Calix Reneau · Designer

Similar reasons, really, just on the opposite side of the spectrum, where the power plants are dealing with EM and coolers are dealing with IR. It's sort of a balance between emissions, safety, cost, weight, all these things. You can disperse a ton of heat, but you're possibly drawing more power to do so. These things don't necessarily scale one to one.

Kirk Tome · Lead Technical Designer

And since you are cooling better, you are generating more heat by the component.

Matt Sherman · Designer

For a live in-game example of this with the cooler, I want to say it's the Aurora CL. It has more industrially tuned components, so it's going to have a higher baseline power output and a bit more cooling efficiency, but in the same regard, they do have much higher signature multipliers. So you get that benefit, but it's at the cost of, well, if you're a cargo ship, you aren't really caring as much about having a baby EM or IR signature. You're caring more about 'I want to move this cargo from point A to point B.' And so it's sort of that trade-off you make.

Kirk Tome · Lead Technical Designer

Also, there's damage to consider. When you're in battle, repairing a component that is more costly, larger and more beneficial requires more resources. If it actually gets destroyed, having spare parts for repairing that component will come at a greater cost.