The developers explain how the Argo SRV's tractor beam works: what it can tow (ships up to Cutlass size per SRV, tanks, cargo crates, asteroids), limits from power, mass and atmosphere, and why unwilling targets are hard to capture. They also cover quantum towing, misfires, controls, and the SRV and MPUV names.
TL;DRThe tractor beams on the SRV and other ships use the same underlying mechanics, differing in scale and power, with the SRV built entirely around it and others carrying smaller, limited ones.
315P as well. They're all the same mechanics at the end of the day. What's different is the quantities and the power that they have. The SRV is built around... it's the only ship in the game at the moment whose sole purpose is to use that tractor beam stuff. So all its items are built to powering it. Tractor beam technology is a very power-intensive thing because, and I know there's going to be lots of questions about griefing and how it all works, but it's a lot of power to do this. So those other ships that have tractor beams, if we ignore the Reclaimer for now, it's like another facet of the ship. It can do tractor beam. They're very small tractor beams. They can only maneuver small little things. They might be just on a single gimbal that can have a small, limited range of movement. Like for the Cutlass and the 315p, they're there for moving crates around and maybe stabilizing something that's slightly spinning. The Reclaimer is there to move big chunks of ship towards the claw to chomp it up. This is there to pick up entire ships and move them. So it's the same underlying technology, just applied differently and in different scales.
TL;DRAn SRV can tow physicalized, immobilized objects such as vehicles, ships and crates, roughly one Cutlass per SRV and at most about a Constellation, though harder in atmosphere, with chaining possible for bigger loads.
The basic restrictions at this stage that we're applying to things: it has to be something that's physicalized in the world. So you're not going to be able to get a thousand SRVs to ArcCorp and move a building off the planet. It's got to be physicalized, so that's vehicles, ground vehicles, spaceships, cargo crates, maybe players. And then it comes to the other restriction we're looking at here, in that it has to be willing to be moved. And by willing, I don't mean, "Are you fine to move me? Yes, then move me." It has to be immobilized in some fashion, whether that's intentionally immobilized or accidentally immobilized, like it's lost its thrusters, and the amount of movement it's doing is within a certain parameter. Again, tractor beams require lots of power. To stabilize something spinning through space like that, you're going to need lots of power to do that. So those sort of things can be very hard, whereas if that ship is gently tilting around or it's a cargo crate tilting around, that's a lot easier for it to do. In terms of vehicles, we've said Cutlass is, in our minds, one-to-one. The Cutlass is where it can confidently do that in space and in atmosphere with gravity. Obviously, there's a million variables there. If the Cutlass is laden with 40 or however many SCU of just the densest material known to mankind, that's going to be a harder job, because the mass will affect it. If we're on a planet or a moon that has 10 times gravity, that's going to affect it. But all things being equal, one SRV to one Cutlass. So it can pull something that's bigger than it, but not humongously bigger. It's got a medium power plant, I believe. It's got some medium items in there because, like I said, it's all about the power. It's got big engines, like a tugboat of the modern world. It's a chassis with big engines attached to it to deal with that. The upper end for one ship, I would say, would be a Constellation. But that's probably going to be a hard job to do in atmosphere. In space, easier, no gravity, no friction. But in atmosphere, it's going to be hard. And then obviously you can chain more ships together to do bigger things.
It doesn't negate the effects of gravity. It's a weird thing. One of Chris's big things is everything in the world and the universe is physicalized. It has real-world parameters. So whilst tractor beams do mitigate that to an extent, it doesn't make your ship suddenly become weightless. You're still having to do stuff in atmosphere with your own ship, and you're just connecting yourself to the other ship.
TL;DRCapturing a powered, shielded, crewed ship should be very hard but not impossible, since the target must be fairly immobile and shields might reduce the beam's effectiveness, though that isn't confirmed.
It's going to be very hard for that Argo to capture it. When we were coming up with this ship, we were very aware of the trolling potential of it. It's got a huge amount, and we want to not make that impossible, but make it very hard to achieve against people that don't want that to happen. If you just close the door on everything, it becomes a not particularly fun thing, but that's not what it's for.
Not completely impossible. So a ship or the target of the tractor beam needs to be relatively immobile. So if you're flying along in your ship and I come along with my SRV and I try and tractor you, if you start jinking or wildly maneuvering, I have to, A, keep up with you doing that, and my ship is not particularly maneuverable. My tractor beam is not particularly quick to move around. And then the amount of power required to hold you whilst you're doing those mechanics might be too much for my tractor beam to even keep on top of. And another layer we're proposing at this point, it's not confirmed, is that shields mitigate that somewhat. So if your shields are up, then that's like a modifier on the effectiveness. So if you're damaged and you're out of power, your shields are going to be down. So you've got very little room for maneuver. If you want to be tractored somewhere, you have to lower your shields, which makes you vulnerable to that. But if you don't want to be, put your shields up; that gives you an extra layer of protection. If you land on a planet and you're concerned about me coming along in my SRV and just picking all your ships off the planet's surface and taking them away to be salvaged somewhere, you've got to do that risk-reward of: I can leave my ship powered on with my shields on, which protects me against people like John coming along with his SRV, protects me against people trying to shoot my ship, but the downside is I'm using power. I'm using fuel. My signatures are higher, so I'm easier to find. I could turn it all off. That goes away. But then perhaps I need to stay closer to my ship and guard against that. We don't want it to be too easy on either end. It's risk-reward.
Theoretically, yeah. Because it's all physicalized, I'm not going to say it's going to be easy to do, but if you had a wave of attack ships to take down a capital ship's shields, theoretically, yes, those Argos could try and move it somewhere, bearing in mind, again, power, mass. That ship's not going to have its shields down forever, and as soon as those shields come up, that's going to be a problem. And also that ship is probably not going to be not shooting at all those people doing that.
TL;DRThere are no current plans for multiple SRV tractor beams, but upgrades are an open-ended possibility, for example if a future ship type resists tractor beams, much like swapping Prospector mining heads.
So the tractor beam stuff is, like the Prospector's mining, this utility item class. And whilst we don't have any plans right now... we haven't got 10 more different SRV tractor beams in the pipeline, that is an open-ended thing that we would allow. Perhaps there might be a ship type in the future that is particularly resistant to tractor beams and requires a specific tractor beam upgrade; then yes. It's the same for the Prospector. That's just one of its mining heads that it could have. It's great for doing asteroid mining. It's probably not very good for doing liquid or gas mining. It'd be able to do it, but not to its full potential. So if you were in an area of space that perhaps had no solid asteroids to mine, they all had liquid or gas cores, you would swap out your Prospector's mining beam system for one that's tailored towards liquid and gas.
There would be nothing to stop that happening. Again, the tank, I believe it does have shield items on it, so they would have to be down. It's getting a bit A-Team, but theoretically there's nothing to stop that. The tank excels at ground combat. When you put a tank in space being towed by another ship, it loses some of its powerfulness.
Theoretically, yes. There would be nothing in the game design to strictly stop that. It's moving physicalized objects around. I'm sure there'll be some enterprising people with the Kraken in canyons driving tanks off the cliff edges into it. I've seen people do that already on Daymar, just driving Cyclones off hills into the back of Valkyries.
TL;DRMineable asteroids are movable and persistent so could in theory be towed, though it would take huge effort and he's unsure they'd want to allow much of it; huge fixed ones can't be moved.
They obviously all have physics, so there's a difference between something that's physicalized and something that's physicalized. We're talking the ones that can be moved around, like the mineable ones; they can break and shatter, and they're persistent and they're tracked. The huge ones around Grim HEX, whilst they are physicalized, they are non-movable. They move, they orbit with the planet, but their paths are fixed. So theoretically, yes, you could play football with those mineable rocks. I'm not sure we would want to allow a huge amount of that to happen.
Theoretically, yeah, it would be a humongous amount of work to do that. If you want to get 50 guys with SRVs moving an asteroid field from one location to another, I guess, or you could have those 50 guys in mining vehicles doing it.
Yes, it can. It was one of the original design goals, to allow it to tow a stranded vehicle through quantum, because it's all very well you calling for help from the United Wayfarers Club or whatever the in-game name is, but if they come to you and go, "I'm going to tractor you now, but it's now going to be 15 years for you to get back to Port Olisar." So one of the other things was allowing it to quantum travel. In terms of going through jump points, we're still nibbling around at the fringe case ideas of jump point travel, because whilst we had a lot of locked ideas, this was never part of the original design plans for that, so I don't have an answer for the jump travel side of it.
Yes. Once it's in space, you require less effort to do it, but yeah, multiple ships would be able to do that. The multiple ships thing is... I think we've all seen Reclaimers on moons upside down like turtles. Multiple ships are really for those scenarios where you need a little fleet of SRVs to come and put you up the right way so you can go back on your travels. We don't see a huge amount... I'm sure people will, but it's more just one-to-one.
Depends on the ship. Like we talked about earlier, Cutlass-sized is where we're aiming for, for one SRV, anything beneath that. And above that within reason, depending on the mass. So it's mass-based rather than volume or type of ship.
It's not something we want it to do at this point. The Pioneer fabricates them inside the ship and then drills them into the surface for stability. The Pioneer can do the reverse. It can land back over them and move them around, but you cannot tractor beam them in the current design.
Probably not a lot. Again, it depends on what those two ships are doing. If one is stationary and the other is moving around a lot, that one is having to use its power to move around. The other one is having to use more power to try and tractor onto it. I don't know if there's an answer for that.
I think they're picturing two SRVs, shields down, locking tractor beams on each other and going in opposite ways. Then it becomes a question of power management and throttle management and stuff like that.
It's like tying two people together with a bungee cord the same way. It depends on what you physically do. The bungee cord becomes irrelevant at that point.
TL;DRThe tractor beam isn't designed as an offensive weapon and they don't want to go down the route of tearing ships apart, though careless handling, like badly righting a ship, can damage it.
Something like drawing and quartering a ship, basically. Take a Cutlass and four SRVs, grab it in four cardinal directions and pull in opposite directions.
I don't think so. That's not something we want to go down. It can cause damage through negligent behavior. So if you're trying to right a ship that's upside down and you don't manage that twisting and turning... In fact, I was in the hotel last night watching some documentary about truckers in the Arctic righting big 18-wheelers that had gone off the road, and the amount of tow trucks they had to do in very specific places to pull it over, and they didn't quite do it right and it just rocked it over and then rocked it back the other way and then damaged it more.
Parking and locking your ship is completely independent of the power state of the ship. You can land your ship and get out of your seat and lock it, and the ship can still be on. Leave your shields going. If you want to turn everything off, lock your ship and go in your Dragonfly somewhere, then yes, it would be at risk. But if you want to leave the shields on, then that mitigates that risk somewhat.
I'd recommend just turning your engines off. I would always recommend that anyway. If you're prepared to pay the price for wear and degradation on your items, turning your engines off will settle you nicely, but it leaves all your shields. If you're halfway to the back of your Freelancer and someone starts shooting at you, you've got time to get back to your seat and do stuff.
Yep, absolutely. They're going to be physicalized items in the world. Just how you see the MPUV moving cargo boxes around, ships with tractor beams will be able to do that. Obviously, the size of the cargo crate and the size of the tractor beam dictate limits. But yeah, you could have the SRV unloading big chunks of a Hull C or a Hull D. No problem.
Yeah, that was a slight mistake by me, because we had been arguing over the name for weeks. The original design brief had it as small. When I came around to filming it, we had adjusted that to search. But it's always been recovery vehicle, and it's the S that keeps changing.
Right before the start of the show, the lore team came in and said it's now standard recovery vehicle. I wrote it down: standard recovery vehicle. So it was small recovery vehicle, then during ATV it was search and rescue vehicle, and now officially, from the people who name things, standard recovery vehicle.
I didn't. That's one of those ones we're still debating backwards and forwards on. Logically, there would be nothing to stop you doing it, but those pesky humans are pretty wriggly.
It doesn't, from memory, unless I've completely forgotten everything over the last week. The main method of entry is through a little sealed lift on the underside of it. So as far as I'm aware, it doesn't have one.
Absolutely. That was one of the use cases that we had when we were coming up with this ship: what are all these scenarios in the game that people are struggling with? Ships running out of fuel on the surface of planets and having no way to get back anywhere. Reclaimers upside down, and other big ships like the Starfarer and Reclaimer struggling to get out of atmosphere, because whilst they do have VTOL thrusters to some extent, it's still a lot of mass and a dense, heavy atmosphere to get out of. Ships like this, that's great.
I wouldn't say a repulsor, but we plan on allowing it to do push-pull. So it's not just a case of I tractor beam something and I can only ever pull it towards me. It would be a case of I can manipulate it forward and back down that beam. There will be a hard limit on the end of it. You're not going to be able to tractor beam something off the pad at Olisar and push it all the way to Hurston across Stanton, but forward and back push-pull will be there, and then the yawing, pitching, rolling will be on the actual gimbal of the tractor beam item itself.
TL;DRLike most items, the tractor beam can misfire, more often when worn or damaged; the exact event isn't settled, but he expects it would just stop working briefly, possibly catastrophically in atmosphere.
Pretty much every item in the game will have the ability to misfire. So misfire is this base percentage chance of an event occurring. Every item can do it, and there's factors that can increase that chance. Wear and degradation being the main one that increases it. So the more worn something is, the more likely it is to misfire. Damage can do that. Distortion can do a temporary buff or debuff on it. We haven't isolated exactly what the misfire event for the tractor beam is, but I would expect it just simply stops working for a period of time. So you could be maneuvering a ship around, your very worn, trusty tractor beam misfires, the beam stops, that ship just keeps... it inherits the momentum that you had given it and it just carries on sailing, and when it comes back on again you've got to reposition yourself to get back hold of it before it disappears. If it does that in atmosphere, that could be pretty catastrophic.
Like remote turrets, you look at the screen and then you go into a full-screen view that controls it. So if you imagine when you're playing in a Prospector, you're sat overlooking the beam; it would be like that through a remote camera, you're sat overlooking it. You can do it in third person, like you can do most things in third person, but it'd be a heck of a lot easier to do it in first person through that.
It's not going to be an instant thing. I keep referring back to Prospector because it's very similar in terms of how you'll be interacting with things, in that you'll be able to rock up, you flick to tractor beam mode and you fire out your tractor beam, and that part of it will be instant. There's going to be a period where it has to settle, and you might have to do some configuration to balance everything properly before you can start doing everything. So for a very simple use case of I'm flying up to something, picking it up and going, it's not instant, but it will be quick. For the scenarios of I've been called to this abandoned ship that's upside down in a canyon, I'd be flying over, getting there, working out the best way to do it, then doing that in stages.
With as many caveats as I can put before this as humanly possible, I don't see a reason why they couldn't. We may disable it in some way in the future if we find it's becoming a horrendous problem, but I foresee it being something that will work out of the box. Again, that Idris or Javelin has to be willing, and if you're turning up with a fleet of SRVs, you'd better be turning up with something to make the Idris and Javelin less angry about you trying to tow it.
TL;DREarly concepts had a rear window by the rescued-crew lifeboat section, and he doesn't remember if it remains but doubts it was removed; the rear-facing tractor beam camera can show the rear.
I'm trying to think if it did. In one of the very early concepts, it did. You have the pilot station at the front, which controls the crew, the tractor beam, and then there's the little lifeboat section in the back where the rescued ship's crew can sit if their ship is unsafe or they just plain don't want to be in a ship being towed through space. They can be in there, and there was a window at the back to look out back over your ship in the early concepts. I do not know off the top of my head whether that's still there, but I don't think it would have been removed. It just wasn't called out in any of the marketing images.
All things being equal, probably not. But for instance, if this came and tractor beamed a Dragonfly or an X1 or a Nox, that's going to be significantly harder for that to get away. And likewise, if we had a super uber capital ship with tractor beam technology and it tried to do it to a smaller ship, it makes it much harder to do. But on an equal footing, it's not an instant win, but it requires effort from both sides to succeed.
That's certainly how I want to do it. The focus of the tractor beam is not a specific point. It's a sphere of influence. So if you get the things close together, then yes. But again, as we come to implement it, there may be some unforeseen technical reasons why it has to be a very specific point.
EMPs deactivate everything that's around them, so that would systemically happen. Again, that would be a great way to knock down a less willing target's shield for a period of time for you to come and tractor beam them, if you're that way inclined.