Just think about all those teeny tiny candles that light up your phone screen. Who lights them all?
Heat sink launcher rationale.
- Thread starter GraXXoR
- Start date
Everyone here does realize a heat sink has a limit as to how much heat it can remove, right?
Try double SCB banking in a Cutter, then double bank in an Adder and tell me which one maxes out the heatsink’s cooling rate.
As for the reasons why a smaller version isn’t available:
1. All utility mounts are the same size. Yes, even between the Cutter and Sidewinder, SLFs too.
2. Heatsink engineering is a thing.
My Courier currently has a .28 ton heatsink, while my Conda has a 4.something ton one.
Try double SCB banking in a Cutter, then double bank in an Adder and tell me which one maxes out the heatsink’s cooling rate.
As for the reasons why a smaller version isn’t available:
1. All utility mounts are the same size. Yes, even between the Cutter and Sidewinder, SLFs too.
2. Heatsink engineering is a thing.
My Courier currently has a .28 ton heatsink, while my Conda has a 4.something ton one.
I guess the real question is what might be done to acknowledge this and improve it without creating a situation where you need to fit 6 HSLs to a Cutter/Corvette and have them popping heatsinks like a one-armed bandit paying out it's jackpot.
If we accept that the amount of heat packed into a heatsink by something like a 'vette is representative of what a heatsink can absorb then presumably it should take much longer for a small ship to generate that amount of heat-energy?
That being the case, perhaps the way to do it would be that triggering a heatsink causes some kind of small "heatsink capacity bar" to appear on your HUD and then HS is ejected when it's filled?
Recharging the shields on a 'vette would fill it immediately and eject the heatsink.
Recharging the shields on a smaller ship wouldn't fill it and it'd carry on absorbing heat from the ship until it was full, and then it'd eject.
Engage silent running and trigger it on a big ship and it'd fill up and eject fairly quickly.
Do the same thing on a smaller ship (or any ship which runs cool) and it'd fill more slowly and then eject, enabling you to silent-run for longer.
Perhaps, in the interests of keeping things simple, the maximum time a HSL could remain "in use" would be 60s and then it'd eject anyway, regardless of whether it's full or not?
Might be a bit fiddly to implement but it'd add a bit of depth to smuggling and combat in smaller ships.
If we accept that the amount of heat packed into a heatsink by something like a 'vette is representative of what a heatsink can absorb then presumably it should take much longer for a small ship to generate that amount of heat-energy?
That being the case, perhaps the way to do it would be that triggering a heatsink causes some kind of small "heatsink capacity bar" to appear on your HUD and then HS is ejected when it's filled?
Recharging the shields on a 'vette would fill it immediately and eject the heatsink.
Recharging the shields on a smaller ship wouldn't fill it and it'd carry on absorbing heat from the ship until it was full, and then it'd eject.
Engage silent running and trigger it on a big ship and it'd fill up and eject fairly quickly.
Do the same thing on a smaller ship (or any ship which runs cool) and it'd fill more slowly and then eject, enabling you to silent-run for longer.
Perhaps, in the interests of keeping things simple, the maximum time a HSL could remain "in use" would be 60s and then it'd eject anyway, regardless of whether it's full or not?
Might be a bit fiddly to implement but it'd add a bit of depth to smuggling and combat in smaller ships.
And a shield booster use the same amount of power to boost a 2E shield 20% as it uses to boost a class 8 primatic 20%.
Funny those utilities.
I see the heatsink as a coolant liquid that gets injected into the reactor to cool it down rapidly and then gets drained into a canister before its ejected. Technically speaking a bigger ship wouldn't run any hotter than a smaller one due to the surface area of the radiators that can dissipate the heat better. So for me its a supper cool liquid that is a set amount all the time.
A max sized scb... lol. Yep take any argument to the extreme and you can break it.
Yep. Worthless on smaller ships.
In the recent Beta, the E grade booster added a flat 60MJ to a shield’s capacity. But they reverted that in the live game.
Personally, I just think that a heat sink should last for a minute or longer on a small ship.
Or, they could just make the number of “shots” available a function of the total heat generation of the ship so that smaller, cooler ships get more “shots.”
There needs to be •some• advantages to flying a small ship other than RP.
They know the heat generation of a ship. Give the coolant some capacity and stick with it.
Integrate the heat generation over time. When the coolant is expended eject it.
Last edited:
This is what I was getting at. The systemically driven gameplay such as eeking out max jump range is a fun way to differentiate your ship.
Making heat sinks as well implemented as FSDs would have been fun and far less of a : stick one on and be done with it.
Last edited:
Ships already have differing masses, speeds, shields, jump ranges, etc... I think the heat management could have been another interesting game had it been done right.
It's a shame that 1.3T has quite a big effect on performance of smaller ships whose hulls only weight 20 something tonnes.
If you're building a smuggler, a heat sink is useful for preventing scan locks by ships over 500m away but it will reduce your jump range somewhat.
A heatsink already does use a fixed amount for heat absorption. It’s just high enough that you only really notice in the bigger ships when using modules that generate large amounts of heat.
If it was based on a percentage amount either a Sidewinder would overheat just as much as a Cutter when using SCBs or the Cutter would never have to worry about cooking like a Sidewinder does.
They would also both be nearly bursting into flames when jumping out of a star’s exclusion zone like the T-7 or Beluga.
I agree that it would be a better system if heatsinks did work this way but yeah, it could lead to FD having to rebalance quite a few things and we have an idea how long that could take, if FD wants to change it at all.