Your tale gave me an idea. In theory if you use one large pull beam with several much smaller push beams ( use missile as secondary to get multiple beams) spaced around the main pull beam when the asteroid gets close enough more of the push beams will hit it and hopefully a state of equilibrium will be reached where the asteroid will stay at a set distance from your ship. Beams would be fired with logic. Idea seemed good, so I built it. Once I got it built I test activated the logic before saving the blueprint. I had built near a shop so that I could buy the items that I didn't have. Shop doesn't take kindly to no damage dealt push beams. After re spawning I collect what is left, the far right side and an overheating core, and rebuild the ship. Save the blueprint then move the ship a good distance away from the shop, then move it some more before testing the logic. Everything looks like it should work, I realize I might have to adjust the output of the push or pull beams during actual field trials so I double check that the logic is off and head back to shop to buy extra modules for the beams before heading out to find some asteroids.
Field tests were a total flop. I tried turning up the pull beam and toning down the push but the non-uniform fixed bias of the split beam prevents a stable operation. I even added some sideways firing push beams to try to keep the rock centered, all that did was cause it to behave as if my ship was a large rock tumbler.
I thought about what the results were and got the idea that it might make a descent auto-salvage set-up. So I added a logic operated twin nested salvage array around the pull beam. Seemed to work good at first but once the rock was nothing but a loose collection of blocks either the pull beam would lose its hold or it would catch a concentrated blast from the biased split beam pushers and either go flying away or pulled so strongly to the base of the salvage array that one or more blocks would clip through causing a much undesired fit of lagging. After the third such incident where I had to manually salvage the asteroid blocks from inside and outside my ship to get the lagging to stop ( this was way more fun than having the Trade Guild needlessly destroy your ship ) I decided to halt further attempts at perfecting the technique until the shotgun/split beam pattern got changed/fixed. Maybe I'll try this again in a few patches.
Field tests were a total flop. I tried turning up the pull beam and toning down the push but the non-uniform fixed bias of the split beam prevents a stable operation. I even added some sideways firing push beams to try to keep the rock centered, all that did was cause it to behave as if my ship was a large rock tumbler.
I thought about what the results were and got the idea that it might make a descent auto-salvage set-up. So I added a logic operated twin nested salvage array around the pull beam. Seemed to work good at first but once the rock was nothing but a loose collection of blocks either the pull beam would lose its hold or it would catch a concentrated blast from the biased split beam pushers and either go flying away or pulled so strongly to the base of the salvage array that one or more blocks would clip through causing a much undesired fit of lagging. After the third such incident where I had to manually salvage the asteroid blocks from inside and outside my ship to get the lagging to stop ( this was way more fun than having the Trade Guild needlessly destroy your ship ) I decided to halt further attempts at perfecting the technique until the shotgun/split beam pattern got changed/fixed. Maybe I'll try this again in a few patches.
