How do I get Laser Cooling

djbully · Post by **djbully** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 5:31 pm

I have just bought myself one of those nice beam lasers but now my lasers overheat a lot. What item do I need to buy so my lasers stay cool, I dont remember what it was. Was it the extra energy unit? or is there something else?

Thanks
Bully

Wolfwood · Post by **Wolfwood** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 6:05 pm

There's no equipment like that in Oolite. You just need to aim more carefully and shoot only when you know you are going to hit!

djbully · Post by **djbully** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 6:50 pm

Hmm. I must have been thinking of FE2 or FFE I guess. I reckon laser cooling equipment would make a worthy addition tho

CWolf · Post by **CWolf** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 6:52 pm

Has been mentioned before, maybe someone will write an oxp for it - consider this however - the npc's will be able to use them as well...

jonnycuba · Post by **jonnycuba** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 7:02 pm

From the suggestion F.A.Q

1. https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=864
2. https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=1121

djbully · Post by **djbully** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:30 am

Hmm. I was wondering, does the laser cooling improve if you buy a bigger/better ship ?

aegidian · Post by **aegidian** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:45 am

djbully wrote:
Hmm. I was wondering, does the laser cooling improve if you buy a bigger/better ship ?

No. Laser types have fixed cooling rates.

I'm planning on overhauling the weapons systems from v1.66+, allowing a greater variety. I have pages of scrawled notes!

drew · Post by **drew** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:55 am

It's a tough one with the game balance.

I have to admit, I've switched to beam lasers on most of my saved games because I get fed up with the military laser overheating. I prefer the beam lasers punch/heat ratio. It's more statisfying to use IMHO.

I like to make long sustained hits rather than small blasts, and this doesn't really suite the military laser.

To digress for a moment, I made the same choice on FE2/FFE and switched to the 1Mw or 5Mw beam lasers, simply because they were more fun than the big lasers or plasma accelerators. The bigger weapons were simply too powerful.

I'd prefer to have a rapid fire laser that didn't overheat much (sort of a half or quarter power beam laser), but with a much lower effectiveness against enemy shields. Then you could make more of a choice between heat and damage.

Also, I appreciate Oolite isn't 'real' (what, no?

) but todays industrial lasers are in the range of 10 Kilowatts continuous beam now, and their cooling requirements are quite modest. We're only talking 100 times the power (based on FE2/FFE canon) to get to a 1Mw beam laser. In a 1000 years of progress I would imagine that entry level beam lasers would be a very mature technology and cooling wouldn't be an issue. Lasers are actually pretty efficient devices when compared to say engines for example.

I can't really imagine a compelling reason why cooling would be an issue at a relatively low power level of these lasers, when compared to engines which can push you to reasonable fractions of the speed of light or hyperdrives that can flick you across 7 light years of space in a few seconds. Cooling these systems, with their prodigious energy requirements, would seem like a much greater engineering task.

Cheers,

Drew.

Davemak · Post by **Davemak** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 1:02 pm

Would like to be able to mount different types of lasers at the front (can't control the otehr views!!) - that way I'd have a military laser for all out grunt, and a beam laser for when it overheated.

Looking forward to the changes that Giles has mentioned (well, not exactly what they are to be, just that there are some!)

Wiggy · Post by **Wiggy** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 1:59 pm

An entry-level 1 MegaWatt laser in Frontier?

Like this?

http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/abl/

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 2:03 pm

Davemak, if we do get to use multiple forward-mounted weapons, they’ll almost certainly use a shared cooling system.

Personally, I’d still like to see a system where equipment takes space, so you can have a big powerful laser with a slightly better cooling system… if you’ve got a big ship and throw out some of those shield generators to make room. ;-)

CWolf · Post by **CWolf** » Mon Jul 17, 2006 2:23 pm

Hmm, if you added shield generators and more energy banks (so say, 4 on the hud instead of 2 for shields), then yeah, the generators should take up space. Existing equipment though I think should stay as it is. The other thing is, why would a weapon take up cargo space? If too big no reason not to just extend externally, these are non atmospheric craft (as far as the game mechanics are concerned). Maybe make it so that if the weapon is too big then you have to remove the fuel scoop to avoid damage (ie: Scooping a sun and burning off the gun).

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:52 am

I was thinking separate internal equipment space. Bolting stuff to the outside works to an extent, but results in nasty new torques and <handwavium>interferes with the shields</>. (Also, it makes no less sense than having the amount of internal cargo limited by mass.)

Davemak · Post by **Davemak** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:33 pm

[quote="Ahruman"]Davemak, if we do get to use multiple forward-mounted weapons, they’ll almost certainly use a shared cooling system.

Well I was thinking along the lines of the different views (front/aft/port/starboard) that do not have linked cooling systems, so why would 2 lasers at the front be any different? I envisage there being a problemw ith the laser itself, rather than a cooling system ie the crystal gets too hot and may fracture if constantly overused, something like that. Mil lasers use bigger/better crystals - get hotter quicker over beam/pulse lasers. This isn't based on any scientific pronciple as far as I know, so please no laser physics lectures guys.

What I'd like to see is a weapons system/upgrades like Privateer. Ship size affects the size of upgrades, have to balance between them. Costs too.

Wiggy · Post by **Wiggy** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:39 pm

Does anyone remember the RPG Traveller?

When designing ships, engines and weapons would take a certain amount of room from your total hull displacement. The more powerful the engine and weapons, the more space they took. Anything left over was cargo space.

I just mention it as it seems to be the direction this topic is going in....