Overheating: Difference between revisions

In the right-click menu available on the capacitor circle itself, there is an option called "Lock Module Overheat State". When enabled, this blocks all overheating changes on all modules: modules which aren't overheating can't be heated, and modules which are already overheating can't have their heat turned off. This can be used to prevent accidental overheating, although it is a very inflexible tool.

Any overheated module increases its performance in some way.

A complete table of heat bonuses follows below, but some of the most important effects to know are:

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.

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The downside of overheating is '''heat damage'''. Heat damage is ''not'' related to normal damage: overheating does not cause damage to your shield, armour, or hull hit points. Heat damage has no link to the Thermal damage type.

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 and go offline (players often call this "burning 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).

The mathematics of heat damage is discussed in a later section for those interested. What all pilots should know about the mechanics heat damage is as follows.

Rack heat dissipates when modules in a rack are not being overheated. Heat dissipates quickly when the rack is very hot, and slowly when the rack is relatively cool. Pilots should note that when a ship is docked up, heat in its racks does ''not'' instantly disappear. It continues to dissipate at the normal rate. As a result, if a ship is docked to repair heat damage and immediately undocked, its racks may still have heat left in them even if its modules have been repaired.

[[File:eveheat2.png|350px|thumb|In these low slots, the two active modules—armor repairer on the left, ancillary armor repairer on the right—have been put at opposite ends of the rack, to distance their heating effects from each other.]]

Players sometimes call these fitting practices "heatsinking", since the passive or less-commonly-used active modules placed between high-heat modules act as heat sinks. This idiom has no relation to the Heat Sink module, a low slot DPS-enhancing module for energy weapons; the Heat Sink module and its variations are no more effective as ''actual'' heat sinks than any other module.

==== Nanite Repair Paste ====

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

Heat damage can also be repaired, instantly, when docked up. In NPC stations this comes with a cost; in player-owned structures owned by friendly players and with appropriate settings, it can be done for free. Repairs while docked will repair fully burned-out modules too.

Pilots should (again) note that docking up does not instantly clear rack heat itself. A ship can be docked and have its heat damage quickly repaired, but if it is immediately undocked its racks might still be hot. This will not cause more damage by itself, but must be borne in mind if the ship is about to overheat its modules again straight away.

=== Skills ===

* {{sk|Nanite Interfacing|mult=yes|price=yes}} - provides a 20% increase in damaged module repair amount per second.

[[Tactical Destroyers]] and [[Strategic Cruisers]] have bonuses improving their ability to overheat, allowing them to sustain overheats for longer. These bonuses are tied to the skills required to fly them:

* Deep Space Transports - Provides 100% bonus to the benefits of overheating Afterburners, Microwarpdrives, Local Repair Modules, and Resistance Modules.

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.

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The following tables specify how exactly module type and hull size affect heat generation.

The logarithmic nature of this formula dictates that it is, in theory, impossible to reach 100% rack heat, which is why the above sections used the more accessible numbers of 50% and 90%. However, in practice, once rack heat passes 99% it's near enough to 100% that it can be effectively considered 100%; and besides, if you're overheating your modules to the point that you hit 99% rack heat you're well on the road to burning out the entire rack anyway.

When no modules in a rack are being overheated, the rack will dissipate stored heat, at a rate proportional to how hot the rack is. The rate of dissipation is:

This table 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.

In most cases, the number of slots in a rack directly corresponds to that rack's <code>heatAttenuation</code> attribute

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The odds for a given module to sustain overheat damage on a single cycle can be condensed into one formula: