Tractor Beam Spitefulness

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Seygantte

Instruguey (13)

Posted 13 years ago.

I'm going to ramble a bit with this, so bear with me

Hooray for puns

So I decided that I didn't have enough TLs, just the lone Albatross you buy with the PHQ. Since I had top rank with all races, my remedy for this shortage was to go on a capping spree, and I am now the proud owner of at least a dozen spangley new TLs. The downside of this however, is that all of the races are now, shall we say, less than fond of me.

So currently I'm meandering around the universe picking up any missions I can find that doesn't make me follow someone, and blowing the pants off of anyone I can to gain me rep. The reason for this is because on my travels up to Guiding Star, I noticed a shiny target. It's a RRF Minotaur (that's the M7M) all alone, and best of all it's carrying around a Jump Beacon! The only issue is, my rep with the Argons is so low that if I even look at it funny I'll be pushed into the negatives and my small trade empire in Argon space will be in jeopardy. Since I'm still early in the game I don't have my own military fleet, I've been relying on the natives as a defence. Needless to say if they go hostile it's not going to be pretty...

Now when I'm cruising for missions to increase my rep, I get a return my ship mission. It's got a fat payout so naturally I accept, expecting it to be, at the most, return my lost centaur or something. Every such mission I've had so far has been at the largest an M6. But no, to my surprise it's an empty M7 Cerberus. It's almost undamaged and abandoned, just one sector away from my PHQ. I reaaaally want a Cerberus, it's a 36M ship and is almost mint, but damn it I'm trying to build rep and couldn't afford the massive hit I took when I tried to pinch it. Reload. At any point before today I would have simply jumped it out of there and be laughing but no, I had to go and piss everyone off by capping all their supply Mammoths :/

Begrudgingly, I capped it, grabbed a tractor beam from my PHQ and began towing back to the starting station. As it turns out, said station wasn't one that could dock capital ships, so logically it was simply a matter of getting the ship within a certain range. Sure enough, at about 5km or so the dialoge box pops up and I hand over control.

Now most of you will have tried to tractor an asteroid, station or ship that doesn't belong to you for whatever purpose, and will therefore know that it doesn't work. Personally I consider this a failing that only things you own can tow the things you own, as I for one would rather like to drag a pirate base in front of a gate and watch it explode from the impact of scores ships passing though. However, what I discovered and you may not know is that if you deliver an M7 or larger to a station it can't dock at by towing it there, the tractor link remains even after you transfer control!

I, being in the dickish mood I was in after being denied a fancy new ship representing about a fifth of my liquid assets, decide to be a spiteful arse. Using my tractor beam I tow the helpless sucker slap bang into the station to which I had just delivered it. How do you like them fireworks?! That's what you get for dangling such an easy prize in my face at precisely the time I can't accept it!

Side note:
Do you think I should report that bug to the ES forums?

à² _à²°à³ƒ My monocle and I disapprove â™‹

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

hmmm.. well I think if you could do that with a tractor beam then it could turn it into a very powerful weapon. Asteroid's kind-of have unlimited health, so you could drag them into M1/2's with a single M6. As for dragging non-friendly stations/ships, then equally the AI should be able to do it to you too (otherwise it would give you an unfair advantage). It might be funny at first dragging a pirate base in-front of a gate, but not fair. I really think the towing should be improved - as you can drag a Aran at 80m/s, when it can only get up-to 12m/s normally (doesnt seem right to drag such a large ship, faster than it can move itself).

With boarding, I recommend after you do one then you try and repair your rep. Leaving your rep low, then going for another makes it so much harder. Sometimes just 1 kill mission can 'repair' your rep.

anyway.. hope not to bore you:

Seygantte

Instruguey (13)

Posted 13 years ago.

Yeah, I know that it would be hard to choose between what can be towed and what can't, so I guess they went for the restrictive option for simplicity's sake. What annoyed me most was that there was no explanation as to why you can only tow you own things. I wouldn't have minded so much if there was a reason behind it other than "it would make the game unfair". Even a random hogwash sciencey mumbo jumbo would appease me more than "You just can't, ok?".

Still, if it were made possible to tow other things then I agree there would have to be limits. Perhaps to prevent you from blockading gates it could say that "interference from the wormhole event horizon destabilises the beam when under the strain of excessive loads", so some such bull, with 'excessive' referring to stations or asteroids. The result would be that if you get too close to a gate the connection drops, but still lets you tow ships.

For tractoring AI ships, perhaps firing back or accelerating to a high speed could break the connection and there be a cool down time before you can re-establish it, thereby preventing spam abuse. Building on that, it could be that by equipping multiple tractors, the beam would be harder to beak. Diminishing returns though, or it would be too OP.

And yes I agree that AI ships should be able to do it to you though. When it comes to speed though, I agree that the speed thing needs to be fixed. I would suggest that you can only tow something to greater than it's maximum speed if your ship is bigger e.g. An M1 can down an M6 at full speed, but not the other way round. I say this because on the flip side, a whopping great ship with huge engines such as Titan, shouldn't have its speed reduced simply because it's towing a tiny M5. Going back to using it in combat, it would then make sense if you in an M6 try to tow an M1, it could end up pulling you in a sort of space based tug-o-war. You've got smaller engines, and so you're the one getting dragged.

Furthering down this train of thought, what if a small group of small ships could all tow a larger one, and therefore raise the speed cap. That would probably be too hard to do, but to me it sounds like nice hypothetical. Most of this stuff would be hard to do, but it just seems to me that the tractor beam has more possible applications than those to which it has been limited...
...but perhaps I've just been spoilt by star trek.

So, how does that scenario sound?

à² _à²°à³ƒ My monocle and I disapprove â™‹

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

I agree that the tractor-beam could have more purpose then it currently does, however ego would had to spend a bit more time thinking how it could be used.

I think the tow speed depending on ship size/tow size is a good idea - that would it would make sense if a M6 could only tow a Aran at 6m/s or something, but a Titan/Boreas at 50m/s (their max).

as for multiple tows, then the laser would have to be changed. atm a single beam comes out and the tow item will slowly be dragged behind one ship. If multiple beams were sent out, then each beam would need to be 'solid' so ships dont all smash into each other. Ideally the beams should form a tow bubble.

Seygantte

Instruguey (13)

Posted 13 years ago.

Don't cross the beams? How very ghostbutser-esque ^^,
I'm not sure what you mean by a tow bubble, but for multiple ships towing a target from one place to another, I imagined it like a formation. You know when you order a follow command they form up in a V? Well I just imagined that shape with the target behind them instead. If collisions is an issue, perhaps the tow range should be increased a little bit so there's more space to move around in.

For the tow mechanic, I'd imagine that each class be given a mass value, and the basic formula for the velocity of the towing target, w, would be

w = (vx/2y)

where
x is the tower's mass
v is the tower's velocity vector
y is the target's mass
x/2y should be capped so as not to exceed 1.

The result would be that two ships of equal mass would travel at half the speed. Half the engines, half the speed. Makes sense yes? The idea is to get rid of the arbitrary 80m/s limit.

If there are multiple towers, it could be adapted to sum the t from each tower and then take a log value of it. This wouldn't work so well in Cartesian format, and I don't know which one the game uses and how hard it would be to do. If I were to build something like this from scratch though, that's what I'd try. There are certainly a few issues I can see but that's a basic foundation.

à² _à²°à³ƒ My monocle and I disapprove â™‹

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

Dont cross the beams? How very ghostbutser-esque ^^,
- Seygantte

lol, I mean at the moment the tow lasers act as ropes rather than beams. So if the most powerful ship went forward then it would drag its target behind it (like a rope). However if a group of ships were to drag a single object, then each beam would need to be solid otherwise most powerful ship would drag all the other ships (which could cause them all to smash up behind the fastest puller) or the rear pusher would simply smash into the tow object (as the tow rope wouldnt push it forward).

That's why I say they would need some sort-of tow bubble to lock the tractor-beams on a single target. Things arent so bad if all the ships are similar, however with mismatched ships, then the tow would go very wrong:

Seygantte

Instruguey (13)

Posted 13 years ago.

Oh yes, now I understand what you mean. In those scenarios the ships would certainly have to have the angles locked :/ The beams would have to be locked in relation to each other though, otherwise you wouldn't be able to turn. If, for instance, the rear ship turns around then the whole group would otherwise be swung like mace. Since it's the angles between beams that would lock, not the position to the actual ship, the behaviour in one on one towing would be unaffected (which is nice).

I'm not sure whether or not the rear ship crashing into the tow target would be an issue. I haven't tried this in AP but I think I remember in TC you could push with the tractor beam anyway. Failing that, the ship in the rear could always just decelerate if it's going faster than the target.

à² _à²°à³ƒ My monocle and I disapprove â™‹

Anticitizen1

Anticitizen1 avatar

Tropguey (5)

Posted 13 years ago.

Strictly speaking you should be able to tow an Aran with an M5 at a velocity of several hundred meters a second. What should be limited is the acceleration which is the force divided by mass. But X3 doesn't really obey laws of physics so the argument is moot.

Seygantte

Instruguey (13)

Posted 13 years ago.

You're assuming that engines in the X universe are Newtonian in nature. We don't know what kind of funky physics they've got going on in the 27th century. :3

à² _à²°à³ƒ My monocle and I disapprove â™‹

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

Strictly speaking you should be able to tow an Aran with an M5 at a velocity of several hundred meters a second.
- Anticitizen1

Well you could argue that a M1/2 with massive engines should be able to go much faster than a small ship with smaller engines. As there is more engine surface, to push the ship along.

However the engines in the x-games seem to be slower the bigger they get.

PuppyOfWar

PuppyOfWar avatar

Miltaguey (15)

Posted 13 years ago.

What is engine surface and how does it relate to anything? X games engines do not work by propelling matter out the back.

X games engines seem to work by some sort of inertialess drive where relative speed within a gravity well or proximity to a gate is important. It's as if the drive uses the local gravitational field lines or the gate field lines in the same way as a wheeled vehicle uses the ground or a road. There is some temporary inertia, but also some friction or resistance, which appears proportional to mass, so there is a limit to top speed imposed by the power of the engine relative to the field resistance due to the mass of the ship it is moving. So larger ships evidently cause more 'friction' with the local force field that the drive is using, and go slower.

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

What is engine surface and how does it relate to anything? X games engines do not work by propelling matter out the back.
- PuppyOfWar

I just thought of startrek when I said what I did: ie. the base-ship (Enterprise / Voyager etc.) has main engines which can get it up-to warp 9.7? whilst there are smaller shuttles which can only go up to like warp 5 or something?

However like you saying, it depends how the engine-technology works. On Earth we have to think of resistance either being air or water, however in space there is none. However because these ships are based in the future, then we dont know how they work exactly.. heck if we did we would be building them ourselves now

Seygantte

Instruguey (13)

Posted 13 years ago.

This is why I mentioned that they're non-Newtonian, i.e. the ships don't seem to be following the first or third laws, and only follow the second when it suits them. It is as Puppy said, though I always imagined ships as ploughing through the fabric of space, and using that as the friction supplier. Gate field lines are not possible, as ships can fly in sectors without gates.

The point is, despite the visual effects of the engines, the actual behaviour is clearly not that of a classic reaction engine.

@Roguey
As far as we know we will never build ships that function such as these. It's completely in violation of everything we know, and doesn't supply any sort of explanation as to how it works, so is where the X games fall out of SciFi and stray into the realms of what I've heard be termed Future Fantasy. I do agree with you that it makes little sense why larger ships can't go equally fast. Surely it would be 1. build a bigger ship 2. give it bigger engines.

à² _à²°à³ƒ My monocle and I disapprove â™‹

PuppyOfWar

PuppyOfWar avatar

Miltaguey (15)

Posted 13 years ago.

Your text goes here..

As far as we know we will never build ships that function such as these. Its completely in violation of everything we know, and doesnt supply any sort of explanation as to how it works, so is where the X games fall out of SciFi and stray into the realms of what Ive heard be termed Future Fantasy. I do agree with you that it makes little sense why larger ships cant go equally fast. Surely it would be 1. build a bigger ship 2. give it bigger engines.
- Seygantte

That's how it works in the real world. Aircraft carriers go nearly as fast as destroyers, because they are part of what they call a 'battle group' in fancy navy talk. The idea is they have to stay together, which is impossible if the carrier moves at the speed of a dying whale. A group can travel no faster than its slowest member.

Here I think they want us to imagine that this massively inverse relation between speed and size makes sense, but the real reason is the collision avoidance algorithm. Egosoft has yet to develop AI that allows 2 ships to plot ahead and take evasive action when it observes that their paths will cross. In addition, instead of using a highly elongated, frontally biased avoidance detection boundry, it seems to use a sphere, which invariably results in avoiding frontal collisions too late. This is because if the sphere is made large enough to avoid frontal collisions, then the ships dance like crazy trying to stay far enough away from each other. A biased collision detection perimeter is clearly needed or else smarter path prediction.

Egosoft solves this by making larger ships move much slower, so that smaller ships can get out of their way (and they can get out of each other's way). It takes more movement perpendicular to the path of a larger ship to get clear of its path. Thus, the larger ship is limited to very slow speeds to give the other ship time.

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

Egosoft solves this by making larger ships move much slower, so that smaller ships can get out of their way (and they can get out of each other's way).
- PuppyOfWar

Still doesnt work, as ive seen the AI smashed into asteroids before.. The AI does need a major over-haul.

I guess most of this could be fixed if the larger ships were the only ones to fit jump-drives.. This would make the small ships short range ships, whilst the larger ships would be long-range. ie. a bit like in battle-star where the big ship would jump in with a hanger of smaller ships. The big ships should be able to move at good speed but would lose out on manoeuvrability. Small ships could be able to dodge weapons fire, due to their manoeuvrability.

I guess it doesnt help that the big ships cant mount like 200 guns, with 100 turrets. Making them deadly forces.

All this I think makes the big ships rather unlike capital ships.

PuppyOfWar

PuppyOfWar avatar

Miltaguey (15)

Posted 13 years ago.

Yeah well, going around a 4 km diameter asteroid isn't the AI's specialty. It likes to get started around it, then suddenly think its cleared the asteroid, only to smack right into it. I guess its a good thing asteroids don't move too, that'd sure make things a mess. I imagine it would be a bit like trying to dodge Ireland, if it were cruising around the Atlantic at 40 knots.

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