Beam lasers causing overheat

MadDreamer

MadDreamer
Hey commanders, I have 2 "2D beam lasers", and 3 multi-cannons, two of them are 2F and one is 3C. These weapons don't have any engineering on them except the 2f multi-cannons, and I also don't have many engineers yet. Now my favourite thing to do in this game is to bounty hunt, but there is no fun if every 5 seconds my Fer-de-lance starts overheating just by me using my weapons. Is there any solution to this?
Here is my Coriolis build:

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Edit: This is my new ship build:

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
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I am working on some engineering, just gotta unlock them first, so far these r the engineers i got randomly:

  • Felicity Farseer
  • Elvira Martuuk
  • The Dweller
  • Tod "The Blaster" McQuinn
  • Selene Jean
 
Last edited:

The Lawful

The Lawful
Engineering for Efficient Weapon. Or making pauses during firing the beam section.

Looking at the build, 5E thrusters are a no-go, as the entire E class stuff in general. B class is something that may be useful in PvP or AX builds, but yours is not. I would go for A-rated and then apply engineer upgrades where necessary.

Oh, and beams may be considered unusual in a FdL build in general. I would fit 4 overcharged MCs with incendiary rounds possibly, plus an efficient class 4 beam possibly, but there are people around here which are much more pro than me.

EDIT: Not the FdL, but my main Corvette which uses beams for BGS efficiency. I can fire continuously without overheating.

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An FdL build would look like this, but I didn't fly it for quite some time.

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O7,
🙃
 
Last edited:

Aleks Zuno

Aleks Zuno
MadDreamer said:
Hey commanders, I have 2 "2D beam lasers", and 3 multi-cannons, two of them are 2F and one is 3C. These weapons don't have any engineering on them except the 2f multi-cannons, and I also don't have many engineers yet. Now my favourite thing to do in this game is to bounty hunt, but there is no fun if every 5 seconds my Fer-de-lance starts overheating just by me using my weapons. Is there any solution to this?
Here is my Coriolis build:

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io coriolis.io
Click to expand...

There are a few things of which I am quite surprised at the lack of direct mention yet:
  • The most immediate upgrade for reducing heat is to use a 6A power plant. Confusingly the number is called efficiency, but actually it is a scale factor, such that the A-rated 0.4 is better than the B-rated 0.45. Beyond that, most Commanders would seek to use the Armoured modification, which gives a little extra of both power and efficiency.
  • Weapon heat has a relation to the Distributor WEP energy, and your mention of five seconds would match well a depleted WEP capacitor. To see this, look back at your Coriolis page and take a look at the Offence tab, where it says will drain WEP in 0:06. Now, use the Distributor control above to add points to WEP; it increases to 0:10—this needs to be managed while in combat, especially with Beam lasers.
  • You could use a Heat sink! Probably that should be in place of Point defence, although if your Shield breaks and rebuilds occasionally then missiles could pose a threat given the Lightweight armour and lack of Module reinforcement. In any case, activating a Heat sink will drop your Heat to zero and hold it there until expended. They also grant an immediate bit of WEP energy.
As more of a reiteration, the other big Heat-related change would be for just one of those Beam lasers to be given Thermal vent, assuming they do not miss the target more than around one-third of the time! Thermal vent increases heat if you miss, but cools the starship actively if you hit. Personally I use the Short range modification with that, because it amplifies that effect further and fits well with my Fragment cannons, but Long range works also. Mind that Efficient will reduce the cooling effect.

In general, those modules look very much like running unfortunately low on Credits while trying to build the starship. Using generally A-rated has been mentioned, most notably Power plant and Thrusters. Without Shield engineering I suggest also a better Armour; Military Grade is normal without Armour engineering. You can fit also a class 4 Multi-cannon there rather than class 3!
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Yes, beam lasers tend to do that. The Overcharge engineering on the MCs doesn't exactly help there, either. And neither does the non-existant engineering on your B rated power plant. Also - check out that number on your beams: falloff 0.6 km. That means, shooting at a target that is more than maybe 1 km from your ship is a waste of power and time. Yes, the beams have a maximum range of 3 km - but at that range, they only serve to notify your opponent of your presence. There's engineering that can change that (like long range, or focussed) if you want to go that way.
Personally, I also wouldn't put both gimballed lasers and guns on a FdL. Well, I prefer the Mamba, but besides that - only one kind needs to be gimballed if you want to have all guns converge on one target. The FdL is agile enough so you can bring at least one set of guns onto the target without gimbals. And gimballed guns will fail when the target drops chaff or heatsinks.
As for the discussion (that was indicated some place above) of lasers vs. incendiary MCs - either has its place, but again for me personally, the disadvantages of incendiary MCs mean that I wouldn't use them.

In general, getting a well balanced ship is a matter of, well, balance. You'll need to think about what you want the ship for and what you can afford in terms of credits and engineering.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Assuming as with Aleks' answer that you're on a limited budget, a few options - all of which can be used individually but should work well together too - and are either credit-neutral or require small amounts of materials only. Others have given some good options to look towards later as your material and cash reserves get bigger, but these should help mitigate the immediate problem:

1) Try pulse or burst lasers instead - a pulse laser does only slightly less DPS than a beam laser, but has half the heat generation and less power distributor draw. You'll still overheat if you overdo it, but you can keep them firing a lot longer. The cash you get back (they're also a lot cheaper than beams) will be enough to upgrade your thrusters to 5C, giving you an easier time of staying on target and hopefully fewer wasted shots.

2) The Dweller is an easy engineer to unlock if you haven't already, and has some useful blueprints.

- for your Power Distributor, Charge Enhanced up to Grade 3 is a blueprint you're likely to be able to pick up most of the materials for through either salvage during bounty hunting or rewards from easy missions. As Aleks mentioned, heat generation goes up as your weapon capacitor empties, so this will help to keep it going longer. (You could go for Weapon Focused instead, but the reduction in engine and system power makes this much more of a specialised option, and the material requirements are less nice for bounty hunting salvage)

- The Dweller also has some laser blueprints available. As others have said, Efficient will help very substantially with heat and capacitor issues, and even a basic Grade 1 efficient (cost: 1 unit of Sulphur, so you'll need to go planet-side and shoot up a few rocks) will cut the direct heat generation very substantially. Other than the Sulphur none of the materials up to Grade 3 are ones that you won't pick up from either bounty hunting or scanning ships as you go along but they are slightly more rare than the Power Distributor ones. Still, you should see a significant improvement even just at Grade 1.
(The Thermal Vent experimental is only available for beam lasers, not pulse lasers ... but it's quite a bit more expensive in terms of materials, so don't worry about it for now even if you stick with beams)

3) Don't worry about a little bit of overheating. The damage it causes takes a while to get serious, and you'll probably run out of multicannon ammunition and need to go back anyway before it's a real problem. You can swap the point defence for a heat sink launcher if you want to cover it a bit more - relatively few pirates use missiles - but that's very much an option for "I really overdid it this time and need to reset my heat" rather than "I want to be generally cooler".

4) A cheap way to temporarily improve your power plant is to swap your 6B for a 5A - the extra heat efficiency might help a bit. This isn't quite big enough to cover your power use if you also upgrade your thrusters so anything on priority 5 will shut down when you deploy hardpoints: you can safely put fuel scoop, supercruise assist, and interdictor in there as you only use those in supercruise anyway.

As an aside, consider moving your thrusters and life support to priority 1 or 2: you do not want those shutting off to make room for other modules if you're short on power in combat: a good general rule is
- thrusters and FSD on 1 (you need those to escape in an emergency) with defensive modules like chaff
- life support and sensors on 2 (you can last a while without those if you have to but it's nice to get them back quickly)
- most other modules on 3 or 4
- anything you won't use at the same time as weapons on 5
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Ian Doncaster said:
life support to priority 1 or 2
Click to expand...
Depending on circumstances, I'd leave that open for consideration once you get into the realms where you have enough money and engineering capabilities available. With an A-rated life support, you get 25 (IIRC) minutes of operation with a disabled life support until you suffocate. Essential knowledge for any Vulture pilot 😁.
That means you can set life support to prio 4 (or three) and use it as unmistakeable indicator for power plant overloading. That is, at least as long as you still have a canopy...
 

MadDreamer

MadDreamer
Ex
Fnord Velkor said:
My beams all have Efficient Weapon AND Flow Control - some people like those other experimental effects, the thermal ones - I just like to be able to keep holding the fire button down*. ;)

* I am not a combat-centred player.
Click to expand...
Exactly, it gets annoying that the opponent is at 5% health, and my ships temperature reaches 105% due to constant firing
 

MadDreamer

MadDreamer
Ashnak said:
Yes, beam lasers tend to do that. The Overcharge engineering on the MCs doesn't exactly help there, either. And neither does the non-existant engineering on your B rated power plant. Also - check out that number on your beams: falloff 0.6 km. That means, shooting at a target that is more than maybe 1 km from your ship is a waste of power and time. Yes, the beams have a maximum range of 3 km - but at that range, they only serve to notify your opponent of your presence. There's engineering that can change that (like long range, or focussed) if you want to go that way.
Personally, I also wouldn't put both gimballed lasers and guns on a FdL. Well, I prefer the Mamba, but besides that - only one kind needs to be gimballed if you want to have all guns converge on one target. The FdL is agile enough so you can bring at least one set of guns onto the target without gimbals. And gimballed guns will fail when the target drops chaff or heatsinks.
As for the discussion (that was indicated some place above) of lasers vs. incendiary MCs - either has its place, but again for me personally, the disadvantages of incendiary MCs mean that I wouldn't use them.

In general, getting a well balanced ship is a matter of, well, balance. You'll need to think about what you want the ship for and what you can afford in terms of credits and engineering.
Click to expand...
It's just been a day or two since i bought the FDL, i had to choose between the Mamba, the Fdl, or the Python, to trade for my vulture, and i wanted to make this trade because the vulture only has 2 hardpoints, and i wanted an upgrade, so i chose the fdl cuz it was cheaper than the other and that that moment i had about 53mill. Later i died and had to pay about 200k+ to redeem my ship, and after that i was left with just 1,000 credits, now i have a total of 14.7mill by just killing a few bounties and some wanted ships, and as for how i want to customise my ship, i want a ship just for combat, as i already have a diamond back explorer for exploration (mainly using the Road to riches), and a type-7 for mining(which i still havent figured)
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
Also see if you are maybe too far away. Lasers have extreme distance falloff in output. Which you can engineer away but how would you do that when starting out. Combat distance is an important factor in vanilla.
 

MadDreamer

MadDreamer
The Lawful said:
Engineering for Efficient Weapon. Or making pauses during firing the beam section.

Looking at the build, 5E thrusters are a no-go, as the entire E class stuff in general. B class is something that may be useful in PvP or AX builds, but yours is not. I would go for A-rated and then apply engineer upgrades where necessary.

Oh, and beams may be considered unusual in a FdL build in general. I would fit 4 overcharged MCs with incendiary rounds possibly, plus an efficient class 4 beam possibly, but there are people around here which are much more pro than me.

EDIT: Not the FdL, but my main Corvette which uses beams for BGS efficiency. I can fire continuously without overheating.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
s.orbis.zone s.orbis.zone

An FdL build would look like this, but I didn't fly it for quite some time.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
s.orbis.zone s.orbis.zone

O7,
🙃
Click to expand...
Thanks for the FDL build, I'll A grade my modules as soon as I get some money😂. And speaking about PvP combat, i have encountered any real player in my game, ever, just npc's.
 

Marvin the Martian

Marvin the Martian
Efficient Weapon engineering with Thermal Vent modification.

I hold my laser fire button down non stop with 4 2D fully engineered beam lasers on my FDL / Krait Mk II and my temperature gauge never moves. In fact, I freeze over every 10 seconds or so.

I presently have two of them on my Krait Mk II because I haven't flown it in a while. Here they are.
 

MadDreamer

MadDreamer
Navigare Necesse Est said:
Also see if you are maybe too far away. Lasers have extreme distance falloff in output. Which you can engineer away but how would you do that when starting out. Combat distance is an important factor in vanilla.
Click to expand...
It's really difficult to maintain distance with the opponents, as soon I get them in my line of sight, they just zoom past me, then I have to manoeuvre all the way around, and when I see them, they zoom past me again. It's like a circus show😂
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
You can reduce the turning spiral by slowing down, boost, manoever thrusters and FAoff.
You can also try reversing. Space has no cover and you can keep opppnent in sights by just reversing. It's super unrealistic but zhat's how ED works.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
MadDreamer said:
It's just been a day or two since i bought the FDL, i had to choose between the Mamba, the Fdl, or the Python, to trade for my vulture, and i wanted to make this trade because the vulture only has 2 hardpoints, and i wanted an upgrade, so i chose the fdl cuz it was cheaper than the other and that that moment i had about 53mill. Later i died and had to pay about 200k+ to redeem my ship, and after that i was left with just 1,000 credits, now i have a total of 14.7mill by just killing a few bounties and some wanted ships, and as for how i want to customise my ship, i want a ship just for combat, as i already have a diamond back explorer for exploration (mainly using the Road to riches), and a type-7 for mining(which i still havent figured)
Click to expand...
I think you already got a few suggestions - here are mine. All of them heavily engineered, so that's the road I'd suggest to go. It's not mandatory for PvE, but so much more satisfying.

The Vulture has been relegated to mug delivery - small amounts of cargo to small landing pads, with a couple of nasty surprises for anyone trying to take anything for me. Yes, the Vulture only has two hardpoints, so make them count. The Pacifiers are not suitable for prolonged combat - they basically breathe ammo - but the first two or three pirates coming up won't go home again. Play around with the Shield Booster combos unless they fit in the power budget:

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My general purpose mission runner is a Krait Mk.II. Again Pacifiers, plus a pair of gimballed beams to take care of anything from Vipers downwards. Up to basically any mission, but mainly used for dangerous cargo. I love those high ranked annies - but again the ammo supply is limited. Having to finish off the last pirate with the beams is tedious. The empty compartments are for mission loadouts, but in most cases, I run a cargo rack in the size 6 slot, switch one of the Guardian shield boosters into a size 4 slot and run a fighter bay in on of the 5s:

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Finally, the cherry on top - in this case, a Mamba. Again, the two gimballed beams to take care of anything too agile. The Cytos to rapidly strip shields, the MC for hull damage. Occasionally, I swap the MC for a Plasma Accelerator (just within the power limits), focussed or long range modded to get at least a little bit of shot speed. Enemy Cutters pop satisfactory with a couple of plasma rounds to the power plant. If I take care of my shields, this is the build with the most staying power in RES or CZs - MC or Plasma ammo last for a long time and basically is the only limit. Yes, you can run the PA from your main fuel tank, but on the Mamba I do not consider this a good idea:

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A word regarding the Pacifiers and the Cytoscramblers: those are powerplay weapons (you also might have run across Prismatic Shields). Pledge to the corresponding power for at least three weeks, gain enough merits and then you can buy these toys from the outfitters of your chosen power. Pacifiers are a specific breed of frag cannon - less spread than regular frags. Cytoscramblers are rapid fire burst lasers with increased shield stripping capabilities but no hull damage, also dishing out arbitrary special effects. Well, "no hull damage" only as long as you don't engineer them for Phasing Sequence - yes, unlike the pre-engineered gadgest from the Thargoid war effort, the Powerplay toys are fully engineerable.
 

Aleks Zuno

Aleks Zuno
MadDreamer said:
It's really difficult to maintain distance with the opponents, as soon I get them in my line of sight, they just zoom past me, then I have to manoeuvre all the way around, and when I see them, they zoom past me again. It's like a circus show😂
Click to expand...

Gear-boosting is what you need there, or more likely scoop-boosting if you are flying the Fer-de-Lance to avoid blocking the class 4 hardpoint. Try this:
  • Activate a Boost, deploy the Cargo scoop during the boost effect, then retract it afterwards. Note how this accelerates quickly but limits the speed.
  • Try it again with some rotation, then with some lateral movement, then both.
  • Try it with rotation, and also disable Flight assist for a second or two as well. You can toggle Flight assist at the same time as the Cargo scoop.
That said, mind also that pirates have a tendency to respond to the way you fly! If you boost much, they will do likewise, and actually it can help to slow down a bit until you are actually trading weapon strikes rather than trading evasive actions.


Ashnak said:
Cytoscramblers are rapid fire burst lasers with increased shield stripping capabilities but no hull damage, also dishing out arbitrary special effects. Well, "no hull damage" only as long as you don't engineer them for Phasing Sequence
Click to expand...

Cytoscramblers deal hull damage; the specific reason it is low is that they have 1 Piercing. With Corrosive shell elsewhere, this becomes 21 Piercing and actually poses a threat. Video example!

That is not a serious way to hunt of course, although I love having one Cytoscrambler on the Fragment cannon Mamba; just like those, with Short Range and Inertial Impact!
 
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