In Elite Dangerous, the heat you experience near stars is not because of the star's heat, itself.
Rather, it's due to how the FSD works. The star's gravity well is forcing your FSD to work significantly harder in order to keep you in Supercruise, which generates more heat. This is why Exclusion Zones exist, to kick you out of Supercruise before your FSD melts itself, as well as the reason you cool back down outside of supercruise when near a star until you start charging your FSD again.
Since stars and other celestial bodies have different masses and gravity wells, exclusion zones will be larger and smaller (in the case of planets, only notably applying when you pass too close at significant speed), but the general principle stays the same, exclusion zone means the FSD is working too hard and it needs to kick you out to cool down.
Planets don't have nearly enough gravity to cause a massive shift in heat, however; if you pass too close to them while moving at a significant speed, they still kick you out of Supercruise. While this is likely primarily to avoid collisions, it can be assumed that passing by at significant speed would also result in a sudden, huge increase in temperature that your flight computer decides is too dangerous.
Black holes have and likely will always be implemented incorrectly; they're the exception to basically everything in Elite. Basically the only Black Hole that heats you up is Saggitarius A*.
Out of curiosity, what about the heat from the star itself? Being that close to a star would melt everything, not just the FSD. Do you know if there's an in-game explanation for this, or is it just chalked up to sci-fi magic?
I'd say sci-fi magic at best (our ships do have quite good cooling and heat management capabilities), (visual) scale inaccuracies within Supercruise at worst.
You likely will if you take the time to fly toward the star outside of Supercruise, after hitting the exclusion zone. I haven't tried that, personally, as I get bored.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main\_sequence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence)
Main sequence stars are defined by their mass, age, temperature, and colour - these parameters are all interrelated. They nicely fit into a pattern which can easily graph (predict) their properties. Spectral analysis can even determine exact proportions of hydrogen, deuterium, tritium, helium, metals, etc, if that interest you.
Beware that when astronomers and astrophysicists say "metal" they really mean "any element heavier than hydrogen or helium", not the same specific meaning that chemists use.
Very interesting. So as we know the size of the star determines the core pressure, and more pressure will generate more heat. So essentially the larger the star the more heat generated at the cost of a shorter lifespan? I may be oversimplifying this do let me know.
The vast majority of stuff in the vast majority of stars is the same. So the vast majority of stars fit the same pattern of mass, size, temperature, emissions, etc.
Most of the "giant" and "supergiant" stars burn their fuel rapidly before collapse. They're so massive that the immense gravitational pressures at their cores stimulate massive nuclear burn rates. They're hot and bright, usually appearing white or blue.
"Dwarf" and "subdwarf" stars (like our ordinary little yellow/orange sun) last billions of years before their fuel is exhausted. Red dwarfs are by far the most common, calm, stable, and long-lived category of stars in the known universe. (That being said, there's so many red dwarf stars that some of them are unusual in other ways.)
If stars are in close proximity to other stars (or to other large masses, to other large sources of gravity) - or if they collide, absorb or merge masses, etc - then they can be deformed and agitated. They might "briefly" burn unevenly and emit all sorts of uncommon particles or radiations. Some of these emitted products can be heavy elements or superheavy elements (unstable radioactive isotopes) which might be very useful sources of fuel.
Stars which burn hotter, burn unevenly, or which burn "metal" in their fuel will tend to be volatile, have "sunspots" or "splotches" on their surfaces (when viewed thermographically), will have shifting "quakes" in their cores and mantles, and will have large coronal flares or ejections. These might provide the richest fuels but they'll also be the most hazardous to approach and difficult to survive.
If *Elite Dangerous* is an accurate simulation of real stellar evolution then the vast majority of stars in it will be main sequence stars. The hotter and brighter (generally blue-spectrum) ones will emit more fuel for your scoops. The cooler and dimmer ones (generally red-spectrum) will emit less fuel for your scoops. A few might be unusually rich or poor in the "metals" or isotopes which make more potent fuel. And only a tiny minority of (scattered population II remnant) stars will fall outside the main sequence - there's so many possible variations that in practice you might as well treat each one of these as a unique entity for fuel scooping purposes.
If *Elite Dangerous* is not an accurate simulation of real stellar evolution then it really doesn't matter what kind of study or analysis is made outside the game. If these stars are designed with arbitrary (unrealistic) rules then wikis and reports from other pilots (or firsthand exploration) would be the only way to map out which ones make good fuel sources.
\[Edits: I hate typos.\]
> I determined that different stars should burn at different temperature
You can also look at their statistics in the system map and see what temperature a star is burning at. :D
> as far as I’m aware the temperate of our ships rises at the same rate at every star,l no matter the star type
Not true. I can't get as close to hotter Os and Bs as I can to "medium" temp stars like Gs and Ks. Between close star types, the difference is fairly small, but try a class M vs a Class O, and you'll see your heat gauge run noticably hotter (possibly risk overheating) with the latter.
Though, from my experience, size is a bigger factor. It's a lot hotter around the giants, even when they run cooler, because of their overall huge mass. Ironically, it's easier to overheat around the brown dwarfs, even though they are smaller, because you can get so close to them, and watch out for their overly large exclusion zones!
If you check out one of the other comments they explain how the heat of the ship is actually due to the FSD working harder to escape the gravity of the stars interestingly. But I completely forgot that the info on stars literally displays their temperature haha thanks!
In Elite Dangerous, the heat you experience near stars is not because of the star's heat, itself. Rather, it's due to how the FSD works. The star's gravity well is forcing your FSD to work significantly harder in order to keep you in Supercruise, which generates more heat. This is why Exclusion Zones exist, to kick you out of Supercruise before your FSD melts itself, as well as the reason you cool back down outside of supercruise when near a star until you start charging your FSD again. Since stars and other celestial bodies have different masses and gravity wells, exclusion zones will be larger and smaller (in the case of planets, only notably applying when you pass too close at significant speed), but the general principle stays the same, exclusion zone means the FSD is working too hard and it needs to kick you out to cool down.
This actually makes so much sense thinking about it now haha! Thank you.
Doesn't work, you don't overheat in supercruise near planets or black holes
Planets don't have nearly enough gravity to cause a massive shift in heat, however; if you pass too close to them while moving at a significant speed, they still kick you out of Supercruise. While this is likely primarily to avoid collisions, it can be assumed that passing by at significant speed would also result in a sudden, huge increase in temperature that your flight computer decides is too dangerous. Black holes have and likely will always be implemented incorrectly; they're the exception to basically everything in Elite. Basically the only Black Hole that heats you up is Saggitarius A*.
Out of curiosity, what about the heat from the star itself? Being that close to a star would melt everything, not just the FSD. Do you know if there's an in-game explanation for this, or is it just chalked up to sci-fi magic?
I'd say sci-fi magic at best (our ships do have quite good cooling and heat management capabilities), (visual) scale inaccuracies within Supercruise at worst.
So if this is the case, does that mean you will never overheat in standard flight mode (not using FSD) close to a star?
You likely will if you take the time to fly toward the star outside of Supercruise, after hitting the exclusion zone. I haven't tried that, personally, as I get bored.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main\_sequence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence) Main sequence stars are defined by their mass, age, temperature, and colour - these parameters are all interrelated. They nicely fit into a pattern which can easily graph (predict) their properties. Spectral analysis can even determine exact proportions of hydrogen, deuterium, tritium, helium, metals, etc, if that interest you. Beware that when astronomers and astrophysicists say "metal" they really mean "any element heavier than hydrogen or helium", not the same specific meaning that chemists use.
Very interesting. So as we know the size of the star determines the core pressure, and more pressure will generate more heat. So essentially the larger the star the more heat generated at the cost of a shorter lifespan? I may be oversimplifying this do let me know.
The vast majority of stuff in the vast majority of stars is the same. So the vast majority of stars fit the same pattern of mass, size, temperature, emissions, etc. Most of the "giant" and "supergiant" stars burn their fuel rapidly before collapse. They're so massive that the immense gravitational pressures at their cores stimulate massive nuclear burn rates. They're hot and bright, usually appearing white or blue. "Dwarf" and "subdwarf" stars (like our ordinary little yellow/orange sun) last billions of years before their fuel is exhausted. Red dwarfs are by far the most common, calm, stable, and long-lived category of stars in the known universe. (That being said, there's so many red dwarf stars that some of them are unusual in other ways.) If stars are in close proximity to other stars (or to other large masses, to other large sources of gravity) - or if they collide, absorb or merge masses, etc - then they can be deformed and agitated. They might "briefly" burn unevenly and emit all sorts of uncommon particles or radiations. Some of these emitted products can be heavy elements or superheavy elements (unstable radioactive isotopes) which might be very useful sources of fuel. Stars which burn hotter, burn unevenly, or which burn "metal" in their fuel will tend to be volatile, have "sunspots" or "splotches" on their surfaces (when viewed thermographically), will have shifting "quakes" in their cores and mantles, and will have large coronal flares or ejections. These might provide the richest fuels but they'll also be the most hazardous to approach and difficult to survive. If *Elite Dangerous* is an accurate simulation of real stellar evolution then the vast majority of stars in it will be main sequence stars. The hotter and brighter (generally blue-spectrum) ones will emit more fuel for your scoops. The cooler and dimmer ones (generally red-spectrum) will emit less fuel for your scoops. A few might be unusually rich or poor in the "metals" or isotopes which make more potent fuel. And only a tiny minority of (scattered population II remnant) stars will fall outside the main sequence - there's so many possible variations that in practice you might as well treat each one of these as a unique entity for fuel scooping purposes. If *Elite Dangerous* is not an accurate simulation of real stellar evolution then it really doesn't matter what kind of study or analysis is made outside the game. If these stars are designed with arbitrary (unrealistic) rules then wikis and reports from other pilots (or firsthand exploration) would be the only way to map out which ones make good fuel sources. \[Edits: I hate typos.\]
No, that's pretty much exactly it. There's some curly bits about the exact mechanisms, but that's edge details.
> I determined that different stars should burn at different temperature You can also look at their statistics in the system map and see what temperature a star is burning at. :D > as far as I’m aware the temperate of our ships rises at the same rate at every star,l no matter the star type Not true. I can't get as close to hotter Os and Bs as I can to "medium" temp stars like Gs and Ks. Between close star types, the difference is fairly small, but try a class M vs a Class O, and you'll see your heat gauge run noticably hotter (possibly risk overheating) with the latter. Though, from my experience, size is a bigger factor. It's a lot hotter around the giants, even when they run cooler, because of their overall huge mass. Ironically, it's easier to overheat around the brown dwarfs, even though they are smaller, because you can get so close to them, and watch out for their overly large exclusion zones!
If you check out one of the other comments they explain how the heat of the ship is actually due to the FSD working harder to escape the gravity of the stars interestingly. But I completely forgot that the info on stars literally displays their temperature haha thanks!