Help with Heat Sinks

[Kendall]

Hi everyone. Just bought my first ship (DBE), and installed 2 heat sink launchers.
My questions are . . .

1. What is a "fire group"? and how do I assign my heat sink launchers to the fire group or groups?

and,

2. How do i use my heat sink launchers?

and must importantly,

3. How do i know "when" to use my heat sink launchers?

Thanks!

[funkynutz]

1: is how you choose which fire button activates which weapon. Don't assign your heatsinks to a fire group.

2: Go into your control options, find the cooling section, you'll see heatsink launchers in there. Assign a key to it.

3: You'll know... Don't worry about that.

[Itsrobx99]

As Funkynutz said, you don't need to assign them to a fire group. The default key is normally 'V'. Use it when you get the 'ship overheating' warning. Or, if you are nowhere you can get repaired, exploring for instance, and you drop out of SC by a star, Line up the ship straight up (as thats where the escape vector will be) and fire off a heat sink before you jump into SC or Hyperspace or you will overheat.

[Kendall]

Originally posted by Itsrobx99:

As Funkynutz said, you don't need to assign them to a fire group. The default key is normally 'V'. Use it when you get the 'ship overheating' warning. Or, if you are nowhere you can get repaired, exploring for instance, and you drop out of SC by a star, Line up the ship straight up (as thats where the escape vector will be) and fire off a heat sink before you jump into SC or Hyperspace or you will overheat.

I think the mostly likely scenario would be overheating while too close to a star (like when refueling?).

[ReeNoiP]

Originally posted by Kendall:

Originally posted by Itsrobx99:

As Funkynutz said, you don't need to assign them to a fire group. The default key is normally 'V'. Use it when you get the 'ship overheating' warning. Or, if you are nowhere you can get repaired, exploring for instance, and you drop out of SC by a star, Line up the ship straight up (as thats where the escape vector will be) and fire off a heat sink before you jump into SC or Hyperspace or you will overheat.

I think the mostly likely scenario would be overheating while too close to a star (like when refueling?).

Or if you get too close to the exclusion zone of a white dwarf, fire weapons that generate heat or are trying to sneak into a station.