[eliex]

Perhaps not to the same extent as humans (to be fair, a human without any armour is hurt by anything) although we know not by much, from Hallfight, where a Shivan can be taken down by 2300 era machine guns.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Bear in mind, however, that all Shivans have an integrated beam cannon.

[Dilmah G]

So therefore, at least their exoskeleten must be able to withstand massive amounts of heat, but may be punctured easier (as eliex pointed out, they were taken out by projectile weaponry)

[TrashMan]

There is a difference between a sudden burst of heat and slowly cooking.

Because of basiuc laws of thermodynamics and a thing called thermal equilibrium, eventually every part of a Sathanas (and any shivan in it) will heat up to the same temperature.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Fried Shivan for lunch, anyone?

[William Wolfen]

There is a difference between a sudden burst of heat and slowly cooking.

Because of basiuc laws of thermodynamics and a thing called thermal equilibrium, eventually every part of a Sathanas (and any shivan in it) will heat up to the same temperature.

By that same law, they would also have frozen to death sitting too long in any cold areas.  My guess is that every ship has  a fairly powerful A/C system...

[Androgeos Exeunt]

A/C? Why not D/C?

[William Wolfen]

A/C as in air conditioning...  i doubt anything could live in space for very long without some sort of temperature control for their environment...

[TrashMan]

By that same law, they would also have frozen to death sitting too long in any cold areas.  My guess is that every ship has  a fairly powerful A/C system...

Space has no temperature in the real sense. In space, getting rid of excess heat is the problem - not generating it.
Remember collies heat sinks melting?

[Scotty]

[wild speculation] Maybe the shields on fighters, and maybe something else on bigger things (jury rig?) can keep the superheated gas and plasma from damaging the hull.  The shields (or whatever.  maybe add a new subsystem) go down, the ship takes damage.  Would make an interesting post-Capella campaign.[/wild speculation]

EDIT:  Added [Wild Speculation] tags.

[Kolgena]

Let's not also forget that being in a hot nebula means you're hull is heated from every angle - every square milimeter of the hull is heated up. Heat sinks and venting can't help you in such an enviroment. The hull itself might no melt, but ever heard of the phrase "cooked alive"?

Of course heat sinks would work. Think about how a fridge works.

[BlueFlames]

Of course heat sinks would work. Think about how a fridge works.

A fridge works by using energy to pump heat out of the storage compartment and onto the radiator at the back.  The radiator then passively dissipates heat to the surrounding environment.  If the surrounding environment is hotter than the radiator, then it cannot dissipate the heat, and the refridgerator will eventually fail to maintain its set temperature.  In a particularly extreme case (such as placing your Indestructolux Refridgerator into a supernova remenant), the radiator would absorb significant amounts of heat from the surrounding environment, and the heated "coolant" inside would begin to transfer heat into the storage compartment.

For that reason, heat sinks would be a liability for ships that survived the blast at Capella:  They'd transfer heat into the ship, faster than other parts of the hull would normally allow.

[Goober5000]

And it would take several minutes for the supernova shockwave to reach the node.

FS2 supernova shockwave goes FTL apparently.

[TrashMan]

FS2 supernova shockwave goes FTL apparently.

Well, it took it only something like 2 minutes to reach the Vega node (where the player is running for his life).
Just how much further away do you reckon the GD node is?

[Kszyhu]

Supernova could be detected some time after the event, communication lag should be taken into account, too. Not to mention creating sense of urgency - running like hell form imminent fiery death isn't as menacing as "Pilots, the Capella star has gone supernova. You have two hours to withdraw from the system. Take your time."

[Krelus]

Alert! Alert!

ANYwho, considering all the insane ideas people are pumping out, allow me to submit one of my own: Considering the Sathanas is apparently designed to destroy systems, maybe they also have some sort of external heat-to-power system to deal with the residual nebula heat.

Another thing to keep in mind is that since FS2 lives and breathes this trope, this conversation is more or less entirely superficial.

[Kszyhu]

I'm pretty sure that system like that would break some laws of physics, but I don't think that I'm competent enough to point out why.

[Uchuujinsan]

At first, I was going to say that this was barmy.  They might avoid the shockwave by popping into subspace, but if they pop back out inside a couple of centuries, the nebula will still be hot enough to toast their ships.

Sry, I was not here for some time, so I'm writing a little late, but since when do supernovas create nebulas?
All that I learned says that a supernova will collapse nearby (parts of a) nebula, creating new stars in the process, and will blast away its outer hull in a single shockwave while it's core collapses into a neutron star or black hole.
I also recall pictures of supernovas where you can see this detonation ring.
So going back to FS2, the remainings of the nova shouldn't be a problem for any ship within a relatively short period of time.

[Rhymes]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova

Supernovae have been associated with nebulae since forever.

You learned wrong.

[Uchuujinsan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_remnant
"The supernova remnant is bounded by an expanding shock wave, and consists of ejected material expanding from the explosion, and the interstellar material it sweeps up and shocks along the way."
And to quote from the Supernova article you posted:
"The remnant of a supernova explosion consists of a compact object and a rapidly expanding shock wave of material."
A supernova remnant is mainly a shockwave, and will not leave a nebula were the center has any significant mass except the very core (black hole, neutron star or similar).
Within the system of Capella, there won't be matter with a significant density (probably not or only a little higher than it was before the supernova) within weeks. The matter ejected by the supernova will reach interstellar medium unhindered within 10-1000 years:
"An SNR passes through the following stages as it expands:
1. Free expansion of the ejecta, until they sweep up their own weight in circumstellar or interstellar medium. This can last tens to a few hundred years depending on the density of the surrounding gas."

Ok, some supernova remnants are named nebula (the "crab nebula") while others are not (Cassiopeia A)
True, didn't know that.