CoroNaut
commented
9 months ago I found a neat solution with real-world counterpart in the form of "examining “rechargeable magazines” for cooling and electrical power" DSIP (Defense SBIR/STTR Innovation Portal): Filter by topic "n241-066"
Develop a compact, battery powered, uncooled, tens of kilowatt (tens of kW), one micron wavelength, high energy laser (HEL) integrated solid state laser (SSL) subsystem utilizing concepts such as a reloadable magazine “clip”, or “replaceable” rechargeable, man serviceable, cooling and battery magazines. These “replacement” magazines offer an opportunity to forgo “near infinite life” requirements and examine the potential benefits of limited life (tens to hundreds of shots) and potentially expendable, quickly replaceable munition type power and cooling sub-assemblies.
Having a reloadable cooling and battery magazine or clip would be pretty cool. The laser weapons when found could come with 2-3 heat clips that can cool off on their own time when not in the weapon. The player could reload the laser weapons with this heat clip and fire off another barrage without damaging the weapon.
For the Navy and Marine Corps, the demand on “infinite duty cycle” cooling by water chillers deteriorates causing limited operational employment.
This closely resembles what we have now, a weapon that gets damaged in the course of using "infinite duty cycle" cooling. An additional passive or active radiator would significantly increase the number of shots fired and is already used in conjunction with laser weapons attached to vehicles IRL. It should be far within the balance of the game to have these radiators.
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Mounted laser turrets can potentially have access to much larger thermal masses (in the form of piped coolant) compared to their portable counterparts. This means that it should logically be possible to cool them faster given the appropriate vehicle modifications.
Solution you would like.
"Passive radiator" and "Active radiator" vehicle parts that increase the rate of laser weapon cooling, mountable when the tile has an existing energy weapon. The passive variant would be analogous to a water cooling loop, while the active variant would also contain refrigeration to increase the thermal gradient and hence rate of heat transfer a moderate amount at the cost of a very large power consumption. Alternatively, the loop could be open and continuously consume water like a nuclear reactor. A wearable form of the passive radiator might also be possible, although its smaller size might make its heat dissipation capabilities completely insignificant (depending on how much heat energy weapons produce, and how much they can dissipate on their own).
Describe alternatives you have considered.
Leave the status quo as is. If the overheating mechanic was primarily a balance decision rather than a realism one, then adding ways to "circumvent" it might make laser weapons too powerful again.
Additional context
The active radiator could be a significantly larger version of this PC cooling setup. Probably impractical given the energy-cost-to-additional-cooling-ratio, but seems like it would at least be possible.