Fleet Haulers : Multiple Tractor Beam Ships

[Therewolfmb (OP)]

I thought it might be interesting if ships were able to have multiple tractor beam modules and tow one ship per tractor beam module.

The idea being we could make fuel efficient commercial fleet haulers for moving fuel inefficient warships around. A hauler would be much cheaper than using commercial carriers, but with none of the benefits of hangers and not ideal for large amounts of smaller ship.

thanks for reading

[Steve Zax]

Back in older versions of Aurora there was a famous exploit that allowed combat tractoring : ship A with just engines and a tractor (and fuel and maintenance and crew) would tractor ship B with just  beam weapons and a tractor (and powerplant and maintenance and crew) would tractor ship C with just missles and a tractor (and magazines and maintenance and crew) would tractor ship D this just long range sensors ( and maintenance and crew) and would go as fast as just Ship A towing ship B.
I am jure this has been squashed but I believe some form of tractor strings are still possible. BUT you can only tractor one ship each.

[xenoscepter]

I wouldn't mind multiple tractors allowing multiple tractor targets. So six tractor beams can move six ships.

Currently, tractor speed is determined by size of the engines of the tug versus the size of thing be tractored by it.

So if a tug had six modules, it'd move slower when towing six 10,000 ton ships versus one 30,000 ton ship. And it would the same speed if it was towing six 10,000 ton ships versus one 60,000 ton ship.

Daisy chaining shouldn't be a thing, really. Although I wouldn't mind some new thing where you can make some sort of "Warp Bubble" that adds speed to the fleet around it. Without adding speed to the ship producing the bubble of course, and capping the speed for ships with a warp bubble to prevent stacking to exploit.

[Therewolfmb (OP)]

Back in older versions of Aurora there was a famous exploit that allowed combat tractoring : ship A with just engines and a tractor (and fuel and maintenance and crew) would tractor ship B with just  beam weapons and a tractor (and powerplant and maintenance and crew) would tractor ship C with just missles and a tractor (and magazines and maintenance and crew) would tractor ship D this just long range sensors ( and maintenance and crew) and would go as fast as just Ship A towing ship B.
I am jure this has been squashed but I believe some form of tractor strings are still possible. BUT you can only tractor one ship each.

Per my recent bug report, tractor strings can still be done, but only the last hauler and its target are counted for mass, meaning 1 ship could move 10 ships of any weight at the speed of at most 2 ships worth of tonnage. Though I haven’t checked if tractored ships can fire.

[QuakeIV]

I thought it might be interesting if ships were able to have multiple tractor beam modules and tow one ship per tractor beam module.

The idea being we could make fuel efficient commercial fleet haulers for moving fuel inefficient warships around. A hauler would be much cheaper than using commercial carriers, but with none of the benefits of hangers and not ideal for large amounts of smaller ship.

thanks for reading

This is a cool idea and I like it a lot