Thought on tractor beam

[Tempest]

whaaaaat.

[WhyteDragon]

I think more than enough people have commented on balance, and brought up all the key points, so I'll just ignore that.

To be honest, I do agree that science is horridly under used. If I had the option between having a man on science console and a small ship out, chomper to body block, destroyer to strike, I would probably nearly always choose the small ship. Science Console currently feels like a Kerm Dump for Yamato and Core Purging, and maybe Iron Curtain though I think many would opt to shield/small ship tank as much as possible over hull tank. Energy Transfer in the midst of a BC fight is going to be mostly nulled by the fact that SSes are launching and docking frequently due to SS tanking, the only exception of which I can likely think of being mine layer.

In short, ignoring early game, science is a nice way to use extra kerm very quickly. And ultimately tractor beam is a very high cost (100r 100y 20k) upgrade with little benefit and high maintenance. Tractor beam already feels heavily underused to me and moving it, as previously stated by others, probably only serves to make it as unused as the console itself.

[Tempest]

I think more than enough people have commented on balance, and brought up all the key points, so I'll just ignore that.

To be honest, I do agree that science is horridly under used. If I had the option between having a man on science console and a small ship out, chomper to body block, destroyer to strike, I would probably nearly always choose the small ship. Science Console currently feels like a Kerm Dump for Yamato and Core Purging, and maybe Iron Curtain though I think many would opt to shield/small ship tank as much as possible over hull tank. Energy Transfer in the midst of a BC fight is going to be mostly nulled by the fact that SSes are launching and docking frequently due to SS tanking, the only exception of which I can likely think of being mine layer.

In short, ignoring early game, science is a nice way to use extra kerm very quickly. And ultimately tractor beam is a very high cost (100r 100y 20k) upgrade with little benefit and high maintenance. Tractor beam already feels heavily underused to me and moving it, as previously stated by others, probably only serves to make it as unused as the console itself.

Upon further study i agree with this post. Something needs to be done to make Tractor beam even more desirable, the mineral and energy cost is to steep for the reward.

[Crowbar]

Maybe the tractor beam can be used for mining as well. Use the tractor beam to pull in astroids to be refined or placed into the hanger ready to refine. If you decrease the cost to be 50y 50b 50r 10g, I believe it would be used more. Just make the pull in speed for astroids slow enough to make chompper more desirable. The idea I had was to use it for mining assistance as well as grabbing SS.

[Red-Rocket]

to be techical, the tractor beam isnt a weapon, its an energy beam. (50Y 50B 10G ) This change can make tractor beam more useful because it lowers the price because people would rather spend on other things, and only purchase it if its out of their way and they can get it or a specific stradegy, which isnt used by alot. Also theres many times a shortage of red and an abundance of blue (this has ben slowly changing but further things can be changed) and the fact that it is an energy beam

[WhyteDragon]

Maybe the tractor beam can be used for mining as well. Use the tractor beam to pull in astroids to be refined or placed into the hanger ready to refine. If you decrease the cost to be 50y 50b 50r 10g, I believe it would be used more. Just make the pull in speed for astroids slow enough to make chompper more desirable. The idea I had was to use it for mining assistance as well as grabbing SS.

I actually really like the 'tractor mining' concept. In late game, I see a lot of 'on the fly mining' by chomping. Depending on the cooldown, this could become a very nice way to simply do 'mine and run' tactics using the science station (if moved) which would give it a lot more value. Moreover, the science station pulling in 'space rocks' seems absurdly appropriate somehow. It puts in a new dimension to Kerm Rushing too -- obviously not going to get all 4 asteroids with the BC, but it creates the opportunity for a situation where the Kerm spread between both teams is far more equal. It becomes far less 'absolute' when one team manages to secure Kerm a bit more firmly.

[Jannik2099]

i already created a topic about the tractor beam for mining/hull dmg(not when shields up)/energy drain

[Zeus]

I think tractor beam should stay on Nav. Unless you're going for the BC you only have one or two people on the BC. Tractor beam can be very useful for the guy on Nav. He can nab a ship and broadside it if he's the only person on the BC. This allows tractor beam to be more versatile and useful.

[Crowbar]

Jannik: I have no intention of stealing ideas. Sorry I missed your topic.

Zeus: To me from another post, it sounds like you want everything on navigation. If you have tractor beam you will not need broadsides to kill it, just pull it and crash it into your BC.

There are 6 teammates and during the game everyone should be able to do something to help win the game. We see these team strategies mostly with small ships (aka damage tanking and destroyer play) durning a major engagement. This is great and fun, but what if there isn't any small ships available. I guess players could go mine more, but that does not feel very rewarding for many players. They did not directly do something in the winning engagement. More options available on the BC for people to play with will help create new strategies or modify existing ones. This would also create positive feedback for many players knowing that they where directly involved in the destruction of their enemies. I think putting all the abilities in one spot becomes "We lost the game because our nav didn't do this and that and that...." instead of "We lost the game because we didn't work together well enough." Navigation is a crucial position and one of the better players should be there, but they should not have the ability to do everything. Broadsides fits the navigation position, but really when you think about it, broadsides should be at a different station. Due to simplicity it works great there.

Zeus, a thought came to me about your concerns when you are in a situation where you have to man the BC alone. I am not sure if this is possible. It will probably over complicate the game but would be a cool feature. Could there be another station, lets say a Captain terminal, where certain abilities could be turned off at one station and turned on at another. For example: have engine power control be deactivated at power and activated at navigation so the player at navigation could control the engine power to a limited level (like 125 GW)? I believe someone has mentioned a Captain terminal before but to prevent people from buying unnecessary things. But what do people think about abilities/controls switching between terminals?

I understand that the tractor beam isn't great or cost effective, I was just thinking of ways to make it worth while. One of my goals with this topic (I should start another post to keep the topic alive or bring an older post to the top) was to discuss ways to improve science and improve the viability in non-combat and combat situations.

We have brought up cost and worth of the tractor beam. I came up with this thought last night when I was talking with Ivan. What if we make the tractor beam a standard issued ability on science and have cheaper upgrades to increase the pull strength. Make the initial pull strength equal to 0.5 that of a miners initial speed and allow it to target all movable objects. Have each upgrade increase the pull strength up to where the pull strength is currently. Combine this with a chomping ability on the BC. This way the science can pull astroids in and chomp when it is close enough. To balance, just adjust the cool down on the chomping ability. Comments and/or concerns about these ideas are welcome.

I tend to go off on tangents and there should be like 3 posts here lol.

[Zeus]

Actually, it's not that I really want more things moved to Nav. I'm just trying to get the game a bit more friendly to smaller parties until the community grows that 5v5 and 6v6 fill on a regular basis. It's that it is almost impossible to get full games. During the day almost every game is 4v4. I almost never see a 6v6, except for during a small two or three hour window in the evening. I think in a perfect world, assuming 6v6 games fill all day and all night, that tractor beam would either be on Nav or Science, broadsides would be on Nav or Weapons, and AI would be able to launch missiles while on Weapons. Just earlier today I was in a 3v4, which isn't uncommon as the games don't fill well the majority of time, and it is hard as hell running the BC with only three people. I'm just trying to think of ways that we can grow the community and have the game fully functional when we have games that are less than 5v5. I think this game maybe needs short term, medium term, and long term plans in how to setup the game and BC in a way that we can grow the community and have the BC fully operational with small parties. Then when the community grows in size we can move the BC setup to where you need larger parties to make it fully operational. Here is a case in point, I've been sitting in CC lobby for 30 minutes now. The lobby went from 3 to 5 and back down to 2. It's still at just 2, sadly. Oops, I spoke too soon. Now it's just me in the lobby.