Nuclear engine with nearby radiator is hotter than those with radiator retracted?

[THX1138]

I extended a radiator for one Nerv engine and left the others retracted to compare the temperatures and saw the opposite of what I expected. My guess is that the radiator actively draws the heat from all the Nervs and then some of it is conducted back to the nearest Nerv. Is that what's happened?

Edited January 29, 2016 by THX1138

[Snark]

The foldable radiators draw heat from the entire ship; they don't care what's nearby or not.

It's possible you could be seeing some bleed-back conduction from the radiator, though that seems kinda unlikely to me-- the foldable radiators are deliberately designed with really low thermal conductivity to their neighbors, so that a hot radiator doesn't heat up the thing it's attached to (much).  And even if it did, the NERV is at least one part away, since you can't mount a radiator directly on it.

As to why that one NERV would be hotter:  no idea.  You could turn on the thermal diagnostic debug data and then see what the heat budget of that NERV looks like compared with the others-- at least then you'd have an idea of what's going on (conduction, internal production, radiation, etc.)

[JTpopcorn]

I would have to assume in this situation that you are getting heat bleeding back into the single NERV, and while this may be problamatic, extending the other rads should quickly solve the problem.

Maybe it is emitting enough heat to the surrounding area that that one Nerv takes in more... Similiar to pointing a rocket at a craft... I don't know just speculating.

[Snark]

Interestingly, the other engines show a very big negative conductive flux (i.e. they're bleeding heat into their neighbors), but the one that's inexplicably hotter has a conductive flux of ... zero.  As in, exactly zero kW.

That seems wrong.  As in, bug wrong.  No matter what's physically happening around it, if you have a situation where extreme temperatures are fluttering around, the likelihood that it just happens to have exactly zero conductive flux seems... unlikely.  Either it should be losing some or gaining some, surely.

May be worth reporting a bug, unless one of the devs (like @NathanKell, maybe?  think he's been working on the thermo systems?) has anything to suggest.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Snark

[NathanKell]

Try to replicate it without radiators? That will help isolate it. Either way, best to loop @RoverDude in.

[RoverDude]

Yep!  I would love to see a stock save with repro steps please!  (feel free to send me a PM)