Overheating: Difference between revisions

'''Overheating''' (or '''overloading''') is an important ship combat mechanic in EVE Online. Any active module can be overheated, and overheating a module wrings better performance from it, at the cost of gradually-accumulating heat damage to the module.

You can begin overheating a specific module by clicking the green light at the top of the module button. You can turn it off the same way. Alternatively you can right click the module and choose to overheat it. You can also use a keyboard shortcut: by default, shift+F1 overheats the module controlled by the F1 key, though this can be changed in the shortcuts options.

== Benefits and Uses ==

=== Key Uses ===

** It is often worth pre-heating your point/scram/web when in warp towards an engagement, especially if you are likely to be the initial tackle, as greater tackling range at the beginning of a fight can make the difference between catching or losing a target.  

* Heating '''[[Tanking|tank modules]]''' increases their effect.  

** This is simplest and most obvious for active tank modules: shield boosters and armour repairers ''both'' repair more per cycle and cycle faster when heated. Note that the faster cycle means a heaver capacitor burden.

** Ancillary shield boosters and armour repairers should almost always be used overheated, since they already offer a short-term, "burst" tank.

** Active resistance hardeners can also be overheated, however, and when heated they make your ship resist more damage. This means that overheating can also benefit some types of buffer tank and some types of passive shield tank.

* Heating '''all [[Turrets|turrets]] and [[Missiles|missile launchers]]''' increases their potential DPS, but not always in the same way.

** Short-ranged turrets (pulse lasers, blasters, autocannon) get a bonus to their raw damage-per-shot.

** Long-ranged turrets (beam lasers, railguns, artillery) get a bonus to their rate of fire. Note that an increased rate of fire also means an increased capacitor burden from beam lasers and railguns.

At its simplest, overheating is a tool for high-stakes moments in combat, and a pilot in serious danger of losing their ship in either PvP or PvE is almost never wrong to overheat relevant modules. Some of the effects noted here, though, such as the tackle module range bonuses, are slightly subtler, and experienced pilots develop a sense of when to use them.

=== All Heat Benefits ===

| ECM Jammer<br/>Burst Jammer<br/>Tracking Distruptor<br/>Guidance Distruptor<br/>Remote Sensor Dampener<br/>Target Painter|| Strength Bonus || 20%

== Heat Damage ==

The amount of heat damage on a module is visible as a red fringe that creeps around the circular module icon counterclockwise, from the 12 o'clock position. Having some heat damage does not affect modules' functions or power in any way. However, when a module has lost all of its hitpoints—when the red fringe has completely circled the module icon and reached 12 o'clock again—the module will stop working (or "burn out"). Note that if any single one of a grouped set of turrets or missile launchers burns completely out, the button for the whole group will become useless; it will be possible to continue using the other weapons, but only by ungrouping them (and if necessary regrouping them without including the burned-out module).

=== Damage Mechanics  ===

Each heated cycle of any module has a ''chance'' to deal heat damage to the heated module, or to other modules in the rack. The chance of heat damage at the end of a cycle increases with the level of rack heat; how hot a high, medium, or low rack is affects how much of a chance of heat damage there is. The increase in the chance of heat damage caused by higher rack heat is not a steady, linear increase: high levels of rack heat generate a ''much'' higher chance of heat damage than low levels of rack heat. Rack heat is displayed in the three dials directly above the circle of the capacitor indicator. The leftmost dial displays low slot heat, the middle dial displays mid slot heat, and the rightmost dial displays high slot heat.  

=== Preventing Heat Damage  ===

Since the proximity of modules to each other affects their risk of heat damage, '''spreading out and separating active modules in a rack can mitigate heat damage'''. By placing the active modules in a rack as far away from each other as possible, the heat damage from each module can be spread out rather than concentrating on particular parts of the rack. Passive modules or less-important active modules can be placed in the slots between.

Offlined modules and wholly empty module slots are especially effective at reducing heat damage.

=== Repairing Heat Damage  ===

==== Nanite Repair Paste ====

A module cannot be used while it is being repaired. No module in a given rack can be overheated while any other module in the same rack is being repaired using paste. It ''is'', however, possible to repair a module's heat damage while it is reloaded. This can be useful with modules with very long reload times, such as Rapid Light Missile Launchers and ancillary shield boosters / armour repairers.

==== Tether ====

When tethered on a friendly [[Upwell structures|Upwell structure]], heat damage to a ship's modules is slowly repaired, for free. Tethering can repair burned-out modules.

==== Docked Repairs  ====

== Overheating Bonuses ==

* {{sk|Nanite Operation|mult=yes|price=yes}} - provides a 5% reduction in Nanite Repair Paste consumption per level.

=== Bonused Ships ===

[[Combat Interceptors]] and [[Industrials#Deep_Space_Transports|Deep Space Transports]] have flat role bonuses that double the benefit of overheating certain modules:

=== Red Giant Wormholes ===

Wormhole space systems with the [[Wormhole_space#Red_Giant|Red Giant effect]] increase both the risk and the reward associated with overheating. Every Red Giant wormhole increases heat damage by a percentage, and increases the bonuses gained from overheating by twice that percentage.

| &#43;50%

== Heat Mathematics ==

=== Rack Heat ===

=== Rack Heat Dissipation ===

: <math>\displaystyle \text{Heat Dissipation per second} = (\text{Current Rack Heat %}) \cdot 1\text{%}</math>

Unlike heat generation, heat dissipation is constant across all ship sizes.  

| Heat Level || 100% || 90% || 80% || 70% || 60% || 50% || 40% || 30% || 20% || 10% || 1%  

| Time to lose next 10% || 10.5s || 11.8s || 13.4s || 15.4s || 18.2s || 22.3s || 28.8s || 40.5s || 69.3s || 230s || -

| Cumulative loss time from 100% || - || 10.5s || 22.3s || 35.7s || 51.1s || 69.3s || 91.6s || 120.4s || 160.9s || 230.2s || 460.2s

This chart also demonstrates a very useful rule-of-thumb for managing rack heat in combat: It takes '''69 seconds''' for a rack's heat to drop by half.

=== Heat Attenuation Values ===

=== Master Overheat Damage Formula ===