I know the resource experts of the EVDC love questions like this, so here goes nothing.

I know that inertialess ships are not affected by tractor beams (as in, yanked around by them). But does a tractor beam still stop an inertialess ship from leaving a system? That's my question.

Try it and find out

You can jump away even when tractored I believe, even if you don't have an intertialess ship

My tests some months ago suggest you can't. Also add the fact one of the strings in the STR# reads something like "unable to enter hyperspace under the effects of a tractor beam".

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Try it and find out

That made me chuckle for some unknown reason...

JTH, do you mean that you can't jump out when tractored when inertialess, or just when you have inertia?

I'll test this out sunday, hopefully.

My tests were with intertia.

Oh, okay. Well, that's handy! Thanks! I thought that I might make a Covenant Gravity Mine that is a nonmoving lauched ship which fires an invisible weapon which tractors all ships in range. This acts like an interdictor field from star wars, and keeps you from leaving the system.

This is just an idea, though, and it might not make it in to the Halo tc. Depends on how things go.

How will you get it to tractor all ships in range? even if you give it 32767 turreted tractor beams, it will only target one ship.

Hmm, maybe proxradius 32767 and negative impact.

This post has been edited by LNSU : 30 October 2007 - 11:30 AM

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How will you get it to tractor all ships in range?

It's a secret!

Well, actually, I hadn't thought of that. I suppose a burst radius would work. Like I said, it's just an idea and I still need to test it out.

You make a beam weapon with a reload of 0 and a count that is greater then 1. You give it 360 degrees of inaccuracy and negative impact.

Hmmm. Sounds like a sound idea. Thx d00d!!!1111!!!1

Except that it might look strange, consume many beam at one time in system, miss consistently and all that. Yeah. Just make it a recursive submunition "detonate at end of lifespan" negative impact with a blast radius of whatever type of weapon. Works better.

It doesn't look that strange or miss consistently. It does consume quite a few beams though. Having actually tested it, I can say that it works well enough at stopping ships from entering hyperspace. It also draws in small ships just as a tractor beam should.

Well, depending on the range, unless you use a really huge number of beams, it will start missing fairly often and it won't keep its hold on the ship. The longer the range, the less effective that method is. It's much easier to use recursive subs on projectiles. The one thing I'm not sure is that negative impact on projectiles stops ships from jumping.

You can see invisisble beams, unfortunately, if the backgrounf isn't perfectly black.

One thing might work is what I did with the Ionization Generator. It fires an invisible shot in a random direction, short life span, and a suitable blast radious, causing it to detonate in a small area, ionizing everything in it. Might can change it to negative impact to get a tractor beam radius. Only uses a few shots at any given moment, as opposed to numerous beams. You can make it recursively submunition a limited number of times if needed as well.

Hmm. Similar to my ion grenade, except it's just a basic 1-time ionization bomb; much simpler, and really not helpful in this situation at all.

Looks good. Don't mind me, carry on, carry on...