Wanted to use every slot while going for maximum sustainability. To that end I decided on a STD engine so if I lose the left torso first my heat cap doesn't suffer. Some laserboats lose a lot of alpha when a side torso goes, but if you manage to lose the left first on this, your total heat per alpha barely goes down, so I didn't want the cap to go down. With full cool run and most -heat nodes, it alphas 4 times in a row and only needs to wait a brief moment for the 5th alpha. If you find that you do enough right side peaking that the left arm is dead weight, just shave it down entirely and use the weight savings to run a STD275. With a bit of leg shaving, you can cram in a 19th DHS. 19 DHS let you alpha 5 times with the proper skill build. Using ER mediums is possible (just ignore the left arm in that case) but makes the whole build run a lot hotter, so once you get in a real furball it's at a disadvantage.
After the heat scale limit quirks, this 'better stock build' is probably the best big alpha. I'd probably still risk the heat limit and just run 9ML for the sake of range synergy and a bit more safety if they do focus down your right torso. ERML are super ultra hot indeed, best off going for as many DHS as possible with those and forgetting your arm(s)
19 DHS is the most you can cram in, and some of those are going to end up in your right arm anyway. If you wanted to run a light engine, you'd have to put some in the left arm as well because of the crit slots the engine would take up in the side torsos. Firing 9 medium lasers at once adds a lot of heat to the alpha, so I'd probably end up trying to only fire the 8 lasers right of center most of the time and all 9 for real emergencies, but I just didn't want to spend the mental bandwidth. This one just lets me unthinkingly fire all guns every time with the only question being whether my arms are on target. I just didn't want to do so much situational min-maxing. I even managed to get a 500+ matchscore game for the event in this build, together with one of my friend who was running 8 ML and a stripped left arm. The functional difference is very minor most of the time.
IMHO 52% cooling efficiency is very respectable for a laser vomit with the current meta, you are switching from a DPS oriented role to a ranged-poke build... And ~300 meters optimal range versus 400 meters optimal means a lot.
Cooling efficiency of the erml is mostly because they have a longer cooldown, so the HPS isn't too much higher, but the alpha heat is about 50% increased. Thus, you have less room for overheating.
