Quick (silly) question: Does radiator placement matter in the new thermo model?

[Pthigrivi]

I've done a little playing around and so far it's hard for me to tell. Do radiator panels cool the entire craft or the parts they're attached to first and foremost? Some combination of the two?

[Gaarst]

It depends on the type of radiator used:

In 1.0.x, static radiator panels used to passively drain heat (so just normal heat conduction) from the part they were attached to, while the deployable radiators drained heat actively from the whole craft.

In 1.0.5, the deployable ones still behave the same, while the static panels now drain heat actively from the part they are attached to and one part away (this allows you to drain heat directly from drills by attaching a radiator panel to the same part they are attached to).

(I haven't checked it by myself, I heard it during the 1.0.5 KSPTV streams, probably from NathanKell himself)

Edited November 11, 2015 by Gaarst
Clarity

[Pthigrivi]

Sweet. I was trying to suss out the difference here. I do really like that it matters now.

[Snark]

Another difference is that radiators now require electricity.

I don't mind that so much for the "active" (deployable, folding) radiator panels, because I can open and close them, and they "turn off" (don't require any electricity) when closed.

However, the so-called "passive" panels (the ones that aren't deployable) now use electricity continuously. Doesn't matter whether they're actually pulling any heat or not: I make a ship that's just a fuel tank with some attached radiators (i.e. no sources of heat present), and it's sitting there sucking down electricity on the launch pad. And as far as I can tell, there's no way to turn them off.

This means that if you have a bunch of passive radiators on your ship, you'd better have a good electricity supply (and lots of batteries to get you through the night, if you're relying on solar).

This seems wrong to me. Either there needs to be a way of turning off the radiators, or else they shouldn't draw power when there's no work to be done, or both.

Or am I missing something?