Heat Damage on firing Laser

[Kallipar]

This thread shows an almost-complete misunderstanding of how heat works in these ships. The weapons have their own thermal limits with their own cutouts for overheating. Ship's heat is separate and has to do with the systems supplying power to the weapons. Firing the laser beam doesn't cause much heat to the ship, powering the laser components does.

Note everyone has forgotten I am not against changes, however this new mechanic - lol -has been badly thought out. I wonder if anyone has done any root cause analysis - A brief overview of most of the issues I have seen since Gamma are to do with heat in Elite. Like why is the default bind silent running key right next to the undercarriage - Boom in the dock because you press the Delete key rather than Insert key is one of the first things you can expect as a noob in this game! That's stupid thinking too.

So as Brewer says its to do with supplying power to weapons, ok so where's the technology to limit that... the only one available at the moment is called stop firing the frikking gun Remember I have A class items on this ship so where's the limiter like on the gun - doesn't make sense as Brewer said the gun has a limiter, but not the power supply or the distributor. MAKES NO SENSE ....

As for design if 45% damage is what you can expect for an eagle, then for an Anaconda it is going to be bloody expensive to fire more than 1 round at a time. Btw i know that's an exaggeration but the point is that you take damage in a manner that is not acceptable.

 

[CloneWarrior85]

Apparently you have never played Mechwarrior... Heat is just a game mechanic... Nothing more.

Nothing worse than firing those plasma cannons hopping to finish off that Black Kat MK2, just ending up by overheating and shutting down, as a duo-salvo of 20 LRM rain down on you and your cockpit melts with a concentrated fire of quad MLs.

 

[Kallipar]

Except here you overheat and now BLOW UP

 

[Narius Cen]

Nothing worse than firing those plasma cannons hopping to finish off that Black Kat MK2, just ending up by overheating and shutting down, as a duo-salvo of 20 LRM rain down on you and your cockpit melts with a concentrated fire of quad MLs.

Override shutdown and hope that you lose an arm and not a leg!

 

[Shanaeri]

I never really understood the logic behind this mechanic. No engineer or company worth their salt, or who didn't want to be sued to oblivion would allow their components to damage the subsystems that connect to it. I mean we have rev limiters to stop you over-reving the engine, our CPU's throttle back on their performance if the temps get too high. What happens to the heat in space is irrelevant, as the subsystems should manage it for you, and never allow themselves to cause damage . All the power subsystems need is a 'If temp>=100 then reduce power to weapons" and we'd be done. You'd think if we could design and build super-luminal space ships that have energy shields and hulls that can withstand immense stresses we could add that simple condition statement to stuff.
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It's not even a great game mechanic IMHO I'd prefer to have the temperature failsafe's ON by default and have a toggle we can choose to switch off so that if we want to push past the red line things we can. I.e Make it a combat choice, not just another gauge to watch.
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Mind you, there are more than one examples of "We forgot how to program a computer' in the game I wish I could open a software company in 3300 and make gazillions by selling programs that managed heat properly, remembered routes and could dock properly

 

[Narius Cen]

If the default was Heat Safety ON, people would cry when they got owned by people who switched to manual heat management.
If the default was Heat Safety OFF, people would cry when they blew their ship up.
With a gauge to watch, everyone can manage heat according to their needs. And yeah, the point of heat is that it is a restriction that makes the game more fun. Remember that your enemies are subject to the same issues.

 

[DefiledDragon]

Fit autocannons.

 

[DaveB]

Except here you overheat and now BLOW UP

Oh you blow up when you overheat in mechwarrior too, just other folks do it for you while you are shut down

However, heat is changing in 1.2. First thing is the heat % has been rescaled. The amount of heat that would be displayed as 150% in 1.1 will now show as 100% - this is only a change to the display scale, not the the amount of heat - there is no change in how much heat any of your internal systems generate or how much your ship can tolerate before taking damage. Secondly, heat damages modules at >100% (on the new scale), rendering them progressively more likely to malfunction the more damage they take. You have to go all the way up to 160%+ on the new scale (that would 240% on the 1.1 heat scale) before you start melting your hull but then you're in REAL trouble.

The final change, and the one you're really going to have to pay attention to in combat is how weapon heat is handled. Your weapons still produce the same amount of heat as in 1.1. The more full your WEP capacitor is, the more of the weapons waste heat its cooling system can handle. It is the excess heat above that limit that is dumped into your ship heating it up. As the WEP capacitor is depleted, the weapon cooling degrades so that much more of the weapons generated heat lands in your ship with an almost empty WEP capacitor than does with a full one. This means if you're running particularly hot weapons like beams or rails you really DO NOT WANT to fire your WEP capacitor all the way empty with them. You WILL cook your ship. You will want to switch to cooler weapons before the capacitor is completely depleted.

It takes a little getting used to and adds a layer of complexity to combat but it isn't really a problem, you just need to unlearn a few habits and learn a few new ones.

 

[aRtFuL]

It was an annoying mechanic in mech warrior, too.

It is not an annoying mechanic if you mount double Ultra AC/20 and just go for legs

 

[Serpentstar]

Pretty damned funny when you consider how stupid game mechanics can be. It's not as if we use DC current in ships with buss bars any more.

I do wonder how you are supposed to bleed heat in space since there isn't anything to actually exchange energy with... I haven't actually looked into the physics of it. Maybe I will take a stab at it after training...

 

[Whiterose]

pmsl. Its not only your ship that is going to suffer heat damage....impressive rant.

 

[TriumphANT]

In space you only lose heat through radiation. So either you let the LASER get really hot, or you dissipate that heat through a larger mass, e.g. your ship, and allow the larger mass to radiate the heat more effectively. Our Heat Dump Sugar Lumps system allows us to transfer heat to a Sugar Lump and dump it in space, perhaps using electrothermal or phase change methods. But... so long as the LASER is bolted to the ship, the ship will get hot. Simple.

 

[DaveB]

In space you only lose heat through radiation. So either you let the LASER get really hot, or you dissipate that heat through a larger mass, e.g. your ship, and allow the larger mass to radiate the heat more effectively. Our Heat Dump Sugar Lumps system allows us to transfer heat to a Sugar Lump and dump it in space, perhaps using electrothermal or phase change methods. But... so long as the LASER is bolted to the ship, the ship will get hot. Simple.

Exactly - the ship is fitted with radiators you can see happily glowing away (unless you close them for silent running) and that's the only way your ship sheds heat. The weapons have their own heat radiators too - as you keep firing particularly a laser, if the hardpoint is placed where you can see it you'll see them extend and glow. What gets dumped into your ship is the excess the weapons own cooling system can't handle.

 

[mono]

I live north of the Watford Gap. What is this heat thing being talked about?

 

[Shanaeri]

In space you only lose heat through radiation. So either you let the LASER get really hot, or you dissipate that heat through a larger mass, e.g. your ship, and allow the larger mass to radiate the heat more effectively. Our Heat Dump Sugar Lumps system allows us to transfer heat to a Sugar Lump and dump it in space, perhaps using electrothermal or phase change methods. But... so long as the LASER is bolted to the ship, the ship will get hot. Simple.

Exactly, if (like in ED however) your designers are complete muppets and don't include thermal protection subroutines in each module to prevent heat damage. If they do include it, even up to today's standards then it doesn't matter about the heat retention in space, only how good the software is to prevent heat damage.

 

[jgm]

Exactly, if (like in ED however) your designers are complete muppets and don't include thermal protection subroutines in each module to prevent heat damage. If they do include it, even up to today's standards then it doesn't matter about the heat retention in space, only how good the software is to prevent heat damage.

Stop calling people muppets, you are embarrassing yourself.

The reason that they don't automatically shut down is because there are worse things than taking minor damage from overheating. Such as being blown up because you can't land a finishing shot on your opponent. It's there to allow you to make the choice.

 

[Tarman]

Exactly, if (like in ED however) your designers are complete muppets and don't include thermal protection subroutines in each module to prevent heat damage. If they do include it, even up to today's standards then it doesn't matter about the heat retention in space, only how good the software is to prevent heat damage.

The software being written is not there to prevent heat damage, it is there to provide a challenging game combat element. Last time I checked they were making gameplay spaceships, not actual ones.

 

[Shanaeri]

Stop calling people muppets, you are embarrassing yourself.

The reason that they don't automatically shut down is because there are worse things than taking minor damage from overheating. Such as being blown up because you can't land a finishing shot on your opponent. It's there to allow you to make the choice.

I was calling fictitious engineers in 3300 muppets. I don't suppose they'll mind I'll be long gone by then
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You are quiet right, there is worse things than having heat damage and also it's a game play mechanic. But why do we have such a blunt instrument as this one? A far better one is to adopt the Flight assist on/off model, where it's nice and safe by default but if you want that extra you turn it off and on your head be it
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FD have gone to great lengths to make their space ships hugely detailed, with graphic and sound touches(even down to having speakers in the seats to mimic the sounds) It just seems odd for them to leave out such a gaping hole in their ship design.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Fuel scooping is going to result in massive heat.

Not in 1.2 beta...

 

[Gédéon_Lecanard]

I never said it was a GOOD game mechanic, just that it was one.. Actually it was a very poor one indeed but they needed something to have a negative impact on game play, and was promptly written into canon by all the fiction. Similar to what they are doing here.

What? Heat management in MW3 and Pirate moon (the sequel just doesn't exist, to me) was very well implemented, I thought. You'd just shut down the whole system by overheating it. And damage was more of a 0/1 thing: overheating too much in one go (what's not to love with alpha strikes) would make your mech explode, creating a crater, hurting badly everything around, but no component would suffer before that point. It was a matter of managing your heat on the verge of shutting domn. This was pretty awesome, actually.

Heat management in ED is a different beast. It can be tricky, but I never damaged anything by firing heat inducing weaponery (in my ship, that is ). What was your setup, OP?