My stove is steel, and even a small burn will get it pretty hot. I regularly see 700F on the little dial type thermometer I stuck to the lower top step on the stove, and I think that's the hottest Quadrafire recommends. Not much point in trying to get it any hotter than that, but I suppose you could put more wood in to keep it at that temperature longer if you needed the heat due to thermal losses in the home. This house is pretty well insulated and tight, so one burn in either the morning or the evening is enough to keep it in the 68F - 77F range for 24 hours when the temps outside are in the 40s. If it gets colder than that, I'll burn every 12 hours.
Anyway, stoves with large thermal mass, like those made with soapstone, or the ones with large masonry surrounds, have huge thermal masses that will hold lots of heat. Some even have labyrinth like passages to increase the heat transfer into the masonry. So they take a long time to heat up, and a long time to cool off. There's probably thermal modelling software out there somewhere on the net that could give insights on just the right temperature profile in the stove that would be most most efficient way to heat the stove and its surroundings, but like you, the whole thing kinda makes my head spin.
Creosote wise, the flue here is 6" triple wall stainless steel, about 17' high, and it goes straight up from the stove. I clean it after every heating season, and I've never seen any creosote or ash in the pipe, and none drops into the stove when I'm brushing. Year before last there was a small buildup of creosote at the very top end of the pipe that was so small I didn't bother to try to remove it. When I did the clean out last fall, it was gone, probably because I made a point of burning a little hotter in the stove. So I'd agree with you, that the hotter the stove gas, the cleaner the smoke, and the less likely there's creosote in it. And that would also heat up the flue pipe and prevent condensation of any creosote that might be there as well.:2cents:
