Heatshields and Stations

[Micha]

A few entities (eg, the Commie SLAPU and ZGF) are designed to be close to the sun permanently. If the sun is too large, they overheat and eventually blow up, irrespective of heat shield levels.

There are (at least) 3 ways to fix this:
0. Move the entity further away from the sun.

1. Run a timer which periodically resets temperature (Suggested by Eric).

2. Modify heat shields to completely ignore outside temperatures below a threshold, the higher the heat shield level the higher the threshold. Tweak it so that player heatshields have a minimal threshold and so behave pretty much as they do now.

3. Add a new key to shipdata (heat_immunity (?)) which prevents heat build-up completely for this ship type.


0 is a hack - goes against the spirit of the original idea IMHO. But definitely by far the easiest option.

1 is the easiest from a coding perspective - no code changes, just need to add a ship script to the relevant entities. More a work-around than a fix though, and it means there's (IMHO) unnecessary computation going on.

2 is probably the easiest from a coding perspective and IMHO makes the most sense. Add a high-enough heatshield level to the relevant entities and, barring a nova, they'll be fine. Good for stations close to the sun, or special research ships, etc.

3 would be a very bespoke implementation and also the most work. Would also mean the relevant entities could survive anything heat-related, including a nova.

Thoughts, comments, flames?

[Lestradae]

I'd throw my vote at 2, too.

[Chrisfs]

#2 and now I know why I haven't been seeing those things. I have been looking in the wrong place.

[Micha]

Reworked heatshields submitted in trunk r2677.