Tractor beams

[tobytobias1]

How about having tractor beams maybe to slow fleeing enemys, towing asteroids etc. Just putting it out there.

 

[lordra001]

tractor beams that can hold still/slow down severely other ships would be op in combat because that would mean that suddenly fighters that are fast, small and manuvreable would be useless seeing as most people in starmade have massive capital ships and the massive firepower would pretty much insta-hit any ship and it would overheat instantly. Small fighters will be deemed useless and therefore carriers are also useless because there would be no point in having one. however being able to pull around an asteroid would be cool and I could be entertained for hours by towing an asteroid to spawn to fling it at another ship to send it spiraling 25km away and also it would mean you don\'t have to drive a ship\'s core into the loot that pirates and plex storage blocks drop to pick it up.

SUMMARY: could be op in combat but cool idea and very usefull

 

[Savvy001]

I do add to the above post that a tracktorbeam which is a bit slower to move around \"dragging\" would keep fast small fighter ship safe from getting caught in the beam. But bigger ships would get stuck in the beam very easy as those ships are slow in turning themselves. But to hold a big ship via the tractor beam it needs to be a very powerfull beam. Something like \"mass equals needed energy per sec\". That way people \"with bigger ship then the beam can handle\" can escape by slowly pulling themselves out of the beam.

 

[Pacifish]

I think it would be a very cool feature, but hard to balance. Yes it would be cool to drag an asteroid around, but what about dragging around a backup ship or even your friend\'s broken ship? If you could do that, would it only work on ships in the same faction? Then you could still troll your faction mates. See what I am getting at? It would be very hard to work out in a workable and non-irritating way. However, I think it would be very cool if you had a carrier and launched off a ton of automated fighters. Then when you were done, used a tractor beam to pull them all back inside and have them automatically dock. Very hard to both build and limit, but still amazing.

 

[Kratch]

Being able to redock drones with such a beam would also be a nice touch.

 

[Hunter Shoptaw]

If the tractor beam had a lockon feature like the missles then it would make hitting those small fighters very difficult in a large capital ship.

I think this would be a great add because then one could tow a rock to a processing facility, tow a damaged ship to a station, help redock a ship, or, my favorite, hold a ship for boarding. However, 3 things:

1) A tractor beam should not be able to lock on to a ship with shields intact. Also, if a tractor beam has locked onto you while your shields are down, they shoul dbe prevented from regenerating.

2) There should be a bomb/torpedo style weapon for small bombers. High impact, long reload times, no ability to stack, and expensive. This way small sqauds could stand against large ships and do some damage.

3) Tractor beams should have a seperate control computer and have to be built up just like all over weapons. This would increase the size of the beam. If a ship was to big for the beam to encompass, then it would merely slow it, not stop it, until some of the engines were blown out, and wouldn\'t stop shield regen.

 

[Keynesian]

You decided to make a topic with no consideration on how the \"tractor beam\" will even work or look right? That is (no offence) complete bullshit. Before you make a topic consider doing some calculations and/or equations/algorithms. Otherwise people (schema) will have no idea how to implement this.

 

[NeonSturm]

But most peoples don\'t think that far.



Is there a possibility to add templates for posts in some forum?

It could include \"make sure you have read the rules (link)\".

 

[blurb357]

cool idea but would tak ages to program and would make really big lag

 

[NeonSturm]

Initiated by the big ship and works with gravity+dampening toward the docking center

 

[Bluetangkid]

Maybye a tractor beam would be like a radar jammer and would take alot of power, and tractor beams only work one at a time :P