Will a better power plant make my laser overheat less?

Will the heat efficiency of a better power plant make my laser sustained fire better since the lasers can get rid of the heat better? I do not fully understand the heat efficiency effect on weapons.

Solution 1:

No.

There are two sorts of "overheating":

• Actual overheating, when the bar on the left of your radar goes above 100% and sparks start flying. This is the kind of overheating power plant efficiency helps with*. While you can get that sort of overheating from weapon fire, usually it is not the problem with sustained laser fire.

• Weapon "overheating", where they stop firing, and say "Thermal overload". This is not heat related at all**. It actually means your weapon capacitor has run dry. To help with that:

  • get a better power distributor,
  • consider putting more pips into weapons,
  • ditch the beam lasers in favor of bursts or pulses***, as beams have horrible energy efficiency and
  • if you are into engineering (horizons content), consider getting efficient modification on them****.

_{* It helps the steady state, but you won't feel much of an effect if you are overheating when charging FSD.}

_{** A long long time ago I've heard a rumor that weapons close to thermal overload contribute more heat to the first kind of overheating, but from personal experience I have not noticed such a thing.}

_{*** Bursts and pulses currently have about the same capacitor efficiency, with bursts having a bit more damage per second, but taking up much more power plant energy and producing more heat of the first kind.}

_{**** In my very humble opinion efficient is the best modification anyway.}