Silent Running

Silent Running is a mode that can be activated to reduce the visibility of your ship to others allowing you to remain undetected and make it harder to be targeted.

The visibility of your ship depends on its heat signature - that is the amount of heat that it generates. A high heat signature means that you will be easier to see on the sensors of other ships and can be detected from further away.

Heat Management

• All powered ship modules (including the reactor) generate heat.
• Heat is transferred from a module to the ship’s cooling system when the module’s thermal limit is exceeded.
• Heat in the cooling system is radiated from the ship via the ship cooling vents.
• If more heat is being generated than radiated the heat transfer may stop or even reverse, overheating modules.
• Most ships have articulated heat vanes which can be raised, significantly increasing heat dissipation from the ship.
  • However, such activity normally affects the flight model of the ship and always increases the ship’s thermal signature whilst active.
• Systems can be fitted to flush the cooling system, instigating chemical reactions to dissipate heat.
• Heat stored in a ship’s cooling system generates a thermal signature for the ship.
  • The higher the thermal signature, the easier it is to locate using heat-based sensors and the easier it is to track using heat-tracking weapon platforms.
• When heat levels exceed set thresholds some modules may automatically turn off/begin to suffer fatigue damage.
  • Excessive heat puts a strain on the ship’s atmosphere control (reducing the capability of life support modules).
    • Super excessive heat directly impacts the pilot and crew’s ability to function and will eventually kill them.

Engaging Silent Running

When you engage silent running your shields immediately go offline (and won't recharge unless you disengage silent running), and the cooling vents in your ship shut preventing any heat from escaping from it. Your heat signature dramatically reduces causing you to become more difficult to detect on the scanners of any nearby ships. The less heat you generate and further away you are from another ship the more effective this will be.

Heat generated by any active ship systems and modules starts to build up inside your ship and you will see your ship's temperature gauge start to rise.

Using systems that generate heat (such as firing energy weapons) while in silent running will cause you to show up on ship scanners.

You can reduce your heat signature even further while in silent running by switching off additional ship modules (even including life support). You can see the total current heat output of active systems on your ship on the Modules section of the right-hand systems panel, and you can switch individual modules off and on from this screen.

If you want to be totally off scanner, you will need to be iced up, with your weapons packed away and your engines turned off. Being iced up is the key thing here.

Silent running never, by itself, hides you completely from the scanner. It will make you a "ghost" or "vague" contact though, so people will know something is there but they won't be able to lock on to you.

Heatsinks

Heat sink modules can be fitted to hard points. When activated (i.e. fired), a heat sink module flushes the cooling system’s heat into a heat sink which is then ejected from the ship. This will cause a blip to be generated on the scanners of any nearby ships. Ejected heat sinks can also be used as a form of chaff to confuse heat tracking missiles.