What is the point of radiators ?

[Stigy]

What is the point of radiators ? I play 2 months now and never found them useful for anything. Even nuke engines are not overheating. I've read about overheating during drilling but even this problem doesn't exist for me.

[Phil deCube]

Version 1.0.4 changed the way heating works. Radiators weren't so necessary as a result. 1.0.5 might change that again. Standby. You might need them again.

[magnemoe]

Version 1.0.4 changed the way heating works. Radiators weren't so necessary as a result. 1.0.5 might change that again. Standby. You might need them again.

Yes, notes indicates they will be required for efficient mining, it can be smart to add some just to be sure.

Nuclear engines with long burns benefit from radiators, some parts don't mange much heat, the small solar panels, cheap probe cores radial mounted batteries, the kind of stuff you put on a tug

[Snark]

That. From 1.0 up to 1.0.3, nukes made a lot of heat and tended to blow up a lot, and there were no good radiators to solve the problem. Then 1.0.4 double-solved the issue, by adding the really effective active folding radiator panels, while at the same time greatly reducing the heat output so that those nifty new radiators aren't needed.

That said, they still have some uses. They can help if you have a mission that flies very close to the sun. Also, some mods include parts that generate lots of heat (e.g. Porkjet's Atomic Age), and the radiators come in really handy there.

[CrashTestDanny]

I've still managed to have nukes explode without radiators - just gotta burn em for about 40m straight....

Danny

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I've still managed to have nukes explode without radiators - just gotta burn em for about 40m straight....

Danny

Long burns FTW!

[Stigy]

So if You Use Nuke engines where to place radiators ? above them ? Because it's impossible to attach them to engine. What radiators should i use ?

[Mastikator]

Do radiators protect sundivers or do they just make things worse?

[MatterBeam]

Do radiators protect sundivers or do they just make things worse?

Radiators can orient themselves away from the sun, so that they are facing it edge-on.

[Snark]

So if You Use Nuke engines where to place radiators ? above them ? Because it's impossible to attach them to engine. What radiators should i use ?

Use the active radiators (the ones that fold/unfold, and rotate to track the sun). They're designed so that they suck heat out of whichever part of your ship is the hottest, regardless of placement (which means you can put them anywhere on the ship).

The passive radiator panels just cool the part that they happen to be attached to, which doesn't really help with nukes.

Do radiators protect sundivers or do they just make things worse?

Radiators can orient themselves away from the sun, so that they are facing it edge-on.

Well, they're supposed to do that. However, it turns out that they don't, actually. Visually, yes, they track the sun to stay edge-on, but it doesn't actually do anything in terms of heat flux. They just act as if they're not rotated at all. Detailed discussion here. It's a bug, NathanKell has indicated that they're aware of the problem. Hopefully it'll get fixed in 1.0.5 with the thermal overhaul.

So, they do protect sundivers... but nowhere near as well as they ought to. Basically, until this bug gets fixed, you have to babysit your ship to keep its nose pointed dead straight at the sun, so that the "real" radiators (the ones you can't see) stay aligned edge-on to the sunlight.

(The disconnect between visual and actual behavior kept messing with my brain, so in my own game I've stuck in some ModuleManager snippets to stop the panels from visibly rotating. At least now they're WYSIWYG.)