The Tractor Beam Trap

[Ben2]

As I posted about the evilness of doing things with Tractor Beams in the tournament thread, I've gone back to the rulebook and double checked it.

It doesn't mention being able to move a tractored ship, simply that it must remain stationary.

However if the tractoring ship has more damage points it can move six inches a turn, meaning that it can tractor a ship within two inches, and the next turn move six inches away, then six further inches. This essentially means you can becalm enemy ships and then simply move out of their weapons range, holding them immobile.

Going over the ship stats the 30 point heavy freighter has a tractor beam and damage of 212 meaning it gets +21 to the contested crew quality check to maintain a tractor lock. The highest bonus a military ship can get is +6. This means that all you have to do is get the initial crew quality check to lock on and then the lock can never be broken unless you cripple the ship (having done 141 points of damage) and are lucky enough to destroy the tractor beam or cause a critical that succeeds in destroying the tractor beam (results 2 and 4 on Dilithium chamber, result 6 on crew). Rules As Written mean that no matter how far you move after the initial lock is established as long as you keep your tractor beam intact then the tractored ship cannot move, even if you move completely out of weapons range.

If this isn't how tractor beams are meant to work and the tractored ship is towed by the tractoring ship (as it works with grappled ships in Noble Armada) it means that you can drag them through asteroid fields, into black holes and force enemy ships to make Tactical Withdrawals (preferably off an edge they aren't allowed to exit) and remove that ship from play and get the victory points for it. Giving up a 30 point freighter to pull a dreadnought off the table is a completely logical thing to do. And I know you can do this if that is the way the rules are intended because in the first Noble Armada tournament someone pulled a mint destroyer off the table with a damaged frigate, causing it to leave the table and Matt ruled it a legal move under RAW.

Could we get a clarification on how tractors are meant to work?

 

[billclo]

As I posted about the evilness of doing things with Tractor Beams in the tournament thread, I've gone back to the rulebook and double checked it.

It doesn't mention being able to move a tractored ship, simply that it must remain stationary.

However if the tractoring ship has more damage points it can move six inches a turn, meaning that it can tractor a ship within two inches, and the next turn move six inches away, then six further inches. This essentially means you can becalm enemy ships and then simply move out of their weapons range, holding them immobile.

Going over the ship stats the 30 point heavy freighter has a tractor beam and damage of 212 meaning it gets +21 to the contested crew quality check to maintain a tractor lock. The highest bonus a military ship can get is +6. This means that all you have to do is get the initial crew quality check to lock on and then the lock can never be broken unless you cripple the ship (having done 141 points of damage) and are lucky enough to destroy the tractor beam or cause a critical that succeeds in destroying the tractor beam (results 2 and 4 on Dilithium chamber, result 6 on crew). Rules As Written mean that no matter how far you move after the initial lock is established as long as you keep your tractor beam intact then the tractored ship cannot move, even if you move completely out of weapons range.

If this isn't how tractor beams are meant to work and the tractored ship is towed by the tractoring ship (as it works with grappled ships in Noble Armada) it means that you can drag them through asteroid fields, into black holes and force enemy ships to make Tactical Withdrawals (preferably off an edge they aren't allowed to exit) and remove that ship from play and get the victory points for it. Giving up a 30 point freighter to pull a dreadnought off the table is a completely logical thing to do. And I know you can do this if that is the way the rules are intended because in the first Noble Armada tournament someone pulled a mint destroyer off the table with a damaged frigate, causing it to leave the table and Matt ruled it a legal move under RAW.

Could we get a clarification on how tractors are meant to work?

While said tactic might be legal, if someone pulled that on me, it'd be the last time I played with them for pulling such a slimy tactic. Freighters are SOOOO broken from what I see so far.

 

[Ben2]

As it stands equal points of freighters will beat any pirate.

125 point game - Orion CR vs Heavy Freighter, Large Freighter, 3 Free traders.

Even if you lose initiative you can still move 4 ships after the pirate. The Free Traders can move 12, can go All Power to Engines and has a +1 advantage in maintaining tractor locks against the Orion. The Heavy Freighter may only be able to move 8", but gets a +19 advantage in maintaining tractor lock.

In fact reading the rules you automatically pass the initial crew quality check, meaning if you can catch the Orion (and the Free Trader moves just as fast) and hold him until the Heavy Freighter gets there the CR can never escape and only has the phaser 3's facing rearward. You can then sit there in the rear arc with 5 phaser 2s and 3 turreted phaser 3s and up to 5 suicide shuttles (which should all be launched on the same turn).

It's a horrible tactic, I personally would never do it like this (though warship against warship it is perfectly valid and we've seen it in the show), but as far as I can tell it is a totally legal tactic.

 

[billclo]

How can a ship tractor a target and then move out of tractor range yet maintain the beam?

If I may offer a solution that is a bit more logical.

The rules ought to be revised taking into account available energy to maintain a tractor beam or fight an enemy tractor beam. A large freighter has less than 1/4 the available power, and as such the Dreadnaught aught to have no problem at all breaking the freighter's tractor beam.

It's not the size of the hull on either end of the tractor beam that is a factor in maintaining or breaking it, but how much power allocated.

We could abstract this by saying that the tractored target must use a special action called "break enemy tractor beam". There should be a die roll to break the beam, modified by the difference in hull class (roughly reflects available power) thusly:

Class 1: freighters, all civilian ships, police ships.
Class 2: Frigates and Destroyers
Class 3: Light or War Cruiser
Class 4: Heavy Cruiser
Class 5: Heavy Battlecruiser or X-ship
Class 6: Dreadnaughts
Class 7: Battleships.

Add or subtract one to the die for each class difference in hull size. Optionally, allow the tractored ship a second die roll to break the tractor again, but the ship gains a power drain that turn whether or not it is successful.

In either case, allow the tractored ship to make at least a 45 degree turn each turn (reflecting thrusters or low powered impulse turning) while in the beam; this allows said ship some sort of chance to engage and destroy the ship maintaining the tractor beam.

As for movement, the ship that has the larger ship class number ought to control movement since it has more engine power available.

I'll leave it up to those more knowledgeable about the rules to work out the actual rule.

 

[Ben2]

Banning civilian ships from tractoring military vessels that aren't crippled also works and is dead simple.

Changing the damage values on civilian ships also fixes most of the problems.

 

[Iain McGhee]

How can a ship tractor a target and then move out of tractor range yet maintain the beam?

It can't. Tractors have a 2" range and a tractored ship moves with the tractoring ship ("linked together", as stated) if it's larger (otherwise neither move). It shouldn't need to be pointed out that they don't suddenly get unlimited range once they snag something.

It does need clarified whether a tractored/tractoring ship can turn (I'd say it does, like any ship that doesn't move when activated). If so, grabbing a warship with a freighter won't be very clever. The freighter has poor shields and can't use any of the damage-limiting SAs and still maintain the tractor, as well as leaving itself open to Kill Zone range phasers and overloaded heavy weapons or marine raids. Won't take long to rack up the 71 points to cripple the heavy freighter, even if you don't disable the tractor or cause one of the "no SA" criticals.

That's assuming that a convoy of freighters with weak shields and very limited weapons actually manages to get close enough to a military ship to try it and still be in any condition to fight.

 

[Ben2]

Everything you are saying makes sense, it's just not what the rules say.

On page 19 of the rulebook, it says a tractored ship cannot move, but that as long as the tractoring ship has more damage points it can move 6" per turn.

It specifically says that the tractor beam remains in place until it is released by the tractoring player or the tractor is broken. It doesn't say anything about it using Special Actions in subsequent turns or the tractoring ship needing to remain within 2 inches.

Heavy Freighters have damage 212/71 and take 141 points of damage to cripple. Large Freighters have damage 116/39 and so only take 77 points to cripple, but don't have the tractor trait (though large freighters have them in SFB and FC, so it may get errata'd).

From Rules As Written it doesn't say anything about one ship moving another, though it would make sense if it was clarified to say so. It is strongly implied in the flavour text under tractor beams on page 16, but not stated in the rules. It would still leave you able to drag dreadnoughts off the table with freighters though because of the relative damage scores.

 

[Iain McGhee]

I don't think it makes sense to interpret the intent of the tractor rules any other way, but until such times as there's official clarification regarding them I suppose there's little point in us debating it.

Yep, I was wrong about the points needed to cripple the ship. The 71pts just stuck in my head from the last time I used one (perhaps it might have been a better idea to base the crippled level on the hull boxes alone, even if the cargo boxes still contributed to the total damage).