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Tractor beams are broken
issueman1
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I want you to picture this-
a 1979 pinto with a tow strap tied to the back of it. On the other end a kenworth 18 wheeler.
Now imagine they are at a dead even pull, smoke pouring off both vehicles tires.
When I see my runabout tackle a dreadnaught and make it stop this is the image I have in my mind. In reality that runabout would have been pulled by the larger ship, if not by the engines then the pure inertia. I believe there was an episode on DS9 that this was brought about. If they used a tractor beam on the station (I believe it was when the station needed to be relocated) that the mass of the station would just drag the tow ship.
Please... save the pintos.... make tractor beams used by small ships vs larger ships slow... not stop...
And yes, I related runabouts to pintos...
a 1979 pinto with a tow strap tied to the back of it. On the other end a kenworth 18 wheeler.
Now imagine they are at a dead even pull, smoke pouring off both vehicles tires.
When I see my runabout tackle a dreadnaught and make it stop this is the image I have in my mind. In reality that runabout would have been pulled by the larger ship, if not by the engines then the pure inertia. I believe there was an episode on DS9 that this was brought about. If they used a tractor beam on the station (I believe it was when the station needed to be relocated) that the mass of the station would just drag the tow ship.
Please... save the pintos.... make tractor beams used by small ships vs larger ships slow... not stop...
And yes, I related runabouts to pintos...
Post edited by issueman1 on
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One hell of a Runabout!
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
If they did that, then should we all have repulser beams?
Since tractor beams are just attenuated linear graviton beams, the force of the tractor beam is directly related to the strength of the tractor beam, and not directly related to the size of the ship emitting it.
It is not the mass of the ship using the tractor beam that is anchoring the target, but rather the gravitational energy conferred by the graviton particles itself in the beam that cause the target to slow, stop, or be towed along.
The grappling hook however..... is still up in the air.... :P
But the strength of the beam would be dependent on the energy output of the ship. Even if it weren't (and now we're getting into silly MacGuffin territory) the larger ship could just generate a tractor of its own and cancel out the effect through superposition.
I should add that the gravity-based explanation given by Memory Alpha actually makes things worse. Gravity is generally a weak force and a poor vector for translating power into work; generating gravity strong enough to stop a Runabout, let alone a behemoth vessel like a Galaxy-class, would vaporize the ship attempting to generate it as well in the process, and both would likely collapse into a localized black hole.
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
TECHNOBABBLE!
Learn to love it!
Actually though, that is not the case. The real science behind warp theory and teleportation require such massive power sources (equivalent to several dying stars) that it makes generating a gravity-well capable stopping a ship in it's tracks is pittance in comparison. And we all know how prevalent those things are... :rolleyes:
Well that's better than a spread out nebulous black hole like happens......um....errr...nvm.
I imagine that both the runabout and a larger ship are using a standard tractor beam emitter, thus have about the same strength. And since it the standard emitter alone has enough power to generate enough graviton particles to stop a large ship, that's all that needed. There is simply no need for adding more power, even if you could.
And adding more graviton particles to existing ones wouldn't cancel out the effect. Reversing them would be, as in tractor beam repulsors - and that DOES work as a counter to tractor beams in the game.
The gravity doesn't have to be localized black hole strength either, just enough stop stop a ship from moving, which an actual black hole would be over kill for.
And yes, this is technobabble/mcguffin territory. Which is partly my point - you can't argue real world physics and logic about ship sizes when dealing with devices that were technobabble to begin with, and the OP saying that the tractor beams are broken, and making a comparison to terrestrial automobiles is a fallacy.
Not only do they outrun, outmaneuver any other ship, they also have to tractor you....
What i would do to tractors:
1) borg tractors, npc and the 4set bonus, unchanged.
2) boff skills, pet powers, change to NOT stop a target, but instead dissipate incoming energy weapon fire from the targeted ship. By lets say 5% reduction in acc and 5% reduction in dmg per rank of the tractor skill. Example from DS9 when the defiant run away from a vor'cha and used their tractor exactly like this.
3) change repulsors to deflect incoming physical projectiles, aka torpedoes, by the same amount.
4) weaponized tractor beam, that goes into a weapon slot and in combination with the boff skill can be used like tractors can be used currently.
I would rather see a cut scene where the smaller ship's Tractor Beam Emitter gets ripped from their ship causing all kinds of secondary discharges and problems to reward them for even trying it.
It doesn't matter if the emitters are standard, it's the fragility of what it's mounted to versus the force being applied.
Mass does not matter with tractor beams, they are not ordinary cables, they are beams that manipulate gravity. A ship can tow anything as long as it has a sufficiently powerful energy source, since we see Danubes towing large ships in DS9, one can assume they have enough energy.
The beams aren't attached to the emitters like that. The stopping force comes from the graviton particles themselves, there is no shearing stress placed on the emitters at all. The emitters simply sustain the beam - there is no way that another ship could result in it being 'ripped out'. The worst that would happen is the beam would sputter and die out as the graviton particles are dispersed.
I think I found the problem. You seem to think this is somehow based on reality. Well, no. No it isn't.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
Not how the universe works.
If it were somehow dependent on the gravitons in the beam itself, then the emitting ship couldn't move either and if engaged in a system with gravitational, thus graviton emitting objects like planets, then the emitting ship would be flung about everywhere.
In the shows, Tractor beams replace Grappel Cables, are those magic Skyhooks as well?
LOL I knew someone would use the standard "reality" excuse.
Gravity is a function of mass. It's not physically possible to "manipulate" gravity with energy or "beams" (were such a beam to exist, it would be manipulating the surrounding mass in some form to give the illusion that it was directly affecting gravity). To be specific here, I don't mean that our technology isn't capable, I mean that the syntax is wrong and based on a misunderstanding of gravity, akin to asking what's north of the north pole.
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
That said:
1.APO
2.PH
3.Evasives&Engine Batt
4.Evasives&Full Engine Power
5.TBR
6.PSW
7.SS
8.JS
9.Jump Console
10. Tholian Web
11. Big enough collidable between you and the player using the TB
12. Killing the player/pet using the TB,kill player who launched the pet using the TB
13. AMS
14. Tric Stun/Interrupt
15. Draining/offlining the TBing player/pet's Aux
16. Speed Console
17. Deut&Evasives
18. Vent Theta
19. Wall building console
20. KHG shield proc
The above in no particular order will aid in dealing w/TBs, and there maybe more than I listed. Other than massive pet spam I don't see this being an issue in terms of playability and perhaps the fact the Boff cooldown starts when TB is initiated instead of @ its completion.
Edit: Added a couple more optoins.
Edit: Added KHG shield proc to list of stuff that can break TBs.
Random Quote from Kerrat
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C&H Fed banter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as55NormWzg
For those who dislike small ships tractoring the big ones in combat...
The first draft of the DS9 Pilot actually did have DS9 towed by the runabouts, but this was eventually changed to using the station thrusters in combination with a sub-warp field... and in the final DS9 pilot, the runabout had no problem at all pulling a Galor out of the wormhole...
QFT
It has nothing to do with the size of the ship. Because a tractor beam in essence is just an artifical gravity well.
In one of the TOS episodes where the Enterprise gets rubberbanded and ends up in 1960's Earth upper atmosphere, the Enterprise's tractor beam crushes the dispatched USAF fighter... so it is cannon.... as is rubberbanding in STO....
Agreed.
As for the realism arguments: lulz. For years, there's been a weekly thread about how "bigger Ships should be better at X because they're bigger"; so much so that, if the devs had given in, the mere presence of a Tac Cube would make all Ships within 50km instantly explode. An Odyssey orbiting DS9? Anything smaller within the system explodes, as well!
In a fantasy-themed MMO, it's easy to counter any "X is unrealistic" arguments with the "midgets flinging fireball" retort... STO needs an equivalent.
Yes, and also note that both ships are moving rather rapidly, and that the tractor was used to dissipate the disruptor fire from the vor'cha. Not to stop it or tow it around.
So, anything but how tractors are in game.