Hi,
Let me start by contradicting the stated "problems" with the current system.
a) Forced design choices are what causes complexity. Without forced design choices you end up with "slap whatever wherever and it'll be fine" (no complexity).
If you want to encourage ships with interior spaces, changing the power system in the hope that this might maybe somehow indirectly convince someone to possibly want interiors is the wrong approach. If you want to encourage ships with interior spaces, give players a direct (not indirect) reason to want interior spaces; like bedrooms/quarters, kitchen areas, relaxation/garden areas, food production areas (mushroom farms!), etc; where the size of the space and/or the contents of the space effects productivity and/or morale of the player and NPCs in some way.
If you want to discourage doom cubes, then you're delusional. There will always be methods of designing a ship that is optimal for some reason or another; and the only thing you can possible do is replace stupid people whining about doom cubes with stupid people whining about whatever becomes the most optimal design after the changes ("doom hollowed out sphere" or whatever). It achieves nothing.
Note that (if I understood the proposed "heat influence area" properly) I expect that the new most optimal ship design will become "external armoured power reactors pods" floating far away from the main part of the ship; where the main ship (excluding the "external armoured power reactors pods") will still be a doom cube packed full of systems without any interior spaces.
b) Lack of complexity is mostly nonsense. The "XYZ" arrangement for the original power genenerator blocks has always been a challenge for small ships (where it's tricky to fit inside the ship's hull), and has encouraged multiple "most efficient generator" discussions. The new power auxiliary blocks are also relatively challenging because of their "exploding" nature - you don't want them anywhere near the outer hull (due to risk of damage/explosion) and you don't want them anywhere near critical systems (due to risk of failing auxiliary power taking out nearby systems).
For large ships (not weenie little bath-time toys, but ships in the "millions of blocks" range), the power required to get "mostly unacceptable but better than nothing" thrust is insane and it's impossible to achieve even when you fill the entire ship with nothing more than thrusters and power auxiliary blocks. The only viable option is to rely on power capacitors to give you enough stored power to be able to accelerate or deaccelerate for a short time (I aim for about 5 seconds) before you run out of power.
Now compare this to the "complexity" of thrusters, or shield capacity/regen, or any weapon system, or jump drives, or scanners, or... You will find that the current power system is the only thing that doesn't lack complexity.
c) Too many blocks involved is also mostly nonsense. There are a lot of blocks needed (especially for larger ships); but it's necessary for game balance - without this, everyone will be flying massive titans and the game will crumble due to the severe performance implications involved with "multiple fleets of many titans".
d) Focus on regen is also nonsense. For large ship thrust you need power storage (see above). For high damage/slow reload weapons (e.g. "missile:pulse:something") in ships of any size you need power storage.
Now... For the proposed "solution", I'll begin with the simple problems.
First, "internal hull" is an oxymoron - please change the name to "thermal insulation" (I don't necessarily care if the stats and appearance are identical regardless of name). Second, due to the way rendering works (adjoining faces of solid blocks are discarded very early and don't add to graphics overhead) empty internal space will cause a significant frame rate problem for a lot of people. Third, I personally think "bounding box heat zone" is silly (thermal dynamics does not work like that) and will be exploited (e.g. see "external armoured power reactors pods" above).
That leaves the bigger problem. I like the reactor mechanics, but not the coolant tanks (more on that below). I also like the idea of adding "heat" (as a concept) to the game a lot, but in addition to power and not instead of power. However...
To be perfectly blunt; if you're going to redesign so much anyway, I think you need to stop diddling with childish failures and start designing game mechanics that at least have a "slightly plausible" basis in physics.
My Proposal
Energy does not mystically appear out of nowhere - you need some form of fuel source, whether it's a storable chemical energy (e.g. liquid hydrogen and oxygen?), nuclear (uranium), light (solar panels), something else; or a mixture of multiple options. For game balance and economic reasons I'm strongly in favour of consumable fuel (with solar as a "low regen, non-consumable" option) - I'm fairly sure consumable fuel (and all the advantages) has been discussed multiple times already, so I'll try not to repeat that.
Most energy sources require something to convert it into a usable form (electricity/power). This would be an engine or reactor. Solar energy wouldn't (making it much nicer for smaller ships where you can't afford the space for an engine or reactor).
Engines or reactors generate heat. Heat does not magically disappear all by itself (e.g. coolant on its own would just keep getting hotter until it ceases to cool anything). The only place heat can go is out into space; either by external heat radiators (which create an external vulnerability , or a combination of internal radiators and some sort of exhaust (to minimise or avoid the external vulnerabilities), or possibly some sort of "heat cannon" that ejects super-heated projectiles (but requires consumable ammo to store the heat being ejected). This would require some "coolant plumbing" to connect the engines/reactors to whatever is being used to dispose of heat. Solar energy wouldn't create heat because it's on the exterior anyway (making it much nicer for smaller ships where you can't afford the space for a cooling system).
I'd also want a second type of thruster. The existing thrusters would use electricity/power and wouldn't generate heat; and the new type of thruster would use fuel (and not power) and would generate heat (and would need to be connected via. "coolant pipes" to something that can get rid of the heat).
This gives the ship designer multiple options. Do you use "solar only" and have no running costs (but add an exterior vulnerability)? Do you use a larger engine/reactor and powered thrusters with higher power regen (but running costs)? Do you use a smaller engine/reactor and fuelled thrusters with less size/weight (but with even higher running costs and "sluggish" thruster response and less power available for weapons/shields)? Do you want cheap external radiators (that add another external vulnerability) or an expensive internal cooling system or a cheap and small cooling system ("heat cannon") that increases running costs (consumable projectiles)?
All of these options are better/worse for different types of ships. For a small civilian ship you probably want solar only with powered thrusters (and no cooling system and no running costs). For a larger civilian ship you probably want a small engine (for shield and weak weapons) plus solar to reduce running costs, fueled thrusters and external radiators. For a military support ship you probably want a smaller engine, no solar, fueled thrusters and internal radiators (no external vulnerabilities, higher running costs). For a military warship or fighter you probably want a large engine (for large weapons and shield), no solar, powered thrusters (because you have large engine anyway) and internal radiators plus a "heat cannon" (in case heat builds up too much). For a cloaker, let's assume other ships can detect heat from your radiators or exhaust (at a smaller range than radar), so if the ship is small enough you want solar with powered thrusters (so there is no heat) and if the ship is too large for that (because solar doesn't give you a lot of regen) maybe you need "heat cannon" (so that the heat other ships detect is all in fast moving small projectiles and not where the ship actually is).
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@DukeofRealms
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