat to get a workable resource program going. Even eight of these ridiculously large and effective radiator panels that I have, is not enough to keep the converter unit going for more than five minutes. That is with roughly 25000 units of thermal mass attached and 16000 units of dissipation provided by the radiators.

This is the mod I am using for now.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/51395-WIP-Nert-s-Models-Current-HeatControl-heat-management-systems?p=1884792&viewfull=1#post1884792

[supremeownage]

I've never been able to get the ISRU converter working. It's always at 100%, long before it reaches its destination to mine the ore. Even once there, and left for months and months in sped-up time, it never goes down from 100%. Seems broken to me.

I really hope they add some sort of heat dissipation item, seems to me like they've added new heat mechanics with zero thought to how we're supposed to deal with it.

[NukaColaAddict]

I've never been able to get the ISRU converter working. It's always at 100%, long before it reaches its destination to mine the ore. Even once there, and left for months and months in sped-up time, it never goes down from 100%. Seems broken to me.

I really hope they add some sort of heat dissipation item, seems to me like they've added new heat mechanics with zero thought to how we're supposed to deal with it.

The only way I can do it is to start it up, speed up time 1000x, and let it process and it will work without overheating. I have 8 large solar panels - which don't seem to help at all - as well as 2 5-star engineers but it will overheat in a matter of minutes no matter what. I too hope they fix it or at least give us a dedicated radiator/coolant to use.

[Rhea]

If you enable debug output in rightclick menu you can see that the temp is actually NaN...

- - - Updated - - -

Also i managed to bypass this bug by setting GeneratesHeat and AutoShutdown to False... (edit the part file, restart the game)