In Stationeers temperature gets at you in two ways: through the air you breathe, and through what your suit exchanges with its surroundings. Sun and weather come on top. This article collects the values from Stationeers 0.2.6428.
What your lungs can take
According to the game code the lungs take damage when the breathing air is colder than −10 °C or warmer than +50 °C. That is the limit that matters – also with the helmet open in a room whose heating has failed.
The character itself exchanges hardly any heat: its factors for radiation, convection and sun are 0.019 each. What protects or endangers you outside is the suit.
How much heat the suits exchange
The game data give every suit three factors: thermal radiation, convection (heat transfer to the gas) and heating by the sun. The smaller the factor, the less heat flows in or out.
| Suit | Radiation | Convection | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eva Suit | 0.205 | 0.205 | 8.19 |
| Icarus Suit | 0.193 | 0.193 | 1.45 |
| Emergency Eva Suit | 0.132 | 0.132 | 0.66 |
| Hardsuit | 0.062 | 0.062 | 6.23 |
| HARM Suit | 0.032 | 0 | 0.13 |
Helmets look similar: the Space Helmet has a sun factor of 1.26, the Hardsuit Helmet 0.91 and the HARM Helmet only 0.055.
What follows: the Eva Suit heats up most in the sun. At the same cost, the Icarus Suit is the better choice for sunny trips. The Hardsuit exchanges only a third via gas and radiation, the HARM suit almost nothing. In vacuum convection drops out; radiation and sun remain.
How hot and cold the worlds get
| World | Outside temperature according to the world data |
|---|---|
| Vulcan | curve from 400 K (127 °C) at night to 975 K (702 °C) at noon, with the radiation surcharge 922 to 1,377 K at noon at the start location |
| Venus | a constant 737 K (464 °C), day and night |
| Mars | about 276 to 283 K (3 to 10 °C) at noon, 221 to 226 K (−52 to −47 °C) at night |
| Europa | 124 to 134 K (−149 to −139 °C) |
| Moon, Mimas | vacuum, no temperature curve |
The Mars values include surcharges for sun, air density and greenhouse effect; at night it is colder there than the bare curve (240 K) suggests.
Sun and storms
In Stationeers "radiation" mainly means heat: radiative exchange and heating by the sun. On Vulcan the world adds up to 750 K of radiation surcharge during the day, depending on the orbital position. You can measure the solar irradiance with the Daylight Sensor via SolarIrradiance. The game data behind this wiki contain no value for radiation damage to the character.
Storms shift the temperature further:
| Storm | World | Day | Night | Sun | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| dust storm | Mars | −20 K | +30 K | × 0.3 | yes |
| snow storm | Europa | −29 K | −24 K | × 0.3 | yes |
| dust storm | Venus | −98 K | −98 K | × 0.3 | yes |
| ash storm | Vulcan | −275 K | +150 K | × 0.05 | yes |
| solar storm | Vulcan | +500 K | +100 K | × 4 | no |
| solar storm | Moon | +50 K | +50 K | × 4 | no |
A solar storm quadruples the sun. In the Eva Suit with its sun factor of 8.19, that is the moment to go inside.
Hot worlds: canisters and fire
On Venus and Vulcan the heat becomes a pressure problem. The pressure in a canister rises with the temperature in kelvin. A worked example for Venus:
- A Canister at 7,600 kPa and 20 °C would reach 7,600 · 737 / 293.15 ≈ 19,100 kPa at 737 K – almost twice its limit of 10,132.5 kPa.
- To stay below the limit at 737 K, you may only fill it to 10,132.5 · 293.15 / 737 ≈ 4,030 kPa at 20 °C.
- The Gas Canister (Smart) with its 20,265 kPa limit tolerates a filling of up to about 8,060 kPa at 20 °C for 737 K.
Whether a canister in the suit reaches the full outside temperature depends on the heat exchange. Plan as if it does anyway.
Then there is fire. The Eva Suit is flammable and autoignites from 300 °C, the Battery Cell (Nuclear) from just 100 °C. According to the game code, autoignition also requires the gas cell to contain more than 10 MJ of heat energy. A Venus cell has about 6.9 MJ – any extra waste heat can tip it over. More in Fire and explosions: ignition, autoignition, extinguishing.
Cold worlds
Europa has oxygen in its air, but at −139 to −149 °C. Opening the helmet damages your lungs at once, no matter how good the oxygen partial pressure is. On Mars, too, the night with down to −52 °C is far below the −10 °C limit.
Cold hits technology as well. Water freezes at 0 °C, polluted water already at 3 °C, and according to the game code liquid in a cold pipe solidifies into chunks of ice. A cold upgrade for the suit does exist as an item, but the Cryogenic Suit Upgrade can neither be crafted nor spawned in 0.2.6428.
Battery cells suffer too: below 0 °C they lose charge every tick according to the game code, namely up to 50 J · (1 − temperature in K / 273.15), reduced when the air is thinner than 1 atm. A loose cell in a room at 101 kPa and −50 °C thus loses 50 · (1 − 223.15 / 273.15) ≈ 9 J per tick; a small Battery Cell (Small) is empty after a little over half an hour. If the cell sits in a slot, the code also uses a heat factor of the cell that is missing from the data used here. So store spare cells somewhere warm.
The Hardsuit and the HARM Suit report TemperatureExternal and the internal temperature through logic, and TemperatureSetting is readable and writable. According to the game code that is the target temperature of the suit air in kelvin, default 293.15 K (20 °C); with the buttons you set 0 to 60 °C. On the Eva Suit and the Hardsuit, heating costs half the heat added as battery power, cooling only 1 % – so on cold worlds the battery runs down faster than on hot ones. The HARM suit also has a slot for a coolant tank with a liquid canister.
Checklist
- Keep breathing air between −10 °C and +50 °C, otherwise keep the helmet shut.
- On hot worlds wear a non-flammable suit and fill canisters low.
- Go inside during a solar storm, especially in the Eva Suit.
- On cold worlds move water as ice and melt it indoors.
Next
- Suit and equipment: what you wear on your body – all suits and helmets compared
- Fire and explosions: ignition, autoignition, extinguishing – autoignition and fire
- Atmosphere and pressure – why pressure rises with temperature
- Worlds and their values: Planets, Planet data sheet