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[cake]

so ships in starsector are extremely advanced, and have very effective armor. they also have shockingly powerful engines. however, people also make EVA trips, and this brings up an issue,
The outside of starship hulls are going to be horrifically radiologically hot thanks to the environment- nuclear/antimatter detonations, energy weapon fire, diving into suns, and so on- reapers exist, and I believe it's mentioned that energy weapons aren't particularly clean. not to mention the fact that ships are flying around on antimatter torches.  so how do we avoid EVA causing fatal radiation exposure from your own ship?

[Nettle]

Run water through it and vent steam into space.

[cake]

=_=


radiation hot- not sexy or red hot

[Nettle]

Ionizing radiation, got it.
A protective layer of lead, polyethylene and boron for your unfortunate crews, or remotely operated drones.

[Killer of Fate]

lore doesn't explain what flux is... It's a way how ships dump heat.
Considering ships have all gravity installed, maybe it's some sort of reality warping mechanism?
Starsector ships are generally pretty advanced to the point of ignoring logic. Domain was pretty wicked smart. And considering this game was inspired by Hyperion among other things, certain magic is involved (not literal magic, just really ridiculous science that goes beyond our current comprehension of physics). Which is one of the reasons why people in the Sector can't create stuff.

[Fenrir]

robust EVA suits, even personal shield

[nathan67003]

Heat might be vented the same way flux gets vented (flux might even be a combo of heat and ionization). Personally, I think flux gets vented into some sort of hyperspace adjacent to real space with different properties; there's already hyperspace you use for FTL, P-space, whatever the hell is on the other end of a cryoarithmetic engine's core (which is probably the same thing that makes the Omega cryo weapons work), the space 'between' gates, the space through which hyperspace shunts work, etc.

[cake]

Ionizing radiation, got it.
A protective layer of lead, polyethylene and boron for your unfortunate crews, or remotely operated drones.

I’m not referring to anything relating to the interiors of ships. I’m talking about how ship hulls would be horrifically radiologically dangerous to anything near them from all of the radiation sources they’re exposed to. But we also know crew do EVA, so there has to be a way that it doesn’t cause massive life shortening during every point where you leave the ship

[nathan67003]

Most radiation that turns other things radioactive is neutrons; alpha, beta and gamma induce radioactivity much, much, much less often. Given that basically all of the radiation sources seen in Starsector (outside of irradiated planets and pollution) are primarily alpha-beta-gamma sources (to be clear: stars), there wouldn't be much induced radiation. (no, neutron stars do not emit significant amounts of neutron radiation) Plus, given how larger ships have more maintenance costs, it's possible that whatever does degrade due to radiation gets swapped out with maintenance anyway.

[cake]

Most radiation that turns other things radioactive is neutrons; alpha, beta and gamma induce radioactivity much, much, much less often. Given that basically all of the radiation sources seen in Starsector (outside of irradiated planets and pollution) are primarily alpha-beta-gamma sources (to be clear: stars), there wouldn't be much induced radiation. (no, neutron stars do not emit significant amounts of neutron radiation) Plus, given how larger ships have more maintenance costs, it's possible that whatever does degrade due to radiation gets swapped out with maintenance anyway.

there's not just stars, we have ships running on antimatter drives and antimatter weapons being thrown around, as well as whatever energy weapons spit out- you might have a point though, I did a quick check, and it seems like most of what antimatter produces is electromagnetic radiation and quarks of various kinds- I don't actually know what free quarks would do to matter personally,

[Nettle]

I’m not referring to anything relating to the interiors of ships. I’m talking about how ship hulls would be horrifically radiologically dangerous to anything near them from all of the radiation sources they’re exposed to. But we also know crew do EVA, so there has to be a way that it doesn’t cause massive life shortening during every point where you leave the ship

Yes, I mentioned a protective layer of "lead, polyethylene and boron", which you might as well put in space suits that repair crews will use. And since the weight of the suits is practically a non-issue in a microgravity environment, you can go pretty crazy with the layers.

[cake]

Up until the point where you can’t move because your suit’s a meter thick- mass doesn’t stop existing in microgravity either- you still have to move yourself. Then again, idk, maybe it’s more realistic to do that after all

[Nettle]

Up until the point where you can’t move because your suit’s a meter thick- mass doesn’t stop existing in microgravity either- you still have to move yourself. Then again, idk, maybe it’s more realistic to do that after all

Moving mass becomes much easier when it has near-zero weight and friction. In fact, most suits designed for EVA in Earth's orbit are easily in the ballpark of 100 kg+. It's by no means effortless to move around, but it is possible.

[nathan67003]

it seems like most of what antimatter produces is electromagnetic radiation and quarks of various kinds

Antimatter chiefly produces, upon annihilation, gamma rays. Said gamma rays have high enough energies to produce matter/antimatter pairs upon impact, though what kind of pairs are produced is largely contingent on the gamma ray's energy; most of the time it'll still just be electron-positron pairs. It can produce baryon-antibaryon pairs but this is likely to be an extreme minority of events - which specifically need to involve the uncontrolled release of antimatter as a weapon. Afaik, that's only a thing with one-two weapons in the game (the uh big red torpedo only uses antimatter as an initiation charge iirc) and also the Remnant pulse drive ship.

I don't actually know what free quarks would do to matter personally

Free quarks aren't really a thing. They can only exist for ridiculously minuscule amounts of time and IMMEDIATELY hadronize no matter what (it's called the strong nuclear force for a reason). The only quark that doesn't is the top quark, it's so ridiculously heavy its mass is the same as A WHOLE ATOM OF TUNGSTEN and the only reason it doesn't hadronize is that it decays too quick for even the strong nuclear force to have time to act. Its sheer mass also prevents its easy synthesis in anything short of dedicated accelerator complexes and even then, it's not enough to have a macroscopic effect on materials' radioactivity by itself (or its decay products).