Ship integrity, and how does it work

Once your ship temperature gets to 150%, you start taking an increasing amount of hull damage until your ship explodes.

Reducing Heat Generation

There doesn't appear to be a method of preventing heat from building up while running silent, although toggling the power state of the various ship modules in your ship and the amount of throttle provided to the engines will affect how quickly the heat builds up.

For example, running through the overheat process with various systems on I found:

• Powered: Engines, Life Support, Power Distribution, Sensor Suite, Engine throttle at 55%: 3 minutes 4 seconds
• Powered: Engines, Life Support, Power Distribution, Sensor Suite, Engine throttle at 141%: 1 minute 54 seconds
• Powered: Engines, Life Support, Power Distribution, Sensor Suite, Engine throttle at 159%: 1 minute 46 seconds
• Powered: Engines, Life Support only, Engine throttle at 159%: 2 minutes 13 seconds

All tests were performed by starting from 0% total heat generated, toggling on all of the systems I was using for the test and running silent mode at the same time to provide the most accurate numbers. All tests used the default power distribution.

To confirm whether the amount of power sent to the engine through power distribution mattered I did one more run with identical parameters to above but with all power diverted to the weapons (which were disabled on the modules screen) and the shields (which were also disabled on the modules screen). This capped the maximum throttle percentage at 99%;

• Powered: Engines, Life Support, Power Distribution, Sensor Suite, Engine throttle at 99%: 1 minute 46 seconds

I found this odd, but then considered that perhaps (a little illogically), the heat generated was tied to the actual throttle percentage rather than what is displayed on the screen. Since with no power going to the engines, 99% on screen is in fact 100%, while with two blocks of power going to the engine 159% on screen was in fact 100%, that perhaps the best solution to getting the best efficiency out of running silent would be to divert as much power as possible to the engines. Since shields are disabled while running silent, I diverted 4 blocks of power to the engines and 2 blocks of power to the weapons (which were in fact disabled on the modules screen), and then attempted to get the throttle to 99% on screen while running with the same configuration as before:

• Powered: Engines, Life Support, Power Distribution, Sensor Suite, Engine throttle at 108%: 2 minutes 38 seconds

Managing Heat Generation

It is possible to purchase a "heat sink launcher", which requires heat sinks as a form of ammunition but allows you to eject heat sinks to reduce your current heat level. Additionally, it is possible to use the heat sink launcher while in silent running mode.

Conclusion

I concluded from the above testing that the best way to get maximum time out of running silent without having to stop to cool down would be:

• Full power to the engines in power distribution
• Low throttle % - something like 50-75
• Turn off shields

This should provide you about three minutes (ish) of time in running silent without having to stop to cooldown.

^{Another thing I did notice during testing, the engines generate a lot of heat - so much in fact, that even with all of the other systems off and the ship at a stand still, if the heat percentage is above 0% when you active silent running, the heat percentage will climb by itself, regardless of whether the ship is moving or not.}

If you're trying to sell a specific commodity, the "exported to" system list in the commodities screen of the station services is a good start, but here's what I do to locate better info:

1. Figure out what economies consume and produce the resource I want to sell. Either via the description,the ED wikia commodities info pages, or this handy spreadsheet
2. Go to Galaxy Map
3. Go to the 'view' options.
4. Set "View by color" to "Economy"
5. Un-set the economies that don't consume or produce that commodity (so it's easier to see the ones that do).
6. Enable the "show trade routes" option.
7. Clear all the trade routes (so nothing is shown)
8. Enable the one commodity you're interested in.
9. Buy up some trade data from systems that might need or produce that commodity. Not all systems have trade data available (especially further away), so including producers will increase the odds of finding a trade route for that.
10. Look at the trade routes for that commodity. They're the brightly colored curved line of the same color as in the trade routes selection, with bright "sparks" traveling along them to show the direction the commodity flows. Make sure to watch for smaller sparks traveling backwards along a route. You want a system that the commodity flows into but doesn't flow out of. If there's a lot of that commodity flowing into a system, it might mean they have very high demand, but it may also mean their market is flooded with it and demand is now low.
11. Now you should have some candidates. Click on them and go into the system view.
12. When you're looking at the system, check all of the stations. Look at both the primary and secondary economy of each station to verify that your commodity isn't produced anywhere in that system. Verify that your commodity isn't illegal at that station. See if it's in the list of top 3 imports (or at least similar to one that is), and verify that it isn't an export. Try to verify that the station you want to travel to isn't too distant from the primary star.
13. Switch to Navigation tab of the galaxy map, pick "Fastest" route option, click the "route to this system" button for the destination (if you intend to grab more cargo, make sure to slide that slider over).
14. Optional: Do a quick check on the intermediate route systems to make sure my commodity isn't illegal in any of them. I think for that, you only need to check the station closest to the major star, since it will be the one whose faction sets the law for the space around the star that you'll be jumping through. If you're in a poorly armed ship carrying expensive cargo, you may also want to avoid anarchy systems. This is optional, since you can usually jump through intermediate route systems without spending enough time there to get interdicted by authority or pirate ships.

The same basic technique works well for searching for where to buy a specific commodity, such as when you have a mission.

In the example of H.E. Suits, those are imported by pretty much every economy except agriculture (maybe also not service and tourist?), and they're produced in high-tech systems.

Alternately, you can skip all of that, go to Thrudd's Elite Dangerous Trading Tool, an do Search/Commodity/Station Buying and put in your commodity, station, etc and see what price different stations were buying it for in the last couple of days.

Other trade tools:

• http://eddb.io/trade/single
• http://roguey.co.uk/elite-dangerous/trade-helper/mk2/
• http://etn.io/
• http://inara.cz/market