Plotting Routes

[Xebeth]

But what do heat sinks do? And why do you think it's better for me to lose the shield generates which will make my shields weaker? Considering I have no weapons that seems like a crazy idea to me.

Heat Sinks rapidly remove heat from your ship, you assign them to a button, when your ship reaches a damaging level of heat you fire off a heat sink and it takes the heat away. Basically you shoot off the red hot lump of metal that you ship has been channeling all it's heat into. (Note that they have ammo)

Why use them? Well out in the deep things can go wrong, a typical situation is jumping into a system and finding you are between two close binary suns (happened to me more than once), your heat starts to go up rapidly, you fire off a heat sink and your heat drops to zero and you SC away. Another thing is getting a bit too close to something like a neutron star, you get pulled out of SC, but now you are too hot to jump back to SC, again fire off a heat sink and away you go.

As for the loss of shield strength, well out in the black there is (currently) nothing we know of that will shoot you, once out of the bubble there are no hostile NPCs (that anyone has ever seen). Mike Brookes has hinted about something being out there, but he's probably playing with us, or it's something for a future patch.

People have travelled hundreds of thousands of ly out in the black and the only danger is astronomical (e.g. binary suns and shields don't help with these) or carelessness.

The only need I had for shields on my trip to Sag A* was for landing on planets.

[Myrm]

Thanks XeBeth

[Cometborne]

But what do heat sinks do? And why do you think it's better for me to lose the shield generates which will make my shields weaker? Considering I have no weapons that seems like a crazy idea to me.

It is a game of compromises. If you run into a real combat ship out there, it will probably be faster than you are, have more power reserves for boosting, and of course have guns. It does not matter if you have reinforced your 3D shield with four boosters or not, it will blow you into dust bunnies.

The only reason to have some shields to have protection against the inevitable hull damage when landing on planets.

Heat sink launchers allow you to purge your cooling system if you happen to come out of hyperspace too close to a star and start taking heat damage. Systems with multiple suns near the entry point are another big danger. If you are unlucky, there are two or more big stars right at the entry, and if you happen to fly between them, you get roasted.

If the temperature gets too high, your ship will be destroyed.

The theory is that dropping heat sinks can save your ship in this case.

Personally, I tend to fly without heat sinks except when I am in the combat ship. On the other hand, there are old explorers, bold explorers, bold old explorers, but no old bold explorers. And with just 91 KLY on the odometer, I am still a newbie - some of the really old grizzly types can spit further than that

An example system to test would be Gamma Doradus, which is more or less around the corner from Azrael: A pair of class F right at the entry, and a class A not far off. I do advise to be somewhat cautious on your first entry.

There are also stories about black holes, but since I effectively landed on one and had just 60% heat, I do not take them that seriously.

[Myrm]

KK, so I have tweaked it a lot (and clawed back well over 15 million krona!).

My 3A Power Plant struggles compared to yours, yet I have the same set up as you showed with the exception that I kept two shield boosters (which are disabled as that's what I'll do when I am outside the bubble).

Dermy Bud IV

[Xebeth]

Looking good

[Myrm]

Thanks.

And thank you to you all for helping me save lots and lots of lovely krona!

[Cometborne]

Talking about saving money: If you buy your ship and modules at a station that is in a LYR-exploited system, you get a 15% discount. And that applies to your insurance value as well. The Asp Explorer itself is sold with 20% discount in Alioth, the capital of the alliance. However, you need a special permit for Alioth, and the grind for that will take some time.

[Xebeth]

:mrgreen: Thanks.

And thank you to you all for helping me save lots and lots of lovely krona!

NP, enjoy the trip and remember to take lots of pics

[Myrm]

Woah! My previous fuel scoop maxed out at 65-70 speed. This new one goes up to 627 speed. Empty to full takes just a few moments. My jump distance is now about 35 LY ( up from 26).

[Cometborne]

This just came out of Kamito and HIP 20342: California Dreaming

Thanks to LYR, for just 14.8 MCr rather than the usual 17.4 MCr. And now off to the nice Farseer for some slot machine action.