Quote:
Originally Posted by Mailanka
So, you argue that the IR signature comes from the radiators, which makes sense. The rules discussing retracting your radiators seems to be discussing them from the perspective of avoiding damage. If I read you correctly, though, it would also lower your IR signature, because the reason we have radiators is that ships don't radiate IR energy well enough on their own.
Thus, for a spooky, super-science, radiator-less ship, the ship radiates heat well enough without an exposed radiator, but you make the case that it could, instead, choose to dump its heat into a coolant system, reducing the IR signature to, say, +3 for 30 minutes, after which the system starts to overheat
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Sounds about right. Note you shouldn't need a coolant system for the first 30 minutes - if your ship can dump heat without radiators, but can also opt to stop dumping heat (which should be standard for stealth hulls), you can just follow the main radiator array rules, but without having a radiator that can be targeted at all. In that case, the only addition would be that doing so drops the IR signature. Once it stops being stealthy, it can dump the heat into space - which you could handle as I mentioned, just ignore (yep, radiating again, heat reset, continue on), or have it momentarily "flash" in IR by dumping all that heat at once.