Will the Argo SRV tractor beam be capable of moving asteroids? For multiplayer mining ops, can we tug asteroids together for our party members in the Prospector/MOLE?asked by McGonagall
TL;DRAsteroids are currently static, but with tractor beams they're looking at making them movable, and a strong enough beam could move one; they're probably heading that way, though some problems remain.
So right now, how we originally designed mining, we just made all of our harvestables, which mineables are part of, static. And it was the simple thing to do back in those days. And I think now we're starting to get to the point where with the tractor beam and all these features, there is a point in making it dynamic. So until now, and even right now, if you just crash into a fresh mineable with your ship, it doesn't matter if you crash a Bengal carrier, that rock is not moving. But at this point, we can start looking into having them movable. If you have a tractor beam strong enough to move a ship of the same mass as the rock, there's no reason it couldn't move that rock. We already saw some things happening when lootable boxes were tractor-beamable. So we know there's some small problems there that we still need to overcome, but it is doable. So we're probably going to be heading in that direction.
I feel like, if I'm allowed to speak for you, I've known you and Torsten long enough to know that if there's a way to make towing asteroids around possible and relatively safe and not balance-breaking, we'll probably pursue it.
Wait until they tow them at really ludicrous speeds and crash them into stations. Just wait for that. That is the first thing everyone will do.
To see whether you can bring it with you into quantum.
We'll at least try it.