Do you think it would be cool if a tractor beam could be used in combat?

[brucewarren]

This is not a serious idea, so I'm not going to post it in the ideas forum.

How cool would it be if you could lock your tractor beam onto an enemy
ship to stop it running away. Especially if it was a small fast ship that
you normally couldn't catch once they started to run away?

What do you guys think?

[Spychotic]

That would definitely be a good thing. That way, M6s can lock down those little blighters in M5s that are otherwise impossible to bring guns to bear on.....

[Antarus]

Fighters are already useless, and you want to give big ships the ability to hold them in flak-range? Yeah, that's the best thing that could happen to the already broken balance

You know, I have an even better suggestion: fast, swarmig, auto-targetting kamikaze-drones. Speed the same as Mk1, 1MJ shields to prevent them from being destroyed by a single shot fired in their general direction. They should evade enemy fire like normal drones, but instead of attacking the target with an IRE, the kamikaze drones explode like a Hammer Torpedo! Oh, and they should take 4 or so units of cargo space too.

Launched from any M7M the kamikaze drones will automatically look for and destroy targets or return to the mothership if there are no more hostiles in the area / their energy reserve is getting too low. Since they are drones and have drone-typical hull-strength and 1MJ shields, they will be ignored by any missile defense and will have a really good chance to evade and maybe even survive a hit with a light weapon (and bigger weapons can't hit anything that goes at 450 m/s).

With the capacity to mass produce a weapon like this, we can now safely replace our old-fashioned mixed fleets with many different ship-types to play different roles by a single M7M and see a gigantic improvement in the combat power and effective operating range! The decision which ship to buy has never been easier!

[brucewarren]

I was actually thinking of using it to allow a cobra to hold a springblossom
in boarding pod range.

It never occurred to me to hold fighters in flak range. Cool idea though

One way to stop that would be to state that anything smaller than M6
would be too small to get a target lock on.

I like your idea of Kamikaze drones. Mine always explode after a few minutes
It would be nice if they could do some damge in the process.

[Antarus]

There is no ingame-reason I know of that would prevent any of the things mentioned above from being used. In fact, if anyone in X-universe ever used logic, than that would have been done a long time ago and all ships we currently have would have become obsolete in the concept-phase. The real military doesn't want a fair fight, they want to win as fast and painless as possible. Besides, who'd want to become a fighter-pilot when fighters never survive an encounter?

This is a game, however, and it would be simply boring if combat only consisted of pushing the "I-WIN"-button.

Even if you forbit holding anything smaller than M6, that would just mean that anything except M2 and M7M is useless (that is, if you don't look closely at the M7M, because everything is already useless if you have an M7M anyway).

For me, M6 currently seem to be (surprisingly) more powerful than M7. An M6 can easily destroy a regular M7 and M2 by staying out of flak-range and it is small enough to dodge CIG and ISR, so it can do that with no serious shield-damage at all. M7 have more firepower and shields, but they seem to be too big to dodge anything (or maybe I just don't use them properly), so they will take most of the shots fired at them.

When only shields and firepower matter, the M2 has more of both and it isn't forced to face its target unlike some M7. So if an M2 could hold M6 and M7 with a tractor beam, they won't have a smallest chance. That would mean that M7 become nothing but fighter-screens (fighters would be effective against M2 in the same way M6 were, but EBC/HEPT will be a must-have) for big M2 and M6 would be obsolete because there would be absolutely nothing left for them to do.

Which in the end would ultimately force you to fly an M2 or M7M because you are toast if you enter anything else. So fights would still become more boring, no matter how you put it.

[Nividium]

This idea was actually made into a script for X3:Reunion (written by Bunny) and was called "Combat Tractor" with thread link shown here:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=152827

[Flozem]

Not really a bad idea.... Of course there is still the matter of getting close enough to that M5 to get a lock-on...

Can't see any balance issues here.

[Carlo the Curious]

Not really a bad idea.... Of course there is still the matter of getting close enough to that M5 to get a lock-on...

Given the AI's usual fighting technique of heading straight for you, that wouldn't be difficult. It's not like a webber in Eve where people are smart enough to stay out of range.

[Smacksim]

I like the idea for boarding operations. Several ships pin down a big ship with tractor beams, allowing some kind of advantage, such as beaming marines into the cargo hold of a ship that has been well scanned, or maybe allowing a targeted pulse to fire, that destroys onboard security systems such as sentry lasers, cls, etc.. Or maybe just a death star thing that allows certain stations and huge ships to effectively nullify any ship in range and gobble it up.

Tractor beam docking seems to already be available (docking computer insta-dock?), so how about exporting this as a ship upgrade: 300 cargo space and 5 million credits allows you to insta-dock any ship in docking range, hostile or not. 'Course, the hostiles might likely protest with a self destruct... I was reminded of this a minute ago when I was accidentally docked inside a TL after jumping into the Wall. Hyperion didn't like it too much....

[Nosferatu666rules]

Fighters are already useless

tell that to the Xenon Q + L escorts which wandered in my space and got destroyed by the 12 m3's without any losses

OT:

Using the tractor beam in combat would be cool, either with keeping down the target you wish to board or by holding down those pesky scouts or fighter drones, though to balance it out.. it would need a second orso to get the target to a full stop (try getting the tractorbeam a full second locked on a kha'ak scout)

[Spychotic]

I'm unconvinced by the argument that fighters are already useless.

I'm further unconvinced by the argument that it makes it one-sided; especially if the tractor beam were to use energy whilst firing so that your weapons had a reduced charge rate during TB operation.

Getting your mitts on a TB in the first place isn't the simplest of propositions anyhow.

Spike

[Gazz]

Another consideration with any such idea must be how the AI would go about using the feature.

You, at the start of the game, try a station defense or assassinate mission in your never-catch-me M4.
M6 comes out of the gate... BZZZT... Tractor lock.
You wait for the game over screen.

[LordForrester]

I think it is over all a bad Idea. Most of the things that we tractor in game are not fighting the beam. It is easy to break its hold. Just roll the ship and it will break the beam. Even of you did catch an M5 it would be free all most instantly. All it would end up doing is make the M6 class Useless.

[Antarus]

Fighters only seem to be useful against other fighters (big ships have flaks), which makes them redundant in a fleet. I was also only thinking about IS combat using mounted weapons, missile-spamming M3 should never enter TB-range and would be unaffected by the change. The latter can also be substituted by the M7M, however...

tell that to the Xenon Q + L escorts which wandered in my space and got destroyed by the 12 m3's without any losses

The Q is a somewhat crippled M7 because it only has 1 flak-turret and huge blindspots. In fact, I think it may be the only M7 that would lose to a fighter wing. The Ls are fighters themselves and if your fleet had an advantage (probably equipment and numbers), the result is unsurprising. A team of swordsman can defeat another team of swordsman, but has no chance against a single mashine gun. Now guess what would have happened if it was a Deimos or Shrike instead of a Q.


The scenario Gazz described would be the only thing that ever happens to fighters if tractor lock was possible. The fighters could be left out of the game entirely, because than their last possible purpose (catching other fighters because the stupid ai is forced to use them) would be gone and they now have absolutely 0 chance of survival (unless they only spam missiles from safe distance, but there are better ships for that).

[STL_fpagsc]

really good idea, I had such thoughts myself... kinda Star Trek

[Flozem]

really good idea, I had such thoughts myself... kinda Star Trek

Or Starwars...

[brucewarren]

Actually that's where I got the Idea. I was thinking of the scene where
Princess Leia's diplomatic shuttle is attacked and boarded by the
star destroyer

[Flozem]

Yeah... even Spaceballs has it... so why can't we? :

[Spychotic]

Note what negatives the guys have been putting down. I'm for the idea but if implemented incorrectly it'd be horribly horribly imbalanced against fighters.

Spike

[Killjaeden]

Launched from any M7M the kamikaze drones will automatically look for and destroy targets or return to the mothership if there are no more hostiles in the area / their energy reserve is getting too low. Since they are drones and have drone-typical hull-strength and 1MJ shields, they will be ignored by any missile defense and will have a really good chance to evade and maybe even survive a hit with a light weapon (and bigger weapons can't hit anything that goes at 450 m/s).

ahh yes i see the point... capitalships are unbalanced but M7M are...
Even more balanced with kamikaze drones as intelligent Hammertorpedos...