Newcomer / Intro Unit of thermal load

[Icarus619]

Hello everyone,

so I am having a hard time telling what the Thermal Load unit of the stats of a weapon should tell me. I got a rail canon here which has a thermal load of 14,3. What does the number mean? Load per shot? If so, what is 100% Thermal load told by numbers? Is there a way to see what thermal load is manageable for my current ship and its loadout?

I would be grateful for a helping answer.

 

[Chris Simon]

To my knowledge, yes. It means that when you shoot it will raise your temperature by 14%

Though I think a good termal efficiency powerplant mitigates that by it's eff rating

 

[Klab]

It's basically telling you that it generates heat when fired. Some weapons like beam lasers make the ship overheat when fired continuously causing module damage and possibly malfunctions. Efficient engineer modifications can mitigate heat problems in your ship, otherwise just keep one eye on your temperature (stay under 100%) when firing and you will be ok. Edit: Best way is to test it out and see, you can always sell the weapon if it causes too many problems.

 

[metatheurgist]

I got a rail canon here

You have a rail canon!

 

[Icarus619]

To my knowledge, yes. It means that when you shoot it will raise your temperature by 14%

Though I think a good termal efficiency powerplant mitigates that by it's eff rating

It's basically telling you that it generates heat when fired. Some weapons like beam lasers make the ship overheat when fired continuously causing module damage and possibly malfunctions. Efficient engineer modifications can mitigate heat problems in your ship, otherwise just keep one eye on your temperature (stay under 100%) when firing and you will be ok. Edit: Best way is to test it out and see, you can always sell the weapon if it causes too many problems.

Okay, I know how the basic mechanics of heat work and how to lower it/get rid of it. But I wanted to know what the stat '14,3/S' is telling me. Does it add 14,3% of heat per shot to my ship?

You have a rail canon!

not yet, still looking for good weapons but all stations I land on just sell pretty low rated ones

 

[Winterwalker]

I wanted to know what the stat '14,3/S' is telling me. Does it add 14,3% of heat per shot to my ship?

is it a big 14.3/S or a little s .. 14.3/s ??

Might make a difference, as little s (/s) is generally used to mean per second and would be the most usual way to add things up. This might seem weird with a single shot weapon, but there are firing rates (shots/sec) and when it comes to powerplants, both providing power and dissipating heat, 'per second' would make quite a bit more sense (both to me and to the devs when designing the game, I think) than 'per shot'.

I might need to get back to my experimental sidewinder (near Farseer) to do some field tests!
Let me know if that sounds fun and I'll PM details of medium secret base location.

 

[Icarus619]

Sounds fun

You're right, could be per second or per shot. Still don't know if 14,3/S or 14,3/s means 14,3%. Per shot or second doesn't matter for now.

 

[Winterwalker]

Sounds fun

You're right, could be per second or per shot. Still don't know if 14,3/S or 14,3/s means 14,3%. Per shot or second doesn't matter for now.

Game on then .. I'll make way over to <Caeritis> this afternoon .. ready for more un-interrupted test time, after 6:30 GMT this evening. I forget the name of the main station, where will need to outfit comparable equipment, but Avogadro Station (Caeritis 3) is where I did similar tests on fusion fuel consumption (eg. did you know, you get 1 MJ of energy, per 22.2 grams of hydrogen in ED fusion powerplants). A bit of a tribute to Amedeo Avogadro (and safer for civillians) to test further away from the star imo.

Feel free to add, Winterwalker in game and to rendezvous, if you want.

 

[goemon]

Though I think a good termal efficiency powerplant mitigates that by it's eff rating

concerning the heat generated by firing weapons, an efficient powerplant will help you to cool down faster, but it will not mitigate the heat in the first place.

your ship will have a lower resting heat, though: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/286628-Research-Detailed-Heat-Mechanics "The heat efficiency stat for power plants = how many BTUs are generated per second, per MW being consumed."

@OP i suggest a try-out ... basically, I never know whether a loadout is too hot without testing it. if you manouver more and boost more, thrusters generate more heat for exampel. for exampel i have a double railgun DBS which does not overheat... and i have a double PA vulture which usually overheats a bit ... when outfitting the vulture i aimed for a non-overheating build ;-) my assumption, beside the DBS being the second coolest ship in the game, is, that the max roll on my engineered dbs thrusters leads me to boosting less often, and manouvering less ... while the thruster of my vulture - carefully rerolled to have a low increase of power usage and heat, but not being overly fast unfortunately, actually lead me too boosting more often and manouvering more...

 

[Icarus619]

concerning the heat generated by firing weapons, an efficient powerplant will help you to cool down faster, but it will not mitigate the heat in the first place.

your ship will have a lower resting heat, though: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/286628-Research-Detailed-Heat-Mechanics "The heat efficiency stat for power plants = how many BTUs are generated per second, per MW being consumed."

@OP i suggest a try-out ... basically, I never know whether a loadout is too hot without testing it. if you manouver more and boost more, thrusters generate more heat for exampel. for exampel i have a double railgun DBS which does not overheat... and i have a double PA vulture which usually overheats a bit ... when outfitting the vulture i aimed for a non-overheating build ;-) my assumption, beside the DBS being the second coolest ship in the game, is, that the max roll on my engineered dbs thrusters leads me to boosting less often, and manouvering less ... while the thruster of my vulture - carefully rerolled to have a low increase of power usage and heat, but not being overly fast unfortunately, actually lead me too boosting more often and manouvering more...

Okay I will then try out Railguns. i know that they produce a lot of heat but deal a lot of damage per shot. I have my doubt though that I will hit targets pretty well with a fixed weapon.. that's my biggest concern for now.

Any tips how to find a station with good upgrade/weapon variety?

 

[Chris Simon]

https://eddb.io/station

Or any High-tech station in a system over 20 mil population.

 

[Winterwalker]

OK .. what I've learned so far (I am at Caeritis but have to stop for the evening now) ..

Each ship type does seem to have it's own signature heat capacity but Frontier haven't specified units. However, Commander Frenotx has designed an experiment using heat sinks, silent running and a stopwatch and there's a fascinating thread here that's characterising each ship in terms of it's heat capacity using an arbitrary unit of BTU's for now. eg. a Sidewinder has an unverified capacity of 211 BTU's and this is the amount of heat you can pump in before the ship reaches 100% heat.

I suspect the unit will have to be redefined, eg. towards 1 MBTU (BTU x 1,000,0000) which would equate to 61.8MW capacity, for a Sidewinder, as that would more in keeping with other module values that are usually given in MW,. Haven't confused Commander Frenotx's thread with that idea yet, at least until I've verified the experiment with my Science-winder.

He's also working on a cooling formula to characterise each ship, which logically might see a relationship with ship surface area (whch naturally reduces in proprtion to hull mass, as the ship gets bigger) .. Interesting stuff!