Engineers Noob question about Thermal Vent XFX

[Stealthie]

Hopefully, a simple question...

Is the usefulness of the Thermal Vent XFX proportional to the size/power/type of the laser equipped with it?

For example, will a 4A Beam laser dissipate more heat that, say, a 1F Beam turret?
Equally, would an Overcharged laser dissipate more heat than an equivalent Efficient laser?
Finally, does a Beam laser dissipate more heat than a Pulse/Burst laser?

I've always just worked on the assumption that this is how it works so I just bung the Thermal Vent XFX on the biggest laser a ship has.

I was just wondering if it might be feasible to dedicate, say, a C1 long-range beam/burst turret on my Corvette to heat dissipation, which'd allow me to swap out the 4A Beams for other weapons without losing my ability to vent heat.

 

[Bigmaec]

Yes for all imho.
Thermal vent simply replaces "produced" heat with "vented" heat.

Which is why an efficient thermal vent is less effective (reduces thermal generation and distro draw) then a lightweight one (which only reduces distro draw).

 

[Stealthie]

Yes for all imho.
Thermal vent simply replaces "produced" heat with "vented" heat.

That's a relief.

Course, my OCD (and the lack of anything more interesting to do) means that I'm probably going to buy a couple of 1F Beam lasers and mod' 'em for long-range with the Thermal Vent XFX anyway, just to see what happens.

 

[Stealthie]

Just having a quick look at Coriolis...

My G5 Efficient 4A Beams use 4.9mw of energy and generate 4.2 units of heat per second.

A G5 long-range 1F Beam turret uses 1.3mw and generates 2.4 units of heat per second.

If the usefulness of Thermal Vent is based on energy, I guess the 1F turret is going to dissipate roughly quarter of the heat my 4A Beam does.
If, OTOH (as I assume), the usefulness of Thermal Vent is based on HPS then the 1F turret is going to dissipate a little over half the heat my 4A beam does.

If it's the latter, that might actually be useful enough.
My 'vettes don't really generate a lot of heat and I just need something to stop things getting toastie when I spam the PA.

 

[sinisalo]

Interesting question and I had not thought about how the class affects dissipation.

I use beams on nearly all of my armed ships, and efficient thermal vent on all too. The cloaking effect is awesome, so if your (NPC) target is in a wing or has a fighter, they are all like 'where'd he go' when you're sitting there striking your target in plain sight.

Some use thermal vent to acutally dissipate heat, usually generated through other weapon choices, but for me it's more about the stealth, since my ships run cool to start with.

 

[Stealthie]

Some use thermal vent to acutally dissipate heat, usually generated through other weapon choices, but for me it's more about the stealth, since my ships run cool to start with.

Well, the plan, here, is to fit the turret for the specific purpose of cooling the PA.

As a rule, I don't change my ships once I'm happy with them but (rather schizophrenically) I also like them to be "modular" so it's always bugged me that the PA relies on something else (the 4A lasers) to cool it.

My 'vettes have a C1 long-range turret c/w the Emissive XFX as a "permanent fixture" for painting targets.
If it'll work, I figure I can also fit a C1 long-range beam c/w Thermal Vent also as a "permanent fixture" for dumping heat.
Then I'll be able to swap out the C2, C3 and C4 weapons, safe in the knowledge the ship still has the core-ability to paint targets and dump heat.

And then I'll probably never bother to swap any of the weapons anyway.



Looking at it, it seems like a C3 PA (in various configurations) generates around 10 HPS.
If the 1F turret can dump 2.4 HPS I guess that means it'll compensate for me firing my PA roughly every 4 seconds... which seems reasonable enough.

 

[Stealthie]

Quick update....

Got the 1F Beam Turret built, with G5 Long-Range + Thermal Vent.
Took my 'vette to a couple of Pirate Activity and CZ POIs and it did it's job pretty well.
Once I was in combat for a while I was seeing roughly 15% less heat so I could fire off 3 or 4 shots with the PA before overheating.
After that, sure enough, it only took a few seconds to cool the ship enough that I could fire the PA again safely.

So, erm, now I'm getting rid of it again.

Why?
Well, honestly, I just don't like the look of it.
I don't like having a laser-beam constantly squirting out of the front of my ship at oddball angles.
In the end, I figure I'm not ever going to remove the 4A Beams from my 'vettes so I might as well just have the Thermal Vent built into one of those.

Course, now I've created a situation where there's a "spare" C1 slot on my 'vette, I'm wondering what else I might do with it.
Perhaps a 1B seeker missile launcher with drag munitions?
Maybe a 1E frag turret?
Or, crazy as it sounds, maybe I could just put it back the way it was and stop screwing around?

 

[The_Lorenzo_12]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLcR2MTC8J4

 

[The_Lorenzo_12]

I don't like having a laser-beam constantly squirting out of the front of my ship at oddball angles

I have a huge fixed beam on my FDL to act as a laser sight for the sturdy super-pen rails while helping vent the heat