In their present iteration, tractor beams, for all their potential, are rather .... underwhelming. You have a single 500 ton module that, attached to a ship, let's you drag around exactly one entity of arbitrary mass, with no room for building space!trains, or for using stuff like drop tanks or external launchers.
For such a staple of science-fiction, it's .... boring, to say the least.
Let's spice it up a bit, shall we?
The Proposal :
Rather than have a single tractor module, as in the present, it might be better to have them function more like a combination of box-launcher, magazine and hangar, with a new line of techs dictating how much stuff you can drag around per ton of of tractor, what you can drag around, and how much of it you can drag around. The existing tractor module is bifurcated into two different components : the External Attachment System, which acts a a kind of cross with a hangar, and the Tractor Module.
The existing tractor module now serves as an attachment point between two ships, or a ship and a station, and masses 5000 tons, with the cost now being 100 duranium and 300 mercassium. It serves pretty much the same function as before.
To complement this, it might be prudent to introduce another kind of ship : the external module.
What is this, you might ask?
The External Module
This is, effectively, a new type of ship, distinct from the existing classifications.
An external module is unmanned, meaning it has zero crew requirements. It does not require a bridge, a commander, or any other such components, indeed, it cannot have them, and it cannot accept crew in any form. It is rather similar to a station in many aspects : it has no mass restrictions, it can only be built by construction factories, and it has a structural shell instead of armour. There are three important differences, though :
An external module cannot be issued orders, unless and until it is hooked up to a ship. It cannot move, it cannot use its sensors, and it certainly cannot shoot at anything.
An external module has no limitation on the types of components it can have. Anything and everything from beam weapons to high power military engines are allowed, though it is mostly intended to house the various storage modules and box launchers. It cannot house an EAS, however.
An external module is subject to standard maintenance rules : if it has only commercial components, it gets flagged as commercial and requires no maintenance, but if it has military components, it is subject to military maintenance rules and consumes MSP at the standard rate. However, it counts as having only one-fifth of its tonnage. That is, a 10,000 ton external module takes up 2,000 tons of maintenance capacity at a maintenance facility.
This does pose a dilemma, however : an external module requires maintenance, but cannot maintain itself. Hence, maintenance needs to be provided by an external source, the External Attachment System.
The External Attachment System
The EAS serves as a sort of external hangar, allowing for external modules to be attached to ships, and follows some basic rules :
1. There can only be one EAS per ship, like there can only be one Jump Drive per ship.
2. A ship with an external module will register as a single contact.
3. The added tonnage of all the external modules attached to a ship will result in a proportional decrease in ship speed.
4. Engines on the external modules will add to ship speed.
5. External modules will bloat the size of a ship and increase its sensor contact size.
6. If the external module has shields, they will also protect the ship itself from damage.
7. If a ship equipped with an external module takes fire, the chances of the external module taking the damage instead of the ship itself
is [(external module structural shell width)/(ship armour width)] per weapon hit. This is re-rolled for each weapon hit.
There are three parameters to be kept in mind for an EAS : EAS size, EAS efficiency, and module count.
EAS module size is very straight-forward, it can range from 1 HS to a maximum of 5 HS, with a series of techs to increase the maximum EAS size to 80 HS. This represents the size of the EAS module itself.
EAS efficiency is similar to Jump Drive Efficiency, and starts at 2, increasing with techs to a maximum of 10.
The EAS capacity determines the total tonnage of all external modules that can be attached to a ship.
EAS capacity = EAS size * EAS efficiency.
For instance, 100 ton EAS ton EAS with efficiency 5 can support 500 tons of external module attached to it.
Module Count determines the number of external modules that can be attached to one EAS. The baseline is 1, though it can be increased through techs till 20 modules per EAS. If you have module count 5, and EAS capacity 2000 tons, you can attach five 400 ton external modules, or two 1000 ton modules, et cetera.
An EAS can be commercial or military.
A military EAS can attach both military and commercial external modules, and is a military component. The cost of a military EAS is one-fortieth of its capacity in duranium and thrice that in mercassium. The cost of a military EAS with capacity 2000 tons would be 50 duranium and 150 mercassium. The military EAS takes care of the maintenance needs of military external modules, drawing MSP from the ships stores.
A commercial EAS can only attach commercial external modules, however, it is twice as large and has ten times the capacity of an equivalent military EAS module, while having the same cost.
That's .... pretty much it.
I understand that this might be a lot of work for Steve to code in, but this allows us to finally have drop tanks, external missile racks, use-and-forget engines, etc., which I think is worth the effort.
Thoughts?