Heat Management System

What is this all about?

HMS adds real heat physics to Space Engineers, covering all three parts of it: how heat is produced, how it moves, and how it leaves your grid.

Production. HMS itself has only one heat producer: batteries. The more power you push through them, the hotter they get. More of them come with the satellite mods, H2Real and U235. Transfer. Heat moves in several ways: directly between adjacent blocks, through heat pipe networks, and through water cooling loops with pumps, inlets and everything that comes with them. Dissipation. Any non-deformable block works as a passive radiator, which is often your only option in space. On top of that, vents, heat vents, exhausts and atmo thrusters work as active heat sinks.

Check the Player's Guide for the details.

It all started with me not being happy with the energy system in SE. I wanted more of a challenge. But being a madman, I didn't just add a "heat" number to the grid that some blocks push up and others pull down. I went into the physics and made it block-level, with proper propagation and dissipation.

The mod ships with a config dialed so heat isn't the main topic of your game. But it's always somewhere near you. It's one of those things you keep in mind when you design something: dangerous enough to care about, quiet enough not to distract you all the time. However, if you're not happy with this balance, feel free to play with it. The configuration guide is here: CONFIGURATION.md

Does this mod have a future?

This mod is being developed actively as much as I can. It gets maintenance updates often and new features from time to time.

Top 5 recent updates that matter:

• v1.5: Water-based heat transfer
• v1.4.1: Compatibility fixes
• v1.4: Major overhaul and O2 distribution rebuild
• v1.3.3: Godly temperatures fix and Heat Inspector
• v1.3.2: O2 distribution system and HeatTemperature for scripts

⚠️ v1.5 resets your config to defaults once if auto-update is on (it's on by default). Back it up if you've tuned it, or set HEAT_SYSTEM_AUTO_UPDATE to false before updating.

To learn more about updates, head to Change Notes.

What will I get with this mod?

A living environment. Ambient temperature depends on where you are: a planet's own climate, altitude, day and night, and even weather. Space is cold, Mars noon is not. Pressurized rooms always stay at 20 °C, which makes them a handy place for heat-sensitive stuff.

Heat pipe networks. Conveyors, pipe blocks, Willis ducts and neon tubes join into networks that move heat far more efficiently than plain block contact. They don't cool anything themselves; they only carry heat from where it's made to where it can leave.

Water cooling. On big networks, heat pipes hit a wall: everything near the batteries heats up evenly and heat stops moving. Water fixes that by actually carrying the heat away. Build a sealed conveyor loop, fill it through a Water Pump set to Inlet from your irrigation system, and drive it with another pump set to Flow Pump. Small grids can be filled from the base. Mind the leaks. Everything else is in the Player's Guide.

Heat between grids. Connectors, rotors, hinges and pistons pass heat to subgrids and docked ships, so the heat of a ship's batteries can be dumped through a station's cooling and vice versa. Or you can just shoot off an overheated battery pack and replace it with a charged, ice-cold one.

Vent turbo mode. Vents that can't pressurize a room can spend O2 to cool themselves down fast. You'll see the steam. O2 comes from your conveyor network: generators and farms first, then tanks.

Visual feedback. Hot blocks glow, batteries smoke before they blow, and leaking water loops spray.

Automation. The Event Controller gets two new events: block temperature and grid max temperature. Scripts can read any heated block's temperature through the HeatTemperature property.

Multiplayer. Works on dedicated servers. The server does the simulation and clients only get what they need.

What else is in the family?

HMS is the foundation. It simulates the physics, and satellite mods plug into it to add their own heat producers without reinventing thermodynamics. Both satellites require HMS, so subscribe to it too.

• H2Real: realistic hydrogen. Engines and thrusters burn O2 along with H2 and heat up, and overheating damages them beyond functional. O2/H2 generators use real electrolysis numbers for power and output, and they're the first blocks that actually benefit from heat: they melt ice with their own stored heat, so a warm generator needs less power.
• U235: reactors that behave like reactors, not like fossil fuel engines. A reactor has to heat its core up to 800 °C before it gives any power, burns uranium in batches, and puts out more power the hotter it runs. Control rods throttle it automatically, but never fully, so a reactor without proper cooling melts down. And a meltdown is not something you want near your base.

If you're a modder and want your mod to be part of the family, the API is described here: EXTENSIBILITY.md. Reach me on Discord if you get stuck.

How do I see what's going on?