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Will tractor beam forces ever combine? Will there ever be a situation where people would use 12 different tractor beams?

TL;DRYes, long term the intention is for tractor beams to combine, probably with limits or diminishing returns, tied to weight and size limits on cargo, but not in 3.12.

Richard TyrerCore Gameplay Director

Yes. So the intention when we came up with the tractor beam was it's supposed to be this electromagnetic force that is kind of aiding gravity to lift this item. We do want the ability for people to combine together. I don't envisage a scene where we've got like 250 people pulling down a Bengal from space or something. I think we'll probably have some kind of limit, that it's like, okay, after a certain amount, it falls off, or some diminishing returns. But yes, the intention long term is that we have, and the way I described it was, the way the weight categories work: currently any of the boxes that you carry in the game, they have a physical weight, but they're not affected by the carryable system. So if you see a box under the hood, it might be a thousand kilos, but you can just pick it up, it doesn't really matter, and you can just walk around with it. But obviously, as we're moving towards a more physicalized world, we're actually setting all these weights to be correct. So some of the 50 by 50 boxes, they have gold in them. Now, if you do a 0.125 meter cubed box of gold, which is a one SCU box of gold, that's really heavy, like thousands of kilos. So you're never going to be able to just go, oh, I'm just going to lift it up with my hands. So what we're going to have is, we'll have the weight limits and we'll also have size limits. So we already have the size limits in terms of the 50 by 50 by 50 centimeter little boxes that you can pick up with your hands. And eventually that will tie into a weight limit of probably about 70, 75 kilos that you can actually carry. And obviously the weight will then slow you down, so you'll be struggling at that weight. Then all of a sudden you'll be like, okay, I can maybe manipulate one SCU boxes, and that'll be, okay, that's the tractor beam, maybe that can go up to 250 kilos. And then we'll have something, maybe a dedicated one, where it maybe is more numbers and larger sizes, which we've discussed. But let's say you get to the version where it's like, hey, I want to lift this box out, but it's too heavy for me. Oh, just me and my buddy, a couple of pals will come in, we'll shift it off, because it's full of metal. Because at the moment, how the records work is that it's a box of gold. It's a box of agricultural waste. It's not a box and then the waste. So they're not separated. So what we want to do is separate into the box and then the item in the box. So that means that the box will dictate the volume and size, but what you put in it will then really clearly matter in terms of how you can lift it. So if I look at a 1 SCU box, which is the standard commodity box, and it's full of, say, a gas, that might be light enough for you to lift it with your single tractor beam. But if that box is full of metal, it's not going to be light enough for you to lift it with a single tractor beam. So maybe now you need a buddy or a friend to come and help you later down the road. And then you can all lift it off and put it onto a grav-lev trolley with push-pull or something. And then you can push it around. So think of them almost like forklifts, to be able to get these things on to more maneuverable items. So long term, yes. 3.12, no.

Star Citizen Live›All About Alpha 3.12·
Published on this date.11 Dec 2020