[Herra Tohtori]

Hello... I did a search on tractor beams and the closest thing related was an archived conversation with last comment made on 2006, so instead of necrothreading that I decided to make a new one to ask some questions and present an interesting idea I got out of the blue while thinking about something completely different. The last comment in the archived thread was this:

(...)The tractor beam trick cannot truly be done with FreeSpace.

Cannot be done, huh? Well we all know that it is possible to change enemy's momentum with weapon hits. Morning Star does that, but for a tractor beam, the effect should be reversed obviously.

So I got mainly two questions.

1. Is it possible to reverse the Morning Star's effect on ship momentum? So that it affects the radial velocity of the target towards the weapon firing, instead of repelling it?

2. If yes, can it be applied to turrets as well as primaries?


If (and only if) the answer to both questions is "yes", then it should be relatively simple to

-set damage to zero
-set firing rate to rather high
-set projectile velocity to very high to increase accuracy (as well as AI accuracy)
-set the effect to black/transparent 2x2 pixel


Any chance that someone would bother testing it? If it works, wouldn't it be relatively simple to place a few of these around an ISD hangar. They would be limited so that you'd only get into the hangar if the ISD's hangar was pointed generally towards your direction, but who cares, it'd still be awesome IMHO.

Also, this kind of tractor beam would have several interesting in-built characteristics:

1. It's effective range isn't defined only by the point where the weapon's projectiles "disappear" acording to the table. By doing evasive maneuvers you would be able to avoid the beam "locking" onto your ship, just like with other weapons. So, the closer you go to the ISD or whatever using the tractor beam on you, the higher the risk of being hit and eventually caught in continuous stream of the weapon's "particles"

2. Lightweight ships would automatically be more prone to this weapon since the amount of inertia change would be definite. There could obviously be heavy tractor beam turrets and light tractor beam turrets for, say, pulling Corellian Corvettes or fighters (respectively) towards the hangar bay. If a heavy tractor beam would hit a very lightweight ship, the change of momentum given to the fighter would probably propel it towards the turret at rather high velocity...

3. Multiple turrets (or projectors, should I say) would add to the effect so that eventually you would be positioned in the center of the hangar bay, which could work as a mission ending trigger and/or docking sequence initiation trigger.


Just tell me would it be possible to do it this way? Obviously it would be possible to write the mission so that it would disable controls and continue flying on pre-defined path but that'd be the same every time, whereas in this case you could even try and destroy the projecors with well-placed shots, before being dragged to critical distance that triggers mission ending.

[Snail]

You can by setting $Mass to a negative value.

[Herra Tohtori]

Okay, the first question is cleared then.

How'bout the other one, does it work for turrets as well?


And please tell me if I'm trying to re-invent the wheel.

[Snail]

Yes, it can be applied to turrets. However, if it is used as a beam, I would expect it would need to have a bit of tweaking so that it continues to aim at the target instead of shooting once and then stopping.

[chief1983]

This is assuming we wanted to make a tractor beam an actual weapon.  We could also make it a scripted effect in FRED and possibly some help from Lua, which I believe could provide a very realistic effect in a campaign/mission.  It could take advantage of the autopilot feature, although I'd have to see how it works exactly to know if it's doable that way.

[MI123645]

A tractor beam on fighters is rather nice. But in the TG games, one could put all beam power into their engine.

So if one had a beam, they would actually have double the power, not half of it :/

Grr at TG games for that.

[Herra Tohtori]

Yes, it can be applied to turrets.

Fascinating... so in theory (tm) it should work, eh? Cool.

...wether it would be a functional solution remains to be seen.

However, if it is used as a beam, I would expect it would need to have a bit of tweaking so that it continues to aim at the target instead of shooting once and then stopping.

Even though it's called tractor beam, I'm not actually suggesting that it would actually be a beam turret in FreeSpace context. It would be a weapon much like Morning Star with even higher firing rate and projectile velocity, negative $Mass value, no damage and high accuracy.

Since the tractor beams canonically don't have any visible effect in SW movies, none would be needed, just a way to affect the trajectory of the target. A dense stream of invisible fast projectiles is actually pretty much indistinguishable of a beam...

...which tempts me to experiment with changing the beam turrets into high-range, high-velocity, high-rate of fire Prometheus blob hoses instead of current "line weapons".Although I don't know how the graphics/collision detection would handle that many blobs simultaneously. But I digress...

This is assuming we wanted to make a tractor beam an actual weapon.  We could also make it a scripted effect in FRED and possibly some help from Lua, which I believe could provide a very realistic effect in a campaign/mission.  It could take advantage of the autopilot feature, although I'd have to see how it works exactly to know if it's doable that way.

Quite obviously it is an option, but making it available as a weapon/subsystem kinda removes it from "plot device" category IMHO. Simulation versus arcade, in a way...

Mission designing with autopilot would make the mission partially a cutscene with the player having no control over whether his ship is caught or not. If it's a plot device that the player needs to be caught, it indeed is likely the most bestest way to do it anyway. But what if you want an option to be or not to be caught? Then again, in campaigns you would need to make a branch for an escape mission if you were caught. Or make the player replay the mission and not get caught.

Having it as an actual simulated possibility, not a certainty in the mission, would make it another threat posed by a Star Destroyer that could be avoided with correct tactics - mainly keeping your distance and weaving in evasive pattern.


Also, it would be possible to fit this kind of weapon (or something like it with limited power) to some playable ships. I know it differs from tractor beams seen in X-Wing/TIE Fighter games where a tractor beam makes the enemy simply fly straight when locked, but it might be interesting nevertheless.


/me ponders the possibility of HL2 Gravity Gun in FS2



...and yes, I remember that getting a beam was actually just an effective way to increase your available energy in the classic XWTF games, and that was my usual purpose for it... I mean, it was fairly useless in most cases, recharging it took a crapload of energy and wasn't really worth it so I usually redirected all of it to everything else after mission start.

[Topgun]

someone made one a LONG time ago on freespace retail (can't remember who). it worked, I tried it.

[chief1983]

Well then heck, if it was possible on retail there's gotta be a way to do it now.

[Black Wolf]

Fighter mounted tractor beams are a bad idea without heavy coding or scripting. You can FRED them relatively easily with every-time, set-ship-position and variables (with a bit of aritmetic thrown in if you want to get mathematical about it and make some nice, clean, off axis lines, but negatove mass beam weapons don't work, and negative mass pulse guns like an anti morning star accelerate the targetted object towards you at a constantly increasign speed, so it rams you. 'tis nasty.

[chief1983]

Yeah I really don't see the use for any player controlled tractor beam.  I wouldn't think it would be needed for anything beyond a scripted event in a mission, but if making an actual weapon to do the scripted even is easier that just completely scripting the event every time, sobeit.

[G0atmaster]

would the fact that you're getting hit by a million of these projectiles every second possibly make your ship fly faster and faster with every hit, just as the morning stars sort of, build momentum?  Could this be a problem?

[jr2]

/me ponders the possibility of HL2 Gravity Gun in FS2

* jr2 knows that you can't use tags before /me

[Herra Tohtori]

would the fact that you're getting hit by a million of these projectiles every second possibly make your ship fly faster and faster with every hit, just as the morning stars sort of, build momentum?  Could this be a problem?

Million might be pushing it... even hundred per second would likely be sufficient to the purpose.

But yeah, obviously it could be a problem, assuming you didn't do the table balancing correctly. I don't know how the damping forces work in FS2 as the velocities grow. If they act as a constant force like, for example, the friction affecting a box sliding on surface, then it would be a problem because the stream would add more or less constant force greater than the friction, in which case the velocity would indeed grow exponentially and increase all the way until you hit the tractor beam projector.

But, if it acts more like atmospheric drag which increases as velocity increases... then at some point there would be a point where the tractor beam acceleration would match the damping acceleration, and the target would continue on more or less constant speed towards the projector. The lighter the ship, the faster the terminal velocity. Or vice versa, the properties of the beam would also affect the end result. Should a stray TIE hit the path of ISD heavy tractor shield pulling in, say, a Corellian Corvette, the results could be spectacular for bystanders and craptacular to the pilot and beam operator. You would still need to balance it so that fighter-sized ships would have a sensible terminal velocity when being in light tractor beam's grip, and the heavy tractor beam so that a Corvette can be pulled with reasonable termonal velocity likewise. It could be used on Dreadnaughts, Frigates and the like as well but the bigger the ship, the smaller the effect... but I'm jumping ahead of things here, as you probably have noticed.


So, a third question - is the damping acceleration in FS2 constant until zero velocity in mission co-ordinates is reached, or does it increase when velocity increases? According to my experiments, at least the forward deceleration does not really stay constant from max speed to zero; it starts fast but slows down somewhat before reaching zero. Dunno if the lateral/vertical damping works in the same way.

If latter, then it's just a matter of balancing the weapon correctly. If the former, then it's probably easier to do it with scripting and/or mission design. Someone should test it to see how it works out, but I haven't got the time... I'm just wildly throwing in some ideas to catch if they should be worth a while.


...and jr2...

* Herra Tohtori tells you that your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries, and that he does not want to talk to you no more, you silly knnn-nigget. He also informs you that you should go away or he shall taunt you a second time-ah. In addition he remarks that you should mind your own business if you have no input on the subject of the thread, but since you're protected by Someone Elses Problem field generator, he'll let someone else to actually handle that if they will, you bloody spammer

...j/k.

I could've used the /me thingamaroo in itself but I actually wanted it to read /me instead of what it does to the text after it.

but frankly I simply dislike using red colour in my messages. Oh, I guess I could've made it olive, but it reads so badly against rather dark backgrounds.

[jr2]

Ok, on topic, I remember reading in a SW book about Thrawn (The Emporer's Hand) "returning", only it was an alien that could change his appearance, IIRC, and he used ocular implants to emulate Thrawn's eyes.

  Now, in that book, an Immobilizer or whatever (subspace planet gravity field emulator) drops a transport out of subspace with someone important inside it, to announce Thrawn's return to the new Republic.

  Now, when in the tractor beam, the transport fired a missile filled with reflective material, sort of like chaff, the missile was pulled by the tractor beam very quickly, and was almost neutralized by turrets, but exploded before hand with chaff, which allowed the transport to almost get away.  You might want to take this into consideration when making this tractor beam... I believe the churlish Mr. Herra already pointed this out.  j/k, but he did mention smaller objects getting pulled rather quickly by a tractor beam using enough energy for a larger object.

  Just make sure to include missiles in this category, and allow the player to fire them.  Also, you should be allowed to try and break lock with the tractor beam, and if you're in a heavy transport with aux power cut in, and the ship tractoring you is very small, you should be able to break away, unless your engines are damaged...
  which brings up another point... subsystems shouldn't auto-repair unless you have an R2 unit, and even then it's a stretch.

  And what are you going to use for a support ship?  SW doesn't have any, that'll be interesting.  Hmmmmmmm, so many things.  I'd better split this monstrosity into paragraphs, or I'll get lynched. 

[Herra Tohtori]

Ok, on topic, I remember reading in a SW book about Thrawn (The Emporer's Hand) "returning", only it was an alien that could change his appearance, IIRC, and he used ocular implants to emulate Thrawn's eyes.

Yep, I remember that too. Vaguely...

Now, in that book, an Immobilizer or whatever (subspace planet gravity field emulator) drops a transport out of subspace with someone important inside it, to announce Thrawn's return to the new Republic.

That would be Interdictor cruiser, most likely by the description. They would be equivalent to not being jump out from the mission (Alt+J disabled).

Now, when in the tractor beam, the transport fired a missile filled with reflective material, sort of like chaff, the missile was pulled by the tractor beam very quickly, and was almost neutralized by turrets, but exploded before hand with chaff, which allowed the transport to almost get away.  You might want to take this into consideration when making this tractor beam... I believe the churlish Mr. Herra already pointed this out.  j/k, but he did mention smaller objects getting pulled rather quickly by a tractor beam using enough energy for a larger object.

Hmmm... I don't think this kind of an effect would extend to missiles, since they can't be hit. And bombs would be destroyed more likely than being pushed/pulled.

Just make sure to include missiles in this category, and allow the player to fire them.  Also, you should be allowed to try and break lock with the tractor beam, and if you're in a heavy transport with aux power cut in, and the ship tractoring you is very small, you should be able to break away, unless your engines are damaged...

Yeah, well, it should be ship's maximum acceleration versus beam's inflicted acceleration depending on beam parametres and ship's mass value. If the ship's acceleration is bigger it can simply head away and increase distance slowly, even though the beam would be accelerating it backwards (ie. slowing things down).

Breaking lock would be the easier the further you were from the beam start point. Just head towards the normal of the beam, hit afterburners, with luck you can fool the targetting of the beam, assuming your angular movement is sufficiently large and unpredictable. The closer you get, the harder it would be to break from the grasp of the particle stream.

which brings up another point... subsystems shouldn't auto-repair unless you have an R2 unit, and even then it's a stretch.

There are many schools about this matter...

I think that the ship onboard computer / astrodroid should be able to circumvent some damage to sensors, communications and fire control (and equivalent systems) by re-routing other hardware to do it's job... a couple of times. No percentage fiddling, just a time to Get It Fixed. Other possibility is to have auxiliary systems for some components. But sure, if you get damage to engines, an astrodroid's not gonna fix it in a heat of a battle unless it gets very lucky. If, though, a monitor gets shut you ain't gonna be able to head to nearest GalMart to get a replacement part, you're trying to fight a war against pesky eggshells with solar panels. And wedges with a lot of guns. So you're stuck with a broken HUD element.

Getting sensors FUBARed (literally beyond repair) is/was a key element in previous SW space sims... or actually, your sensor systems could be working just fine, but the observation instruments became fired so you weren't able to actually use them.

And what are you going to use for a support ship?  SW doesn't have any, that'll be interesting.  Hmmmmmmm, so many things.  I'd better split this monstrosity into paragraphs, or I'll get lynched. 

Totally Games' XWTF games did utilize support ships for both Rebs and Imps (if there was a support ship available in the mission, you needed to target it and hit Shift+B by default keyboard settins IIRC, then it would slowly make it's way towards you, dock and reload your ship... handy on bombing or convoy strike missions ), so there's a good enough reason in my opinion for having them around, even if there were no other canon references to them.



...Oh, by the way. There's no reason to call me Mr. Herra... unless you want to produce a few laughs from me and my fellow Finns.

[Topgun]

ok mr. frodo.

I think the retail beam thing was actually 2 turrets. 1 pulls the ship toward you the other stops it.
I think that's how it was.

[Bob-san]

ok mr. frodo.

I think the retail beam thing was actually 2 turrets. 1 pulls the ship toward you the other stops it.
I think that's how it was.

I was actually about to suggest that--you beat me to it (by 2 hours). If you use two weapons, you should be able to negate the effects and use a "holding" beam. Another thing you might be able to do is set ranges on the "push" beam... if you have the "pull" effect at, say, 2km... you will pull the ship towards you. If you have the "push" effect at 1.5km, you can keep the target ship at ~1.5km. If you flag it as a beam and use no texture on said beam, you should have an effective weapon (as well as the ability to set refire to 0 and duration in seconds). If you want to add an effect, it should be more strait-forward to texture the beam. Don't forget to take off color flags.

[Excalibur]

I think once I put negative mass on a mornig star.

I fired it at a Herc II and it came towards me at ULTRA high velocity - suicide weapon if used wrongly...

[Bob-san]

I think once I put negative mass on a mornig star.

I fired it at a Herc II and it came towards me at ULTRA high velocity - suicide weapon if used wrongly...

We know that happens--we are trying to get around that point.